Sybarite

sybarite \SIB-uh-ryt\, noun:

A person devoted to luxury and pleasure.

~~~~~~~

Maybe physics isn't a bad place to start. When the reality hits that the entire universe is governed by a set of impartial laws, that nothing is exempt from these laws, that we can look at these laws (as we have interpreted them) and say, "Look, here is a truth. No matter how many times I drop an apple, it will fall. I understand why, and this truth will never change."

From there, one can wonder how many other laws are like this. One begins to understand the true aim of science (or thought in general)--to find these laws, to make sure they're there, that we can test them. Criterion gets established for the strongest truths. We have to trust our skepticism. To find truth, we find, we have to question ourselves.

We have to question what makes each of us different, at least at some point. It becomes striking how small the differences are, when one looks at the whole picture. Just as the Earth becomes infinitesimally small when recognized in the grand scheme of the universe, so do we. This can be merely depressed, or it can be, more valuably, humbling. One can start to recognize himself or herself as one of many humans spread across the planet. When impartial observations are applied, it becomes clear that much of our lives are the same. We seek love and affirmation. We get afraid, and it makes us hate. Our instincts, intellectualized, combine with social circumstances to make the best and worst of us. We are admirable in our capacity for imagination and mercy.

An individual is not a single, removed entity standing among a sea of faceless or foreign bodies, but a face among faces, subject to many of the same laws of living that all the rest are. And once this concept is established, the question arises: Can we still believe in evil? It is more difficult to be upset with an adversary when one truly understands his or her position. Likewise, it is difficult to justify that any person in the world is evil upon recognizing that we are all subject to many of the same laws, and at the very least are disposed toward the same desires: love, security and health. This is not to say the unflinching laws of physics works its way up into subjective human experience--we are subject to many different laws too, but the most important ones are too similar to label coincidence.

A standard has only just recently, in the last few hundred years, been established in our world: humans are not exempt from a singular, unified description. Spawning from the revolutionary observations of people like Darwin, Freud, Einstein and even Marx, it became clear that humans were not, and should not be, removed from critical observation. While the application of the understanding has been murky (first women and blacks didn't count, now the line is grey with homosexuals, remaining racial tensions, varying religions), the idea that we are really not largely unlike one another is thankfully gaining ground.

It's a bit of a slippery slope scenario: upon understanding that one can't undermine human rights by excusing some people from the grounds of "human" by classifying this description under racial, political, sexual or religious terms, it becomes exponentially clear that there is a correlation between all of these things. They are united by their shallow justification of wrongdoing to other human beings. To strip another human of the rights provided by the recognized standard, one must be classified not only an enemy, but not human. At least it requires more work than it used to.

Inalienable rights. I think that should speak clearly enough. That none of us should be subject to alienation by our fellow humans: that none of us should be considered enemies or evil. What disputes we have can clearly not be settled by gods alone, as they rather prefer to choose sides (at least in the eyes of their propagators) and thus dilute the "we are all human" standard required to find peace among this planet. To claim oneself part of a chosen people is anathema to kindness, freedom from oppression and equality, because chosen people have unchosen adversaries: people subject to different laws and judgments.

The cure? Like I said, physics is not a bad place to start. Seeing pictures like the one in the top right corner remind that even should we be the chosen ones, we have at our hands a feeble amount of power. Secondly, it speaks loudly that our home is a small one that should not be meaninglessly torn apart merely because we as people cannot put into action the very standard that allows our minds and lives to flourish: we all have inalienable rights, because we are all subject to many of the same laws.

And while those laws are not like physics, and cause cruelty to some and not to others, we must always side with the human race before siding with our temporal predilections and dispositions. We only want our group to be chosen because it's a little less fear on our plate, but I truly believe that if we were to realize that fear is largely the same on every plate, it would be a lot harder to satiate by adding to one another's plate in an attempt to clear one's own. How much longer can we ignore our similarly unalienable similarities? To find a standard by which we can understand our species and find a happy peace for all is more advantageous, kind, moral and mentally, emotionally and physically rewarding pursuit than finding temporal ways to keep one or more chosen peoples satisfied.