The Rise of our World

Aled Lines
Mr. Brent Loken
Global Ethics
January 22, 2008

The Rise of our World

I awoke to the gentle drumming of rain drops falling upon the moist dirt and slick rocks that cluttered the entrance to our cave. We had discovered this particular den nearly two weeks ago, when we traveled here from the north, in pursuit of our food supply. I looked around at the other inhabitants of the shelter, my tribe. There they were, sleeping, shivering as a result of the gentle breeze and the damp ground they slept upon. They were healthy enough, save for one, a very old man, must have been 25 years of age, he lay in the far corner of the cave, sweating profusely. He looked on the verge of death; he had killed a wild dog several days previously, and had consequently been attacked by its canine relatives. The attack had left him with a bleeding leg, the blood flow stopped eventually, he seemed to have recovered well. Within a week however, he had succumbed to a strange sickness, which the tribal elders declared was the gods’ punishment for harming the jackal. He had been cursed indeed, his wound had turned black, in contrast to the rest of his disfigured leg, which had become bloated and pale, he constantly sweats now, he simply lies there, in a state of semi-consciousness, waiting for gods to cure him, or to be allowed to die. I sighed in dismay, he was a good man, kind to the rest of the tribal family, had the date trees we usually harvested from had not been particularly unfruitful that week, he would not have ventured out that morning in search of prey (or come back to us that day with his left calf torn and bloody). Such are the perils of this fickle lifestyle, and such are the wishes of our fickle gods. I closed my eyes, lay down on the cold, damp dirt, and fell asleep.

I was harshly aroused from my slumber, the woman that had woken me beckoned for me to follow, I was lead out of the cave. It was a glorious day, the sun was bright, the great river that flowed by the cave was glistening, its crocodilian denizens were floating serenely on the surface. I heard the sound of soft sobbing, and turned to find a young lad, barely 8 years of age, kneeling before the still-moist body of the sick man; his father. We all felt his pain, our tribal society was tightly knit, we all shared a deep emotional bond, we depended on each other for everything, we rarely encountered others of our kind, we needed each other to survive. I felt a pang of anger, why had the dates not been there that day? Why had our friend ventured out in search of food? Why did we simply accept that it was the gods will, why did we not care for him? Nevertheless, I mourned with the rest of the tribe, and helped the elders heave his still-supple form into the river, where he would be devoured by the animals. I stayed outside for a long time after the rest of the tribe had retreated into the shelter, looking around at my surroundings. We had been here before, it was part of our biannual rotation. I liked this land, I did not want to leave it any time soon, but life must go on, the tribe was due to leave in little over a week, and I had no choice but to follow. I turned to return to the shelter, and noticed a single date that had fallen beneath a tree, I picked it up, broke it open to find a stone inside, which I buried (for no particular reason) just outside the cave, where several hours previously, I had for the first time seen the dead man, lying in the blazing sunlight.

It has been many years now, since that fateful day by the river. I am now an elder, not a single person whom was in the tribe at that time remains, they have fallen victim to the elements, to nature, to the gods, to starvation. I alone remain, I have seen much death, I have been surrounded by famine, I have discovered a way to cure it. We are nearing the cave I slept in so many years ago; it is there that I shall unveil my plan.

It has been three more days, We arrived at the river cave this morning, we settled in our cave, the younger men just left to hunt, the elder women cared for the children, and the younger women ventured outwards to gather food. I’ve sat by the entrance of the cave for many hours now, leaning against the trunk of a towering date tree; the very one I myself planted all those years ago. I will tell them tomorrow, at sunrise.
This might very well be the most important day in the history of our tribe. I unveiled my revolutionary plan today. At sunrise, I called a tribal gathering, and presented to them my plan.

