I am Me

          I had the opportunity and pleasure Friday evening to see the movie "Lincoln" .  I was struck by a key point in the final debate in the House of Representative on the 13th Amendment of what equality meant.  Earlier in the movie Lincoln had set out his version of equality amongst men in by stating Euclid's notion in the teaching of geometry: Things that are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another (Transitive property of equality). That is if a=c and b=c than a=b. For Lincoln, it was a logical argument that if you agreed that a slave was a human being, then they were to be afforded the same rights as every other human being under the constitution and laws of the land. And if they were a human being,no matter the color of their skin, then they were that, a intelligent being, created in the image of God and therefore not to be considered to be property, like animals or other living beings who were placed under the dominion of man by God. (See Genesis 1:28-31.).

It is from this that I pull one of my basic tenants for my existence. We all are equal at birth, but that does not mean that we are all equal through life. We are what we make of ourselves. At birth we are all helpless babies. We need nourishment from our mothers, we need to be clothed and cleaned by others, we will be taught and nurtured by others. We are a helpless baby. As we grow older, we become the accumulation of our life experiences. And because of this, we each become a unique human being, who contributes in our own way to society. Doctors and scientific professionals will tell you that even identical twins are not identical, even thought they come from the same embryo They may have a large number of similarities but their life experiences will not be quite the same and therefore they will not be identical.

Because of this, I am steadfast in the belief that I am unique. I am me and no one else is. No one else has the same set of chromosomes. No one else has had the same exact life experiences that I have. No one else has had the same opportunities to make good and bad decisions, to succeed and to fail. There is no one else exactly like me, and that is a good thing. And because I am unique, how can I say that I am better than someone else. I am not perfect or the best at everything that there is to do in life. In my 56 years, I have not experienced everything that there is to experience in this world. I have not traveled to foreign lands. I have not had every life experience that there is in the world, And I continue to grow everyday. Every day presents new opportunities to learn, new challenges to overcome, new people to meet and new places to experience. I am who I am and should be accepted as a fellow human being by all. And I should be respected as a fellow member of the human race.

This is where I have a problem with our society today. We hear everyday of senseless killings by an ever increasing number of young people. It seems that they have no respect for a human life. Maybe its the video games they play. Maybe its the feeling that they themselves have no value. We as a society need to make a major change in our mind set so that we can bring these children into a world in which they understand that they are a unique and valued member of society have everything to live for.

We have, because of various governmental programs,developed another set of slaves and we should be ashamed of ourselves. There is a growing segment of our society who now depend on governmental programs for their existence. These are people who feel that they are owed. They are not ashamed at being "owned". They do not seek their freedom from these programs, but instead demand that the programs provide more for them. They want to be kept and want their children to be kept, instead of seeking ways to be a full participant in society as a unique individual who brings their own life experiences to the table in an effort to make society better and stronger. They portray themselves as victims and demand society make allowances for them, rather than accepting that they have made themselves what they are by not seeking to get themselves out of their slavery.

Not everyone will succeed in this,life, but at birth, we are all equal. The Declaration of Independence set out that we are all equal and have the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While promising the rights of life and liberty, it does not promise us happiness, only the right to pursue it,and that no other human being or nothing in government should deny us the pursuit of happiness. We as individual human beings should be the only ones who hold us back from such a pursuit.