The Sun Sets in the West

“Our rather limited intellectual capacity as human beings to recognize some of mother nature’s laws means that we are just too human not to be repeat offenders.”

The sun sets in the west.

So it has to rise in the east.

These are truths. Yet truth is subjective, as Galileo had so well demonstrated during his lifetime, getting entangled in a web of controversy with the Catholic Church of his time.

In those days, knowing the truth was dangerous, possibly even deadly. The truth of that day was knowing that the earth was at the center of the universe. And nobody challenged that truth, except Galileo.

But our scope of understanding is limited, the vast archives of the knowledge humankind has accumulated throughout our very brief existence on this earth notwithstanding.

Our rather limited intellectual capacity as human beings to recognize some of mother nature’s laws means that we are just too human not to be repeat offenders.

Newton recognized that it is gravity that causes all things to fall to the ground. Today, we know that gravity causes all things to stay on the ground, largely because our schools tell us so.

Fire is hot, and it burns. It burns, and it cooks your meal, yet is has the potential to kill you.

If it does kill you, a chain of very predictable events will start to unfold. Your obituary gets published in the local papers. People will flock to your funeral. People will cry. And when people cry, it makes other people sad, who will also probably cry. You will be deeply missed by your loved ones. But if you died in a plane crash, gravity is to blame.

And Newton would have be proven right once again.

If you kill a man, have just taken a man from his family, made his wife a widow, and left his child fatherless. You have sowed the seeds of sorrow, planting vengeance, hate and fear into the hearts of his loved ones. You run away from the authorities, for fear of being prosecuted. You hide from the face of the sun, and stalk the streets by night. You become a fugitive. In this scenario, even the law of probability applies. Chances are, you will get caught, and get thrown into prison, or even shot or hanged, if by some chance you were born in China.

Yet, like I mentioned earlier, truth is subjective.

If the man you killed was a murderer, and you took his life because he was after the lives of your loved ones, then you are a hero. The judiciary decides that you acted in self-defense. All charges against you are dropped. You are acquitted. You are a free man. It’s no wonder lawyers always win.

But didn’t you just kill a man?

What about his family? To them, are you not a murderer too?

Maybe mother nature is constantly playing pranks on us.

Whether we like it or not, we are part of a system, and part of this system will we always be. The truth will prevail. And we belong to this truth.

 

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