One of what we all are, Pelly. Less than a drop in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea. But it seems some of the drops sparkle, Pelly. Some of them do sparkle!

My recent adventures have made me quite the philosopher, especially at night, when I hear aught but the stream grinding boulders into pebbles through an unhurried eternity.  My thoughts flow thus.  Scholars discern motions in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rise & fall of civilizations.  My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules; only outcomes.

What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts.

What precipitates acts? Belief. 

Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mind's mirror, the world.  If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being, & history's Horroxes, Boerhaaves & Gooses shall prevail.  You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds.  What of it if our consciences itch?  Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage & our legacy? What fight the "natural" (oh weaselly word!) order of things?

Why? Because of this: -- one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the Devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul: for the human species, selfishness is extinction.  

Is this the doom written within our nature? 

If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe diverse races & creeds can share this world as peacefully as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & and the riches of the Earth and its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass.  I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real.  Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.  

A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living.  Upon my return to San Francisco, I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere.

I hear my father-in-law's response: "Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam.  But don't tell me about justice.  Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell 'em their imperial slaves' rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium's!  Oh, you'll grow hoarse, poor & gray in caucuses!  You'll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified!  Naive, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you grasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!"

Yet what is an ocean but a multitude of drops? 

Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell
2004

The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making.

blackswangreen
David Mitchell

Whitey on the moon

A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey's on the moon)
I can't pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Ten years from now I'll be paying still.
(while Whitey's on the moon)
The man just upped my rent last night.
('cause Whitey's on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
I wonder why he's upping me?
('cause Whitey's on the moon?)
I wuz already paying him fifty a week.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Taxes taking my whole damn check,
Junkies making me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is going up,
An' as if all that shit was't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arm began to swell.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Was all that money I made last year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain't no money here?
(Hmm! Whitey's on the moon)
Y'know I just about had my fill
(of Whitey on the moon)
I think I'll send these doctor bills,
Airmail special
(to Whitey on the moon)

Gil Scott-Heron

I watched clouds awobbly from the floor o' that kayak.  Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul.  Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds. 

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

Archivist: Weren't you curious about Union's blueprint for the briter tomorrow? How could you know the new order would not give birth to a tyranny worse than the one it xpired? Think of the Bolshevik and Saudi Arabian Revolutions. Think of the disastrous Pentecostalist Coup of North America.  Surely a program of incremental reforms, of cautious steps, is the wisest way to proceed?

Sonmi-451: You show xtraordinary erudition for an eighth-stratum, Archivist, I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An Abyss cannot be crossed in two steps". 

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

Archivist: Fantasy, lunacy. 

Somni-451: All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell