https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/escaping-together
"At some point in all of our lives, we all try to escape from something. There
are few things more universal to the human experience than the act of escape,
of running from some predator or some danger. To even be where I am today as a
human being alive in the 21st century, I know I’m here because of all the
things that didn’t manage to kill my ancestors before they were able to pass
their genes and knowledge down the ancestral line. To escape is human.
I write these words as an evacuee having just escaped Ida, the fifth strongest
hurricane to ever hit the continental U.S. in recorded history. I write these
words as a pandemic kills human after human around the world, their lives
snuffed out of existence by the ravages of a microscopic replicator whose sole
purpose is to reproduce. I write these words as a human pondering the human
experience, living in the unknown space between having a home and wondering
when I can return to living in it.
It may feel like we live in a unique time of crises, one after the other, be it
climate-related, or health-related, or democracy-related, in a seemingly
endless chain of tragedies large and small, but really, it’s always been this
way. This isn’t the first time we’ve fought a virus, or a hurricane, or a
flood, or a wildfire, or an earthquake, or the rise of authoritarianism. These
crises have always been with us, and so far, as a species at least, we have
managed to overcome them.
Along the way, we have lost members of the human family. We have left people
behind. Not everyone has been able to survive everything the challenges of
human existence has placed before us, but the collective we do survive, and we
do it together. That concept is key - together. Our torch as a species would
likely have burned out long ago, were it not for this kind of superpower of
togetherness. We are social beings. We work best when we work together, when we
collaborate, when we maximize the concept of “us” and minimize the concept of
“them.” We are interdependence machines. By dividing the work of survival,
we’re able to minimize the amount of time spent on surviving, and grow the
amount of our limited lifetimes spent on everything else. By working together,
we’re able to escape more, and be trapped less."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
