by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: October 06, 2009

As living creatures, the basic purpose, motive and intent of humanity is to thrive to adulthood, to reproduce, and to bring the next generation to self sufficiency, where that generation can continue the process. When we talk about "survival of the fittest" that is what we talk about. The fittest, in the animal kingdom manage to escape predators, be they other animals, other humans, poisons or germs.

The fittest survive and produce the next self sufficient generation without experiencing or causing fatal accident, injury, debilitation from genetic disorders, or mental debilitation sufficient to cause loss of will to live.

The fittest do not cause damage to the environment or decimate food sources so that starvation, lack of water, or lack of shelter from the forces of nature cause death.

As humans, we are unique of all animals and living things. At our highest level of being, we think of things that do nothing for immediate survival, staying at the top of the food and predatory chain, or maintaining the will to reproduce and live at any cost. We think of deprivation and deferral of satisfaction as a tool for survival. We think of sacrificing self serving freedoms for the greater good. We think of greater forces and beings than ourselves.

Sometimes, we cause massive destruction with our lowest levels of thinking. When Yosemite National Park was founded, our clumsy attempts to regulate life there created an imbalance in the animal kingdom that has taken decades to correct. We actually prevented a natural extinction (or dormancy) of some plant life that no longer was viable, given the climate changes and water drainage that had naturally occurred there.

Our thinking has created nuclear weaponry sufficient to destroy the earths upper crust and eliminate all life. Our thinking has caused the most horrific and bestial of unessecary suffering, just for the satisfaction of a few who should have been eliminated before they could wield such awful power. We arrived at the possibility of mutually assured destruction.

In that aspect, the celestial jury is voting heavily in favor of declaring humanity far from being the fittest of any living creatures.

But humanity has the spark of greatness in it. When our motives trend toward efforts that benefit the greater good, we thrive.

When our purpose is to improve the world for our future generations, we make it possible for future generations to thrive.

When our intent is to serve something greater than even the whole of humanity, we become a steward of the planet, which is the only viable place for all life as we know it to live. We have nowhere else to go, and we will not get there in the next several generations, even if there were somewhere else to go.

After achieving mutually assured destruction, the evolving motive, intent and purpose of all of humanity has become to thrive as a whole, not as self interested and separate parts of a whole, where each part considers the other parts as predators and threats, and mutually assured destruction as an option.

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