I've been a lost soul since August 1971. It was in my 20th year of existence, one third of the way into my elapsed life, that I discovered the futility of the social contract. It happened on an airplane ride back from heavens know where (actually I know where) to the New York metropolitan area.
As I gazed down on the millions of boxes and lines which define modern urban and suburban existence, it dawned on me that the pinpricks of activity down below were random and unrelated. A spot one second was miles away from the spot that appeared the next second in the airplane window. Those spots had no consciousness of the other - and a dim awareness of the spot in the sky looking down.
It was not the same as the place where I had lived, thousands of miles north, in the Canadian High Arctic. On a small island at the fringe of the Arctic (with nothing but thousands of miles of frozen sea to the north and west), life was real. Humans knew each other. Humans knew that a Polar Bear had invaded the quonset hut the winter before. Humans knew that without heat, water would freeze and life would end. Humans knew.
This is the beginning of my story. It will continue. Be prepared for a challenge to the worldview that America is great, that nation states are natural, and that peace is in our future.
Kwaheri, Shalom
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