"Counterbalance"

Counterbalance.
Life versus death. Libido versus thanatos. Wisdom versus ignorance.
Peace versus war. Counterbalance.
Brotherhood versus hatred. Nurture versus murder. Truth versus lies.
Right versus wrong. Counterbalance.
Growth versus decay. Advancement versus decline. Progress versus stagnation.
Transcendence versus ruin. Counterbalance.
Humanity has been relentlessly plagued by an unsung rule
as ubiquitous as breathing. Counterbalance.
Every step forward must be cancelled out by an opposing step backwards.
Every swing of the human pendulum in the direction of
progress, growth, brotherhood, and transcendence
must be cancelled out by a swing in the opposite direction,
that of stagnation, decay, hatred, and ruin. Counterbalance.
The greater our technological advances, the greater the misery of world poverty.
The more vital knowledge we learn, the greater the number of violent crimes.
The more we organize peace between nations, the more they go to war.
The more we improve our quality of life,
the more out-of-reach those improvements become.
Counterbalance is the reason so many excellent leaders
who have promoted peace, brotherhood, equity, and justice
will always be drowned out by odious tyrants
who have shoved war, hatred, greed, and corruption
down the people's throats. Counterbalance is the reason
so many life-giving scientific discoveries and technological advances
have been outrageously converted into weapons of mass destruction,
the reason so many great geniuses have been met with violent opposition
from mediocre minds, the reason the most noble intentions will still result in
one final Armageddon. No matter how high we climb,
there will always arise some other element of humanity
that must pull the whole of us back down to the dirt.
We have built great aircraft that climb to the highest heights of the skies.
But then there arises another element in our midst,
violently hijacking our invention and
turning it into a weapon of senseless mass-bloodshed.
Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
And even if we discover the secrets of immortality,
others in our midst will surely annihilate the entire race with extinction
long before we apply those secrets. (And the guilty will actually think
that they are doing God a service!) Counterbalance dictates that
we have the key, but we refuse to enter in, and (adding insult to injury)
we violently oppose anyone else who tries to enter in.
Understanding versus foolishness. Diligence versus laziness.
Generosity versus greed. And even throughout our very history,
time itself can be the counterbalance,
with certain of our inventions hailed as a blessing in one generation,
but reviled as a curse in the next,
with fathers and mothers striving against sons and daughters
while the very fate of humanity hangs in the balance.
The future yearns to invent something new,
to replace a horrendously outdated relic.
But the past, currently making a fortune with said relic,
stands in violent opposition. Even the renewal of the mind is daunting
when the avaricious becomes a billionaire.
Thus the very same ideals which have given us our present complex society
are now preventing us from obtaining a civilization of immortality.
Such is the irony of counterbalance, the irony of beings
on the brink.


Copyright (c) 2006, All Rights Reserved