Today, I learned about Aaron Schwartz death. I spent the entire day with friends, watching movies, smoking up and watching sit-coms on Netflix. And all along there was something burning inside me.
Something that just wouldn't let go. I came back home and rolled up another joint, settled down with my laptop ready to sleep. I click on a link on Facebook about Aaron.
And the sleepless night goes on.
Every now and then, I always wonder what life meant. What the purpose of existence really was. Was it to pro-create? Have life forms, in their attempt to pro-create, with no reason other than just being programmed to do so, just evolved over millions of years into a sophisticated bloat of intricate communication cells, that have reached a point where they can question about their own path and destination?
Well, that's for another day, but Aaron's cause has really touched me. Life in and of itself, can only be expressed as the desire to have a chance to prolong its existence. Darwin taught the exact same thing. The theory of evolution teaches us that. Every organism attempts to protect itself to its best capacity.
I saw a video awhile back, (I don't remember the speaker), about one man's theory about the future of the human race. Historically, he said, humans always extended their compassion to the levels of how far they could see or travel. A villager would be able to empathize with someone in the community but would just as easily cut off the head of a rival community. As we evolved technologies and systems that allowed us to extend our reach, learn about new cultures, feel sorry for that kid in Africa and pay a random organization to offer him 1 square meal a day for a year, so have the enemies of that very technology in order to retain control, retain power by curbing the biggest threat to the most unnoticed and underrated enemy.
Then the internet came along. The one abstract entity that is all pervasive and all encompassing. It came along and quietly gained power. Its enemies were too unaware of this seemingly harmless beast that seemed to offer more ways to make money than snatch that very right from corporations and organizations. It lay unobserved and un-controlled for over a decade and not unlike other mistakes control-seekers have made, it very soon became a monster. A monster that was going out of control. Egypt, Sudan, Occupy Wall street, everyone was subject to it's growing power to let information and timely news seep through artificial boundaries and draw support from the, until now, most unexpected corners of the world.
So here we are. A race that, in all fairness to its complexity, is probably the only species that shows such a large disproportion in its evolution. Consider a hypothetical person (called, simply, A) who is the embodiment of human evolution, with all of his/her genes at just the right point in its mutative process.
Consequently, consider the opposite spectrum of that (called Z). The one individual that has, for reasons completely out of anyone's control, been the "weakest link" of the entire species. Who has the lowest probability of all mankind to have the chance to pass forward his/her genes to the next generation.
All of humanity exists between those two individuals.
A repetition of the same exercise with any other species would almost guarantee to show a much narrower spectrum between the equivalent A and Z.
It isn't all that surprising however. It isn't a very twisted statistical phenomenon that, as we see evolution proceeding at an ever increasing pace, so does the gap between those most and least evolved. A classic rich get richer and poor get poorer phenomenon.
Let's look at another instinctive phenomenon that is more or less taken for granted in the animal kingdom. The desire to protect the weak. That offspring of the evolutionary psyche that serves in the best interest of pro-creation and sustenance.
How would an equivalent evolutionary system be synthesized for a complex being such as humans? For a species as widespread, it would definitely take a means that is efficient, not wasteful and has the power of virality. No other species has as effective a communication and broadcast system as the internet. We created this. Out of our instinctive desire to communicate, we created this exemplary by-product of evolutionary purpose. This rapid communicative tool that knows no geographical boundaries. No bias for race, religion, means or money, caste or even language.
[It must be mentioned that as I sit here in a downtown espresso, right outside was this elaborate rally fighting to curb arms proliferation and strengthen gun-control laws]
And that very tool has come under threat. That one creation of this complex race that does not judge, does not discriminate and does not differentiate between right or wrong, but gives every individual the power to make that decision - is under threat. No one saw that better than Aaron. No one fought for it with as much passion as Aaron did. Putting everything he held dear, at risk of being taken away from him, he fought for a greater cause. One that he believed firmly was going to make the world a better place, if only we could finish the race. A race with no known duration or length, but a race with a finish line nevertheless.
We've had victories in the past. And we've had defeats. But the battle rages on. Lives have been lost.
Careers and families have been broken.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
This very tool has, within it, the power of participation without sacrifice. Never before has there been a cause that allowed the power to give it so much voice. Never before has it been easier to make your voice heard. We as a human race can do better than watch silently while things happen. Every individual has the power to voice his/her opinion and find voices that resonate with the same frequency. But, rightly so, with that freedom to receive, almost anything that the heart desires, comes a responsibility to protect those who uphold its existence. And this beautiful tool, as with anything that resonates beauty within itself, gives us the power to protect itself.
Let's not fuck this up.
Let's not let what happened to Aaron, happen to anyone else. He fought for us, fought for all of us and we weren't there when he needed back. He left us with a place better than what it was when he arrived. But we didn't return that favor. Here's to hoping that there will be many more Aarons in the world. Who pledge to protect everyone that is a part of the whole. The whole that has no form, but forms who we are today. The whole that has existed since the dawn of mankind, but has only come to fruition since the dots were connected. Since the internet was born.
