Just One Sharp Point?

If the length of time the slave trade
was legal and regulated proves anything
then let it show just one sharp point;
how much the depths of avarice,
or as The Bible puts it 'the love of money'*,
made us see our neighbour as our enemy,
whilst blinding us to their need for autonomy
and respect, much more than we ever needed to
for our comfort.

Since many of the early Christian converts 
were bought and sold, enslaved by Roman,
it is a shame more than words can express,
that later Christian slave owners
did not have the humility before God
and each other that their fore-bearers,
the converted Christian Roman slaves, had.

Such humility in those later eras
could not have stopped the spread of disease
but would have made modern life less rapacious,
and, for a while, made the world a better place.

*Paul's first letter to Timothy Ch 1 V 6, the full quote being 
'For the love of money is the root of all evil:
which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith,
and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.'.    . 

The Great Contagion

A fool and his pride are hard to part.
Whoever starts to separate them
will leave the task incomplete
and endure some serious disagreement.

Whoever wants to part a fool
from what they take pride in
will in their own time
also be tempted to pride, 
where they will be cutting it fine
for to retrieve who they are
from the situation they thought
that others were worse in, themselves.

An Apolitical Blues

Dig deep enough into human history
and you will find that every last little bit
of what has been recovered so far
is so loaded with literal and metaphorical triggers
that all of it should have warnings attached.

But dig that far and we still have choices;
either endless triggers until our nerves are shot
-from even creating the warnings to make it safe-
or an improvised amnesia beyond all means of repair.

If we prove stronger than our troubles suggest we are
we will still find the slack and grace to manage everyday life.
That will mean being less political to survive.

How To Get From Monsanto To Charles Darwin And Further Back In Several Easy Steps

When Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin,
coined the phrase 'The Survival of the fittest'
it was meant to summarize Darwin's ideas
in an way that the public would find easy to grasp.

Like many similar phrases it missed much of the point
that the original work, by Darwin, meant to make.

Fitness for life was proved at least as much
by how the process of survival became apparent
from closely observing adaption to a given environment
as it was from observing the process of species becoming extinct.

But words are like wars - proof of egotism beyond belief.
If we need proof for this, consider how Galton's
rhetoric helped found the eugenics movement.
Galton started by mis-breeding cattle, then dogs
and more, until his words mis-bred with each other.

Capitalists will see those whose energies they abuse 
for profits as sub-human, as sub human as Francis Galton
once saw all life he could not directly manipulate and control.

I blame the fearful economic theories of Thomas Malthus.