social equality is a warm gun

Let’s face it: Natural competition, that is honest competition for survival, has been done away with by our safe civilization. The safety of civilization is unprecedented in the history of life on earth. While there may be poverty, practically no one is starving to death and there are few predators threatening us. If we’re ever thrust back into a survival situation, the only way to compete will be to outsmart the necessity to compete. That means owning a gun and knowing how to use it. This will at least put you on a level playing field with every other redneck and thug. Then, if you’re lucky you can slip by when worse comes to worse.
God forbid it should ever come to that though. Civilization would have had to come apart at the seams for us to find ourselves faced with that level of reality. As it stands today, survival and prosperity depends largely on intelligence. There’s a healthy mixture of intellectual fitness and accident that accounts for whether people are rich or poor, whether they live or die. I much prefer this to the totally accidental rule of modern violence. The gun makes us all equal. If one man’s edge over another is ever reduced to something as simple as a pistol, equality will finally be achieved on earth. If that ever happens, then god help us all. Equality should truly be feared.
But maybe if there is someday a meltdown like I’ve described here, those who survive will start over on the progressive path when the smoke clears, and reinvigorate the life of our species, this ascent that is presently stalled out in the warm comfort of civilized life. Man may return to the vicious brilliance of nature.

June 11, 2009
Market Café, Denver