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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass |
In typical twist of fate, today is the anniversary of Frederick Douglass' birthday. It made sense to me when I explored the graphic on Google's search engine, because I created the title for today's piece last week, in another bit of fortuitous timing that marks vocational life. It's the type of head-space that has no quirky coincidences for us, only excellence. We live our lives deeply through intelligent design, the harmony that thrums through the universe or, in the words of the now-immortal Carl Sagan, “... the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
We are all made of the same stuff, so it makes sense to me that we would align ourselves accordingly, in harmony and perfect agreement. Mr. Sagan also noted the necessity of variation among life as essential to our shared successes: “Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Did we not at times share living spaces with humans so vastly different in perspective that we fought our most heart-wrenching, bloodiest war over it, so much do we believe that all men are born free as a manifestation of G-d's will that His children live together well? In fact, He tells us that if you do not fight hard enough for the lives of your women and children, then it is also your fate to accept gladly your rightful enslavement at the hands of your victors, because you have not properly defended what is yours by rights, and that is also what I ask of you today: to give more, because it's not enough.
Yesterday I was talking to my father, a man of another generation who struggles with change before he converts to the newest technology and who was, at the onset of my career, a staunch anti-technologist made more so by his avid desire to preserve what he felt was his precious toehold over me in my work as an apprentice desktop publisher, by refusing to participate in this "New World". I could understand it, even as I worked to make the change from the hand-made to the digital easier for everyone around me, as it was not available to me, because I hadn't initially signed on for computer science, but here we are, and yesterday he (finally!) agreed with me that the Internet is the greatest advance in worldwide communications that we have ever seen, because he finally adopted the very technology I cut my teeth on as a young leader in business. Only after finally giving in to my greater expertise did he see how all the pieces fit. Aren't they beautiful?
What became his avid denial about my greater gifts became his grateful acceptance in old age, which is none too soon. Pride goeth before the fall*, and as someone who was tasked with excelling in business while learning impaired, he often made do with his challenges while he struggled to reconcile himself with the worlds I trafficked in, varied universes unto themselves that he doesn't always understand, but that's my job to bear up under. I want you to join us as an "early adapter" to a movement that's actually quite old, and free the Internet, just like you did with t.v. networks. As the astonishingly high price tag behind our superior technology initially frightened off the non-artistic layperson (as it rightfully should), then so has this initial phase of tool usage passed into worldwide acceptance.
We will always have cheaper machines to do small tasks for minor chores done by smaller people than you and I (as is appropriate with any truly sophisticated social hierarchy), but for those of you who want to soar with us in the skies, then come along for the ride. Make the Internet free for all people, regardless of price. That's what Frederick Douglass deserves. A place where freedom reigns.
“ If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. ”
* http://biblehub.com/proverbs/16-18.htm
