SIGN POSTS A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS VOLUME I

A HUMAN FACE – A HUMAN TOUCH

As we step into the next millennium, awash in the wake of the post industrial, postmodern,
electronic media-saturated environment, we must be ever vigilant.
Evolution has taken such a wonderfully long time to get us here – through interstellar trails
of primeval dust and muck.
Now,
thresholding into the future
as co-participants in the creative process, we are faced, as always,
with the opportunity to maintain an ever-present commitment
to what personhood is all about.
A fleeting incessant blip on our intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual horizons hints of an unknown presence shadowing us.
Something always has – perhaps the gods,
or evil spirits?
Now that “God is Dead” and evil spirits are the entertainment of children and teenagers,
what is it that blows the winds of turbulence, shakes our tree,
shadows our sunny days?
What eclectic movements do we fear? What dissonance absorbs our senses?
The venues of the day’s exposure come from an implosion of people
(other beings present in our known space) and data coming from everywhere, overloading all of our senses.
Numbers, beyond the simple,
are incomprehensible
(except to a few)
and therefore without our comprehension, meaningless.
Yet …
the presence of others, different others,
(only in that naive historical sense) is disconcerting.
We don’t feel connected. Something tells us we should, we are all brothers and sisters, and yet …

A NEW POINT OF DEPARTURE
As a social species, we have always had to live as if new truths were to become an essential part of our survival. Now, even though we know there will be inconsistencies, some dramatic and astonishing, others shameful, in our repertoire of survival skills, the worst and most recent – the ineptitude in intervening in the Balkans, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur, as well as the corruptive intransigence at all levels – are obvious.
Wrapped as we have been and will forever be in the environ of the moment, we must continue to live by trusting in that organic nature of the learning process. In this vein, we need to know that there is a learning curve for creators and destroyers as well as victims and interveners. The implications of this fact carry a universal responsibility that cannot turn us from our course of commitment, and an unerring faith must guide our resolve. If we are to continue to live, we must live as if all life matters.
An understanding of an organic process of human growth and development must be promulgated and adhered to so that the evolution of the species continues to manifest in its self understanding a more universal rise in consciousness…