Eighteen wheeler — III. Induction

One number is perhaps dearer than all others
when it comes to the burden of ambiguities:

Two

    or not

matters to us often more than any other question.

Love is a test of
    induction
for a growing person, as it is for a growing species.

Induction, as in,
if something can be shown to follow
from
    one
        to two,
            and then from two
                to many,
then it must follow for all.

First, then, is the formidable leap of expanding one’s care from one to two.
The leap that Rilke called “the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation”.
And for most, it stops there, arriving already reluctantly, conditionally.
(“… perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough…”)

Second, it is possible to learn how
two-and-two-and-two can make three,
be it through the new lives we create together
or the loves we learn to share in our vast hearts.

And, next, to paraphrase Cornel West:

    Justice is an induction on love.

If loving one could bring forth loving others,
until care and dignity, at least, is extended to every human life,
then we would at last mature to a species worth survival
beyond merely that of the fittest.

Maybe the Fermi paradox is resolved simply on this step:
Only those species that manage this induction from love to justice
make it out of their cradle alive,
ready to celebrate literal stars together
as a reward for learning to celebrate the lights in one another.

Maybe the leap from one to two stars
—“the ultimate task, the final test and proof”, this time for a species—
requires of humanity to love more than just tribally,
as it was for a human to love more than just themselves.

Maybe that is the celestial hint we feel in one another
when we love with an abandon exceeding our fear.
That we are not merely made of starstuff,
but belong among the stars themselves.

Melih Sener

“Eighteen Wheeler” consists of five parts:
1. Eighteen wheeler — I. Innumeracy
2. Eighteen wheeler — II. Confabulation
3. Eighteen wheeler — III. Induction
4. Eighteen wheeler — IV. Dice
5. Eighteen wheeler — V. Oath
(… well, fine, and also something about carrots.)