“Gather round, comrades, today shall be the most memorable day of our lives. We have come and gone from distant lands, we have pursued our food source for many decades now. We have lost friends, comrades, family members to the elements, to the animals, to the gods, many have starved, many have been mauled by wild beasts, many have been frozen, but many more, so many more have fallen prey to the strange afflictions and curses placed upon them by the gods. Why? Do you not wonder why? Why is it that we pursue the cattle through the plains, through the deserts, through the grasslands? We have lost many a friend on these annual journeys, why? I propose that we revolutionize our current life style. I shall begin with our food source. We have for many years known that where we plant a seed, a tree will grow. We have all witnessed the conditions and circumstances, under which certain types of plants flourish, we have sufficient knowledge of the ways of the world to begin better life to shape a new, better life. We move from place to place every few weeks, never staying in a single place for very long. We have the knowledge; we need the will to use it. I believe that we can abandon our current lifestyle, we do not need to migrate from place to place, from oasis to oasis, from shelter to shelter. We need to begin by gathering plants, burying their seeds, and segmenting the land. Many years ago now, long before any of you had been conceived, I buried a single seed, on this very spot. That single seed has since blossomed into the titanic tree you now stand beneath, a testament to our tribe’s strength, and the key to a better future. If we begin by planting seeds in specific areas, they will eventually flourish, as will we. We know what trees grow in repeating cycles throughout the year, I propose that we mimic those natural cycles, and create our own simulation of a plant ecosystem, which we can use as a steady food source. The largest problem of our current lifestyle is that we do not have a steady food source, when the food fluctuates, so do our numbers. We must change this! How many of you have lost family, friends, comrades to starvation? I have, I have lost many, in order to better our lives, we must create a steady food source, one on which we can depend. This philosophy can also be extended to the taming of wild beasts. Why do we pursue the cattle through mountains, plains, deserts? We must change, we should build cages, fences, enclosures, we can capture cattle, and raise them in our enclosed areas, they will carry on reproducing, which will ensure that we have yet another steady food source. If we can put the animals in these enclosures, we can nurture them, feed them, shelter them, they will thrive, we can then begin to govern our own food supply, we can begin to govern our numbers, we can determine our survival.

I mentioned earlier that we must begin our new, more stable lives by creating for ourselves more stable sources of food. This is how I propose that we life in a single place; we build our own shelters. We now resort to caves, trees and various other natural obstacles as protection from the biting winds or the glaring sun, we can, nay, we must change this if we are to flourish! We must construct shelter, we may begin by gathering grass, mud, and branches. Branches will serve as the foundation, mud and grass as reinforcement.

That, my friends, is how we begin our transformation. How though, must we conduct ourselves in this new world? Our philosophy will base itself around compassion. Are you not frightened by the prospect of losing those you most care for? Do you not think we should spare others from the same anguish? I propose that when we meet our kin in other tribes, we educate them, we tell them of our new ways, we teach them how life safely, protected from the elements, sheltered from starvation. My only regret is that we may not save them from the judgment of the spirits; I feel that this is worth explaining. Do we not know the approximate intensity of injuries that should result in death? Why, then, do so many of us suffer but a tiny wound, insignificant to most of us, only to fall into an enigmatic stupor, one from which none of us arouse. Why do the wounds, previously crimson, slowly become black and cursed? Why is it that the area surrounding the wound becomes pale, bloated, and eventually useless? Why do these people, in the period of a mere week, succumb to those strange symptoms, only to perish as suddenly as the symptoms arose? It is not a capability of the animal, for surely no beast is capable of such a monstrous feat, it is the will of the gods, we may not, we cannot interfere with such curses. I sincerely wish I knew of a way to save people from this ghastly fate, for surely if we somehow developed the capability to perform such miracles, it would be because, and only because, the spirits had willed it. It is not within our ability to cure people of such curses, we can cure them of starvation however. How many hundreds can we save by providing food to all? How many of you have bore children, only to watch them perish before they have lived but a week? How many of our brothers and sisters have died before they have had the chance to live? We can change this now, with our new philosophy of food production we can fulfill our ambitions, we can save our kin. I believe we should also spread our philosophy to all others that we find, we can save ourselves now, I believe that it would be the height of irresponsibility and immorality to keep this knowledge from others. If we keep this knowledge, we will be remembered as devils, selfish devils, demons whom discovered the secret to life, and kept it to themselves, what is far worse is that we will live forever, forever cursed with the burden of the world despising us, we will live as outcasts, forever alien, forever damned. We begin to act on our central precept of compassion by sharing our knowledge with all those around us. Will they despise us for this? No, they will love us, for who, short of the idiot, the villain, or the lunatic would refuse such knowledge? We can change the world, we must begin by changing our current way of life, the world will quickly follow.

