Why Everyone Matters

Neanderthal Man, Cro-Magnon Man, Modern Man 

© 2010 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved.

Beginning with the first little wiggle in the ocean and going to the very stars, the only path from your ancestors to your descendants runs through you. So if you want to play in traffic, for your family’s sake, at least wait until after you have reproduced, or all that have come and gone before you will have done so in vain. For you, and you alone, carry a unique message encoded in your genes, one-half of a blueprint for future individuals of your kind, and, within some range of environmental limits, a wealth of contingency plans. Evolution is a relay race, and a slowly-morphing baton is passed from generation to generation by individuals.

Within the bounds set by their individual (and so-far mysterious) mating decisions. a large variety of genetic combinations are tried. Occasionally, an advantageous combination comes to predominate within a family line and the dis-advantaged trait falls by the way.

Just as they have for the whole of history, the descendants produced of such individual decisions that may carry any advantageous trait, will prove better adapted to prosper through whatever lies ahead, and prevail, reproductively. It’s why we’re ALL shaped just like this, within just this range of variability. By hook or by crook, blueprints containing just these traits out-survived and then out-reproduced all others offered. Any trait that inhibited that, passed into history with the individuals whose genetic messages included them.

As the environmental conditions and unintended consequences ahead of us may be unknowable in the longer run, and as any given line is just as likely as any other line to be among those best suited to whatever conditions have by then unfolded, any message at all may turn out to be precious to our human future, and all are therefor equally priceless beyond all measure, completely irreplaceable; and therefor so is each messenger. for from an individual, a trait may radiate globally. It would be a shame to lose for all time the specific message that you carry to a moment of cruelty, carelessness or recklessness. Think about tomorrow and stay out of traffic, metaphorically speaking. And just as it would be a shame to lose the genetic message only you carry, so, too, any message, and therefor any messenger.

A paradox lies in that, while no message is replaceable, none is indispensable. The planet cares not a whit how well-suited any species is to the changing conditions it presents at any given time, and will reward with continuity whoever and whatever shows up to pass along their messages most prolifically.

Genetically, there is no other measure. Ask any Neanderthal, he’ll tell you the same thing: “I wish somebody hadn’t played in traffic…”

But it is not apparent who that somebody was, even after the fact, let alone in advance, so the lesson of the extinct is: be careful, and take care for the children, all of them. We can best do that by ensuring our habitat remains within the environmental range that our blueprints specify. Exceed those, and we void all warranties, and can take a seat beside the Neanderthals.

That seems obvious enough, yet we are failing to do that, for reasons that escape my limited comprehension. By knowingly and unnecessarily heating our atmosphere, we are playing in traffic, indeed, and about to settle for the remaining versions of the human blueprint that best handle wide climate swings, drought, famine, dehydration, pestilence and civil unrest. Any other conclusion is arguing with simple arithmetic, and must be discounted accordingly. Even if it preserves short-term financial profit for some, it is longer-term suicide... for all.

The Senator's Song

(c) 2009 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved

I know you’re very busy, I heard it from your aide.

Admir’l, facts trump policy: the facts up here have changed.

Rockslides block the pass and we‘re now elbow-deep in snow,

on this Afghan mountainside with Pakistan below.

The Senator from Warbucks, Inc. arrived today at dawn.

Some agent, sent from Kabul, came, too, with an iPod on.

We are in a pickle, sir, they made too much noise in the pass,

chatter’s up from Pesh’war, and his Bradley’s out of gas.

I am but a Corporal, sir, not twenty-one years old,

raised in Colorado, and I’ve never been this cold.

The Senator says he’s busy, sir, and can’t come to the phone.

He’s sitting in my vehicle, he’s made himself at home.

The Senator came from Khandahar, the Agent came alone -

his camel spits and tests her ropes, some Sheik is on his phone.

The object of the exercise, the reason we are here

is something no-one talks about, we’re here because we’re here.

While I’m on your satellite, and we are in these hills,

where are my B-52’s? My water purification pills?

When the locals ran away the rumor mill did spin:

something to get shot about is blowing in the wind.

