Complex Numbers

Better

I think I'm running out of shits to give.

It's not that I don't have strong opinions about things. Anyone who's read a decent number of entries here can figure that out. It's just that I no longer think it's my job to do anything about it, except maybe write.

Oh, I donate to certain causes, like most people do, I think. And I'm usually conscious of how my actions might impact the environment, but I won't usually do anything about it if it inconveniences me too much - because I've used up most of my shits.

Part of that is awareness of the proximity of my own mortality. I'll be dead soon enough, and with me will go whatever remains of my shits. Another part is the secure knowledge that no matter what I do - or what anyone else does - if we don't put colonies in space and/or on other worlds soon, we're doomed as a species.

But a big part, I think, is the realization that, inevitable doom notwithstanding, things are getting better regardless of what I do. It's not a smooth improvement - there are fits and starts, and sometimes it's a three steps forward, two steps back sort of thing - but there is a definite sense of ethical development over the years. It's a kind of cultural awareness that when something is wrong, eventually we overcome its inertia and begin the slow process of making it right.

These changes don't happen overnight. For instance, it was within my lifetime (just barely) that interracial marriage was illegal in my state. Not just frowned upon by conservatives and racists, but actually, written-into-the-law, illegal. Now, it's not, and we even have same-sex marriages and other things that would have been unthinkable when I was born - and make no mistake, these are changes for the better. After all, everyone should be subjected to the horrors of marriage, regardless of their race or sexual orientation. It's only fair.

Another thing that has received more awareness and attention is animal rights. While I think some people go too far (*cough*peta*cough*), there has been an evolution in the way we see nonhuman species, how we relate to them. Circuses have all but dropped animal acts. Zoos have moved from cages toward more natural habitats. Animal testing, where it's still done, is subject to ethical protocols and reviews. People become vegetarian or vegan, sometimes in a bid to protect the other animals on the planet. Places like SeaWorld align themselves more toward marine animal rescue and rehabilitation than exploitation. And in general, awareness has increased as scientists and researchers have found more and more commonalities between nonhuman lives and human ones.

That's nothing to do with me, though. I'll probably be eating a cheeseburger on the day I finally kick it. But I'll die secure in the knowledge that things will continue to get incrementally, if fitfully, better - until the giant meteor or supervolcano makes it all irrelevant.