You know how, when you get to a certain part of play, you already know how it must end? The setting has been set, the nature of the characters developed, their flaws exposed, and you know you are watching a tragedy; it’s not going to come out well. The author sometimes throws you a surprise ending but its very improbability offends.

We humans pretty much completed our evolution long ago when we were scarce yet competitive.  Evolution is variation, procreation and selection for fitness. With our fundamental reptilian drives to feed, breed, fight, and flight we find ourselves now on a diverse and crowded planet. Back then, if resources became scarce we could just move on, we’re good at migration. When conflict arose flight was the move on option; fight served another purpose, for survival of the fittest requires destruction of the less fit.

I’m at the point of the play where I understand that our behaviors, honed in a world of room to move on, is now faced with a finite and struggling planet. It’s not possible for north of six and a half billion humans to live even modestly and in peace on this earth. As we use the global marketplace to apportion ever scarcer comforts I’m reminded that my mother’s adage, “Them that has, gits,” has as corollary “Them that hasn’t ….” Can we just hold hands for the next act?