I shall, I must, I will admit that it’s hard to believe in the dream of building a settlement for members of our species on another celestial body when our species, despite claims of higher brain functions — culture, religion, ethics, morals and other labels we bandy about like birds of paradise on display — contains serial rapists/murderers/financial exploiters/stalkers.

When while I sit here, quietly mourning, along with dozens of others who knew her, the loss of a dear, gentle person like my mother in-law, bloated egos point blame about the sad state of our species’ barter trade system of survival on this planet (a/k/a the economy) on each other like misbehaving schoolchildren in Bil Keane’s single pane comic, Family Circus, calling up the gremlins of “Ida Know” and “Not Me.”

Thank goodness the trees outside the window are stark evidence that the thoughts in my central nervous system are frivolous.

All supercellular existence like memes, including the label meme and the electronic means used to convey this message, seem meaningless right now.

Look, I don’t mind playing God with all your lives in a supercomputer simulation set.  If my colleagues sit with me in the Committee while reviewing the simulation results and decide to take action against you in godlike manner, exposing your secrets, eliminating the greedy, elevating the needy, I won’t stop them.

None of us is more important than all of us.

The whining of professional sports team owners and players are just so much background noise.

Amateur athletes who destroy their bodies for the sake of personal pride seem so misguided.

Office workers who deteriorate their health to stay within subcultural norms seem so unfortunate.

Military and police who abuse their authority for personal ego boosting seem such a waste.

My mother in-law never drank, never smoked, never directly criticised anyone (rather, she questioned the validity of a person’s behavioural intent) — to some, she might have led a smalltown life which would not appeal to them.

And, yet, she inspired everyone she met to be better than their negative surroundings.

There comes a moment in the clash of cultures when subculture leaders cannot inspire the populace as a whole due to historic teachings about the superiourity of one, each or every subculture over another.

Who can we believe is telling the truth?

Who is truly impartial?

Which fairy tale, which myth, and/or which legend is the most universal?

That’s why, when the Committee put me in charge of telling the story, the running commentary, the plots and subplots of our species from the perspective of the reluctant leader, I’ve tried to take my ego and personality out of the equation by taking your personal stories and mixing them into a supercomputer simulation, an electromechanical device that crunches numbers unfeelingly while processing the behavioural traits of feelings/emotions unique to our species and shared with the rest of the sets of states of energy around us in this part of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Of course, a supercomputer can only do so much.

Its output is subject to interpretation.  Every character, word, space, sentence, formula and conclusion has separate meanings to those who read/view them.

Which means, I suppose, despite trying to create an impartial judge/oracle in the form of a supercomputer networked into our lives, we are still left, at the end of this blog entry, having to trust one another to put species first, subculture second and self last.

Where will this lead us?

In a culture where literacy is important, illiteracy in one’s early childhood school years is a key indicator of low employment capability and most likely high criminal activity tendency later on.  But these are culture-based measurements.

What about the innate concepts of right and wrong, regardless of specific cultural training?

How malleable are we?

What is “right” and what is “wrong” when all subcultural references are removed?

As our species superculture continues to take shape, will we define rules/laws and punish people for exploiting our trust in one another to put species first and self last while preserving individual freedoms/rights?

I am unimportant.  I can die today or tomorrow and won’t regret anything I have or haven’t done.

It is you, our species within the global ecosystem, that matters most.  What are we doing to protect the weakest and most trusting of us from the worst of our behavioural tendencies?

= = =

Thanks to Dr. Reed for calling and sharing his memories of my mother in-law during her medical office visits of the past; Billie Young; Mrs. Knowlton; Peggy Shuck; Pearl Manis; Brandi and her baby near Burem Road; Amis Mill Eatery; Stephanie and Sarah at Beauregard’s; Rave; Shirley Price; Sarah Evans; Barbara Malpas; Janet Netherland-Brown; Melinda Miller; Rogersville Presbyterian Church Business Women’s Circle; Rev. Rose; Sue Livesay; Oles Miller; Rev. White; Maurice Davis; Jim Forgey; David Miller; Jonathan Berry; Brian Givens; Tommy Logan; Broome Funeral Home; McKinney Cemetery; David Testerman; Sweet Tooth Cafe; Pal’s Sudden Service; Kingsport Times-News; Rogersville Review; WRGS; Mike at Rocky Top Markets.