Common Humanity or Slime Mold?

[I often use the phrase "common humanity", in fact I just did a search and found that I've used the term in 32 posts since I started blogging last May and as recently as yesterday. Although the Point Omega series used the term 6 times and should give some idea of what I mean, perhaps a closer definition of what I hope to mean with the term is in order. I'll make a stab at it with this spiffed up version of a piece from 1999 I found in my journals.]

Our "common humanity".

Is it really all that "common" and where is the "human" in it?

Our common humanity is not an apple or an orange; a theory or some cosmic revelation.

Our common humanity is a vision of what we are striving to become, that is human beings. The only use I have for organized religions is that they are intended to codify, preserve and hand down through the generations something of that vision.

However, in reality, our common humanity is simply that vision as it is realized in the daily lives of everyone.

It's not like God wrote a divine screenplay and said: "This is how it will be!"

It's more like God Asks: "What do you want?" "What will you be?"

Well, what is our answer?

Shall we be Ants? Rats? Cockroaches? Slime mold?

Take your pick!

"That-birds-can-fly" is not because they have wings -- neither do they have wings so they can fly.

Birds can fly and they have wings because they followed a vision of Bird.

To the degree that we are human, it is because we have been following a vision of Human.

That may sound kind of like a rehash of Plato or even Blake, but the fact remains that should lose that vision -- and we have always but in danger of that, but never more than today -- if we lose that vision, we will devolve into a wild and ugly beast.

Should that ugly thing happen, it would then indeed have been better we had chosen Slime Mold, and stuck with that! Slime mold looks kind of cute when its yellow glob slides across the forest floor...

"Keep your eye on the prize, hold on!" like I heard on Pete Seeger records while I was in college:

[A couple of addendums. First, what set me thinking about this series of posts was one that Ravenheart posted last September, "We are the Prayer". What I wanted to respond with was too nuanced for a simple comment, plus I have long been mulling over how to communicate my views on the subject.

The other item is more mundane -- the picture above is a snapshot from here. I don't know either the lovely young lady or the slime mold, for that matter -- but the picture was perfect for my purpose today. If either the lady or the slime mold are offended in any way, I hope they will please accept my abject and deep apologies!]