Ah, Spring! Love is in the Air!

First let me say that I hope Tony Kornheiser crashes his car as he unsuccessfully swerves toward a cyclist he's trying to run off the road. Then I hope he's arrested for assault.

Has human willingness to use force on each other really made us a better species, or just the biggest assholes on the planet?

If the ability to hurt someone is the sole qualification for taking a place on the road, every cyclist should carry a sledgehammer and a gun. There! Now you qualify. It doesn't have to be a big hammer. A four-pound, short handled hammer will do. And handgun choices abound.

You do not have to use these items any more than every driver of a potentially lethal weapon ever actually uses it. All you need to earn respect is the POTENTIAL to end someone's life abruptly. What you lack in acceleration you make up for in muzzle velocity. I can't sprint you down, but my bullet can!

This is absurd. But then humans invented absurdity. If a paradox exists, but no living species has the ability to perceive it, does it really exist? We think the so-called lower animals are oblivious to the irony of human arrogance, but maybe they're constantly rolling their eyes when we're not looking. Let's face it, for millennia we've taken our satisfaction in killing them and each other as a poor substitute for really understanding what's going on. And we're still doing it. If someone pisses you off, threaten them with violence. Kill them if you think you can get away with it. Take pride in something you had nothing to do with, like your skin pigment or the arbitrary political region in which you were born.

I believe the tide of history trends a different way, but it moves slowly. I can't tell you if things will get worse before they get better. I just have a sense that people are slowly coming to realize that getting along is more efficient than constant confrontation. I hope that full acceptance of that does not lie on the other side of a global orgy of violence as the last of the confrontationists go after the nearest target in an outburst of uncontainable frustration. We think of war as a conflict between defined large entities, but it could as easily be a broad conflagration of simultaneous small fires.

It probably won't happen today. The weather is supposed to be beautiful. Time to ride to work.