RIP Aaron Schwartz.
Something that just wouldn't let go. I came back home and rolled up another joint, settled down with my laptop ready to sleep. I click on a link on Facebook about Aaron.
And the sleepless night goes on.
Every now and then, I always wonder what life meant. What the purpose of existence really was. Was it to pro-create? Have life forms, in their attempt to pro-create, with no reason other than just being programmed to do so, just evolved over millions of years into a sophisticated bloat of intricate communication cells, that have reached a point where they can question about their own path and destination?
Well, that's for another day, but Aaron's cause has really touched me. Life in and of itself, can only be expressed as the desire to have a chance to prolong its existence. Darwin taught the exact same thing. The theory of evolution teaches us that. Every organism attempts to protect itself to its best capacity.
I saw a video awhile back, (I don't remember the speaker), about one man's theory about the future of the human race. Historically, he said, humans always extended their compassion to the levels of how far they could see or travel. A villager would be able to empathize with someone in the community but would just as easily cut off the head of a rival community. As we evolved technologies and systems that allowed us to extend our reach, learn about new cultures, feel sorry for that kid in Africa and pay a random organization to offer him 1 square meal a day for a year, so have the enemies of that very technology in order to retain control, retain power by curbing the biggest threat to the most unnoticed and underrated enemy.
Then the internet came along. The one abstract entity that is all pervasive and all encompassing. It came along and quietly gained power. Its enemies were too unaware of this seemingly harmless beast that seemed to offer more ways to make money than snatch that very right from corporations and organizations. It lay unobserved and un-controlled for over a decade and not unlike other mistakes control-seekers have made, it very soon became a monster. A monster that was going out of control. Egypt, Sudan, Occupy Wall street, everyone was subject to it's growing power to let information and timely news seep through artificial boundaries and draw support from the, until now, most unexpected corners of the world.
So here we are. A race that, in all fairness to its complexity, is probably the only species that shows such a large disproportion in its evolution. Consider a hypothetical person (called, simply, A) who is the embodiment of human evolution, with all of his/her genes at just the right point in its mutative process.
Consequently, consider the opposite spectrum of that (called Z). The one individual that has, for reasons completely out of anyone's control, been the "weakest link" of the entire species. Who has the lowest probability of all mankind to have the chance to pass forward his/her genes to the next generation.
All of humanity exists between those two individuals.
A repetition of the same exercise with any other species would almost guarantee to show a much narrower spectrum between the equivalent A and Z.
It isn't all that surprising however. It isn't a very twisted statistical phenomenon that, as we see evolution proceeding at an ever increasing pace, so does the gap between those most and least evolved. A classic rich get richer and poor get poorer phenomenon.
Let's look at another instinctive phenomenon that is more or less taken for granted in the animal kingdom. The desire to protect the weak. That offspring of the evolutionary psyche that serves in the best interest of pro-creation and sustenance.
How would an equivalent evolutionary system be synthesized for a complex being such as humans? For a species as widespread, it would definitely take a means that is efficient, not wasteful and has the power of virality. No other species has as effective a communication and broadcast system as the internet. We created this. Out of our instinctive desire to communicate, we created this exemplary by-product of evolutionary purpose. This rapid communicative tool that knows no geographical boundaries. No bias for race, religion, means or money, caste or even language.
[It must be mentioned that as I sit here in a downtown espresso, right outside was this elaborate rally fighting to curb arms proliferation and strengthen gun-control laws]
And that very tool has come under threat. That one creation of this complex race that does not judge, does not discriminate and does not differentiate between right or wrong, but gives every individual the power to make that decision - is under threat. No one saw that better than Aaron. No one fought for it with as much passion as Aaron did. Putting everything he held dear, at risk of being taken away from him, he fought for a greater cause. One that he believed firmly was going to make the world a better place, if only we could finish the race. A race with no known duration or length, but a race with a finish line nevertheless.
We've had victories in the past. And we've had defeats. But the battle rages on. Lives have been lost.
Careers and families have been broken.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
This very tool has, within it, the power of participation without sacrifice. Never before has there been a cause that allowed the power to give it so much voice. Never before has it been easier to make your voice heard. We as a human race can do better than watch silently while things happen. Every individual has the power to voice his/her opinion and find voices that resonate with the same frequency. But, rightly so, with that freedom to receive, almost anything that the heart desires, comes a responsibility to protect those who uphold its existence. And this beautiful tool, as with anything that resonates beauty within itself, gives us the power to protect itself.
Let's not fuck this up.
Let's not let what happened to Aaron, happen to anyone else. He fought for us, fought for all of us and we weren't there when he needed back. He left us with a place better than what it was when he arrived. But we didn't return that favor. Here's to hoping that there will be many more Aarons in the world. Who pledge to protect everyone that is a part of the whole. The whole that has no form, but forms who we are today. The whole that has existed since the dawn of mankind, but has only come to fruition since the dots were connected. Since the internet was born.
RIP Aaron Schwartz.
