Impartial

Who are we to ask for guidance if we become disoriented and need to know where to go next? Let us set aside the suggestions of people. Their judgments are fraught with mistakes and rarely are preferable to our own judgments. What about old mother nature? She is well liked. We laud her for her impartiality--how she never discriminates. (Discrimination is unnatural, after all.) She tolerates everyone equally. Perhaps she is the fount of knowledge we are looking for. Ought we model ourselves off her posture? I have seen many people knock at her door. When she answers, what does she say? What fables does she teach us with?

A bear takes a wrong step and lands in a trap. His foot is crushed; his hide is punctured. Writhing in pain, what does he do? He takes to gnawing off the effected limb. Moral: Live at all costs.

Ought we be like the bear? No. Life is good. It is the most basic good. But should we live at all costs? All? No, no. One loses life trying so hard to keep it. The bear dies hemorrhaging.

A wolf takes a wrong step and lands in a rut. His leg is broken; his stride is undone. Writhing in pain, what does he do? He takes to limping off alone. He refuses assistance. If a helpful human came to set the leg straight, she would be bitten. Moral: Vulnerability is death.

Ought we be like the wolf? No. Death is bad. It is the most basic bad. But does vulnerability entail death? Entail? No, no. One gains life by permitting help. The wolf dies starving.

To live at all costs pits individuals in a mortal competition. Vulnerability is death pits individuals in a mortal competition. The impartiality in nature is a direct cause of confrontation amongst her children. Without the striations partiality--some individuals being embraced, others being confronted, and others being ignored--there is only homogeneous relating. Only the brutest facts are consequential--that one eats and reproduces. These facts constrain within the fixed limits of natural scarcity. One's eating takes away from another's; one's reproducing takes away from another's. The option is posed: either draw daggers or take leave. Fight or flight. There is no relating here; there is no cohabitation or dwelling. Is this any way for humans to operate?

I anticipate your objections. You will come at me and say, "You have gone too far. The bees--they cooperate! Lionesses carry their cubs in their mouths. Some birds mate for life. In nature, there is special treatment amongst some species." And to you I say: Yes. Quite right. I never said that mother nature never had good advice. She is alive and so she must have some good in her. One cannot exist without containing some good. My point is principally that those who rap on her door exclusively are doomed because she will sooner or later sell them down the river. And no, she certainly never meant to. It was the inquirers' fault for going to the well too many times.

We have observed how impartiality leads to inhumanity. If we heed mother nature's advice, the same results follow. One need look no further to see this than one's local instantiations of bureaucracy. One becomes abstracted and is referenced by a series of numbers. The end is not compassion, but collation. "We want to treat you all the same," says the bureaucracy. "Do not blame me. It is out of my control," replies the bureaucrat to your pleading. There is no place for specificity within bureaucracy. There are only greater and lesser generalities. Life is reduced to a flow chart, to a logical system of if-then statements. All of its agents are blameless--they only follow rules.

In this way, nature and artifice relate. They are perfectly devoid of intention and thus are innocent. (Guilt is, after all, unnatural.) We can scoop up the indiscriminate soil of nature and plant in it the seeds of our industry. What flowers grow? The delightfully ambivalent blooms of technology. The guillotine is impartial. Why? Because it harnesses nature. Gravity pulls the blade down upon all presented necks. And before you interrupt me, I can hear your thoughts already. Yes, yes. The wheelchair is impartial, too. Have you already forgotten my point?

To treat every individual as an individual, as a unique being within a unique context--how joyfully unnatural!