Evolution’s bitch

You keep hearing about the merits of the “natural”
and the horrors of the “unnatural”.
Remedies and diets and sexual orientations,
judged by their adherence to some abstracted divinity called Nature
by those whose grasp of the natural weaker even than their grasp of the divine.

But Nature only ever favored the win.

For some, that is where morality
    ends. Ends
justify the means.
And means beget more means with or without meaning.
Survival of the cruelest,
who are not content to simply win, but declare it a merit to be cruel.

Yet this is not how we became human.

We became human when we rejected being
    Evolution’s bitch.

It wasn’t the opposable thumb or the size of a cranium or even speech,
impressive though all of them are and surely of advantage to get laid.

It was the act of mercy without benefit.
We became more than a species with it.
We became a people.

Such revolution was, of course, opposed from the first.
Where to draw the line of kindness
so that it is still within the allowable boundaries of mere profit.
We invented karma and afterlife and legacy
so that we can keep the receipts and demand reimbursement.

Everyone can claim to be benevolent when they draw this line at their whim.
joseph goebbels was a doting father and the loving husband of magda,
casually chirping about homeward bliss in his love letters
even as he orchestrated the death of millions,
right up to the moment when he killed his own children
rather than letting them live in a world where they are not über anymore.

This Battle of the Line continues to this day:
whom to accept as neighbor or lover or citizen;
whom to grant grace, god’s or otherwise;
whom to permit the privilege of being seen as human.
An arsenal of computers and gods and lesser minds are manufactured
and let loose on this battlefield to convince us to pull back on the line of mercy.

Yet, unassailed, my heart remains, and yours, to make a choice every moment
above the screams of this frightened juggernaut, dimming at last.

Melih Sener