I’m in class right now, but my mind is free enough to enable me to write this thing up. On the way to the dining hall for lunch, I was telling my friends about how I wanted to write about this topic last night but that I didn’t because I didn’t want to be any less productive than I already was. Silly thing, actually. All I did was listen to music and think about home, and that’s about as transient as productivity can get. I get annoyed at how stupid I can get sometimes. Especially now, but let’s not go into that depressing and revealing topic.
Anyway, let’s talk about human life and how it is viewed. The common view seems to be that all life is equal, that no one can say that one life is better than another. Intuitively, I agree with this completely. But for now, I am going to try to argue against this notion. I won’t censor myself, and I won’t give much thought to the sophistication (or absence thereof) of my words and terms and to my structure. I’ll just think and write while my professor performs.
I guess the main reason behind the idea that all life is equal is that everyone has that boundless human potential (and because it’s human, it’s boundless, but necessarily bound too – more on that later) and that everyone is called to do different things in life. Therefore, it follows that there is no one standard to measure human life, meaning that every life is equally precious (with the equal not being a standard) and one cannot be said superior to the other.
Is that true? As human beings, we are necessarily bound by time and space. While it may be Platonic to say that the potential of humans exists on a plane on its own, it may also be said that this potential depends on the body, which grounds the possibility that this potential can be manifested and that in fact so manifests it when it is time. Unless, of course, it can be argued that the potential of human beings is completely divorced from their bodies. But I’m not sure if I accept that because all human knowledge (or knowledge about humans) is revealed through and verified by human experience, which means that there must be some external form or manifestation of this. And also, the detection of human potential depends to a large degree on the humanity that is revealed by the human body. If a cat was born of a woman, I don’t think the cat would be called human and therefore be deemed to have that inherent human potential.
Oh boy, I’m qualifying myself a lot, aren’t I? I don’t even know where all these qualifications fit in. I’m just typing down thoughts as they come to me, while my classmate is being grilled on Alabama law. Okay, I’m sick of qualifying myself now. I’ll just spit out the point of what I wanted to say. Well, except that I’m debating with myself in my head, and I don’t really believe any side enough to write stuff down. But wait, I’ll just complete this thought.
Okay, what I was going to say was that there might be some basis to the objective standard that some people are better positioned to manifest their potential than other people are. And now that I’ve typed it, I take it back because I don’t believe it. I can’t do this anymore. I’m getting distracted by the FreeCell game to my upper left and the constant click of the mouse pad, which means that the classmate behind me is playing Snood. And I want to play a game too, but I want to play Tetris, and I don’t have it here.
Boy, I don’t like talking when I don’t feel like it, but I can write and write nonsense for as long as I can think and my fingers can type. So let’s end with a possibly profound thought: In less than three weeks, I’ll be back in Manila. But before that, this war must be fought.
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