Nature Show

I may have some of the details wrong,

But this is what I recall:

I once saw a PBS nature show 

About a tribe of baboons

Ruthlessly ruled over by dominant males

Who bullied the lesser males 

Into submission 

And claimed the females as their property, 

Bullying them as well. 

It was a depressing show,

Showcasing the brutality 

Of nature, red in tooth and claw, 

The survival of the fittest, 

And all that.

Depressingly, it made me wonder,

How far have we evolved? 

But then, those ruling baboons 

Went looking for food, 

Scavenging near city, 

They dumpster dived.

They devoured tainted meat. 

They all died. 

The hierarchy disappeared. 

In its place, a new baboon tribe emerged:

Less violent, more egalitarian,

More... if such a term can be applied to primates

So primitive compared to us... 

Civilized. 

If interlopers appeared 

Who tried to bully their way to the top again,

They were, I believe, ignored, 

Or possibly 

Showed to the figurative door. 

The tribe's new message:

We don't run our tribe that way. 

I'm not sure what our solution might be, 

But it seems to me we might need to find our own 

Dumpster full of tainted meat.

Or maybe we just need to start saying,

Loud and clear,

We don't run our tribe that way.

Founders

 If we admire them for being men of their time -

Too close to their own era to see

All of that era’s hideous flaws, 

Then we admire them

For being unremarkable

For being just like other men 

Of their status, 

The status quo,

Of their time,

Willing to talk about equality

But seeing it only for themselves.

The only reasons to admire these flawed men,

So caught up in the nets of their era,

Is for their transcending their era

And disentangled themselves from the nets of time

To be truly visionary - 

Of their time, true, 

But also ahead of their time. 

They left room for later generations to improve on what they started,

And expected them to do it. 

They created a frame that could expand.

They built a doorway they couldn’t walk through

But left it open for us.

They laid a foundation

But left it for us to build on. 

They paved a road pointed towards a horizon

They could not see beyond

And left it to us to blaze the trail 

Further.

If we revere them for their flaws and prejudices,

Their limitations and limits,

For being men of their time,

We admire them for nothing. 

They were admirable not for being of their time

But for the ways in which they saw beyond it.

To drag us back through the doors 

They opened

Is to dishonor the only 

Greatness they held.