I believe I am hearing the ramblings of discontent amongst you. “Is this not unnatural?” you say, “Isn’t this mindless extermination?” you ask. There comes a point, brothers and sisters, when we must ask ourselves a simple question; are we, or are we not a part of nature? If we are, it logically follows that, by definition, nothing we can do can be defined as “unnatural”. You seem to think that there is, perhaps, a law that we are breaking, a biological law. This could not be more false; we are as much a part of the biological community as any other creature that walks, crawls, swims or flies on this earth, our actions cannot be deemed unnatural unless we too are to be considered outside of the normal boundaries of nature. We will not be exterminating our competitors mindlessly. What we do is all that is required of us to survive. We need more food than our competitors, so we do what we must to assure our access to food. You may say that we mindlessly exterminate the jackals that try to steal our food source. We do not, we drive them away, we kill those that intrude upon our territories, but exterminate we do not. Is this any different from the lion killing the occasional hyena that intrudes upon it’s territory in search of a fresh kill? No, it is not, we obey the laws of nature just as well as any other creature.

As we are now on the topic of laws, there is a slight digression that I feel is necessary; we must discuss how we are to live. We live quite well at the moment, do we not? I feel that we have no real problems discerning whether or not our actions are moral. We do, however, need a standardized set of rules for governing our moral behaviour. Let me explain why; We live in relative peace and tranquility now, we all have a powerful sense of moral obligation to our fellows, we all possess human solidarity, that unspoken moral urge to think of the clan, not only of yourself. This does extremely well in governing our everyday lives, but I do believe we need a set of laws, standardizing our ethics and rules. We have no basis now to persecute one who has acted in a manner contrary to our expected morals, we cannot in good judgment and justice punish an individual who has killed another. If we standardize our morals in a code of laws, we have a safeguard against the occasional sociopath or psychopath who disregards all normal boundaries for ethical behaviour and acts in contempt of our expected standards, we will have a justifiable method to ascertain our natural rights to a peaceful existence. Allow me to provide you all with a hypothetical situation: A man becomes intoxicated from the fermented juices of a fruit, he becomes a problem, he begins to harass the other members of our tribe, therefore, we restrain him by tying him to a tree until he sobers up. He and his family rise up against us the next day, demanding retribution, declaring that we had no right to forcefully restrain him (regardless of what common sense dictates). We would then be faced with a rather difficult and fragile scenario would we not? If, however, we had a code of conduct dictating what we must do with those of us who become inebriated and potentially harmful, we would be in a clearly defined, morally justifiable position. We could show them our laws and the corresponding punishments, we would be out of such a tenuous position. That is but one amongst many possible scenarios where the standardization of laws becomes more than a prerogative, it becomes a necessity. This becomes even more necessary when we begin to incorporate notions of private property into our lives, I do not think I need to elaborate on that, common sense tells us that we need a guide to how to live, and logic tells us that we should make it standardized, and available to all, thereby eliminating the possibility of selective quotations and subjective punishments.

This, my brothers and sisters is how I propose that we begin to alter our lives, as well as the course of history. We begin by planting seeds and domesticating animals to create a stable, reliable food source. We then proceed by building our shelters to shield us from the elements. FInally, we create a constitution, a code of conduct, written by us all, upheld by us all, designed to ensure that our natural rights are protected. We must also try to better the lives of those around us, by spreading our knowledge, this will better their lives tenfold. This, comrades, is how we save ourselves, this is how we change our world forever.”

It has been many more years since that memorable day when I presented my tribe with my plan to change the world. I look around me now at the smiling faces, at the children playing in the stream, children that would have long ago starved had we not access to a steady food source. I look at the other tribesmen, happy in their knowledge that there will be food aplenty for their offspring, for their friends, for their family. I look at my brethren, content in their knowledge that their rights will be defended by our code of laws. I look around at all the happiness and joy around me, joy that would never have been had we continued to live as hunter-gatherers, smiles that would never have shone had we continued our old lifestyle, children that would never have lived had we not changed. My life is nearing to a close now, I can feel it in the weariness of my fragile frame, I am dying, not of starvation, but of old age, a rare way to die, most of us used to die of starvation, even now many of us die as a result of terrible afflictions, not I, I have lived a good life, a long life. I take pleasure in the fact that during my final days, when I sit outside the cave, under the colossal tree, I may look around at the tribe that I call my own, and manage to conjure a smile at the thought that the tribe, so much like the tree I sit under, will outlast me by far, will flourish, and will continue to do so for many years after I am gone and forgotten. I take a final look around, take my final breath, and close my eyes forever.