The Senator flew from Khandahar, he brought along his aide,

they swap jokes with the Agent, laughing, like they’re not afraid.

that’ll all change soon enough if I don’t get some bombs.

The Devil’s on the ridge and he’s brought some friends along.

I heard it on the radio, the bumper sticker’s, they all say,

“Support Our Troops!” Just politics, or are my bombers on the way?

You have got a Carrier Group while I just have one gun-

a shoeless boy in Pakistan will cherish when I’m gone-

for I cannot save the Senator, I cannot save myself,

unless you send us choppers soon and pull us off this shelf.

We could use some air support, Apache’s would be nice,

or you will see the Senator next when Spring’s thaw melts the ice.

I’d like to kiss my girl again, don’t tell me to relax-

the Taliban are coming with no mercy in their packs.

We’re running out of ammo and we’re running out of time.

If you’re not sending choppers, Admiral, please get off the line,

for I’ve got to tell the Senator, Sir, I doubt he’ll take it well:

some sailor is promoting him to the Senator from Hell.

I know you have your budget and you’re saving up your bombs,

be sure to point that out when you’re consoling all our moms.

I know you-re very busy, sir, I heard it from your aide.

I don’t mean to tell you twice, but things up here have changed.

Rockslides block the pass, we are now chin-strap-deep in snow

in the frozen Hindu-Kush with no place left to go,

on this Afghan mountainside with Pakistan below.

Lesson (yet to be) Learned

(c) 2010 Craig Chereek

Our American experience has been that when an economy has civil order, viable supply chains, stable currencies and functioning markets everybody benefits. So we give that to Afghanistan and they'll be prepared to fend for themselves. We have just assumed that others abroad would agree. From the collective experience of the last 150 years of British, Soviet and American occasional presence in Afghanistan, one lesson is as undeniable as it is hard to swallow: civil order, viable supply chains, stable currencies and functioning markets are much harder to deliver than a pallet of ammunition and a briefcase full of cash. 

We have to accept that you cannot obtain the former with the latter alone. Nor can we assume them to be obtainable by any means given current civil conditions. 

How shall we improve those conditions? What is preferred? By whom? Hamid Karzai's alleged Iranian handlers? Our State Department? The House Select Subcommittee on Agricultural? Regional warlords? Mullahs? Sheiks? Pakistani Intelligence? Our NATO allies? New Delhi?  Damascus?

It couldn't be a bigger stake game. These are Planetary stakes. There are knives in every boot, worse in some. Every player has lives and treasure on the line. And we are the newest player at this table.

I understand why National Security Advisers are so often tempted to say, screw it, "Waitress, er, I mean, Congress? I'll have a pallet of ammunition and another briefcase full of cash..."

Partisan epithets won't untangle this. We, not just we the government, but we, you and I and your brother Vinnie, and our fellow-citizens with whom we share the bus bench or the golf course, whoever and wherever we are, need to think, and talk this (and all world affairs, for that matter) through with the best intentions we can gather, and we need to keep thinking this through as conditions change. 

The LAST thing we need on such shifting sands is ANY fixed ideological approach. It's ineffective  to declare a domestically-marketable foreign policy and then just refer back to it henceforth reflexively. America may withdraw militarily, but we will always share a planet. And it is the only one we have to bequeath to our descendants. We get this wrong and they'll live to regret it.

(c) 2010 Craig Chereek

"Daddy, what's a local paper?"

A whole nation of small local corruptions (which used to be the meat-and-potatoes of the print media, back when America had real local papers and local reporters) is at least as big a deal as an International scandal. 

How we are going to discourage it in this new age of media consolidation is anybody's guess. I have no more idea what goes on in my own home town than I do in yours, there is no local investigative reporting going on, there are no courthouse or police station stringers. all reports are national, if not global. By satellite we are ALL the same distance from New York: remote.

While most municipalities have a usable website, and a cable channel carrying the required public meetings, a good local reporter would cover everything else, pursue the whys of the conflicts, the local history of the issues, and know the thinking behind the players, the winners and losers.  

Now my "local paper" (weren't there two?) reads like the editor has never been here and nobody's even phoning it in.