Thoughts on the Relative Good of Something.

The gravity that holds the planets in their clockwork paths and pulls the tides will one day crash another asteroid into our planet.

Gravity that makes it possible for hot air to rise, clouds to float high above our heads and people to stand sideways at the equator also kills us when we slip off the precipice.

Wind drag that slows our cars and makes us consume more gasoline also makes it possible for birds to soar and airplanes to fly.

Fire that warms our bodies and makes food more palatable will also consume our homes and sleeping children.

The sun that raises water from the oceans to make rain upon the land will also burn our skin and make cancers that will kill us.

Alcohol that makes us feel good and sociable will also make it easy to crash our cars.

The aperture (of our eyes) severely limits the amount of what we can see but it makes images possible at all.

Food will sustain our lives but too much will make us fat.

Nuclear power plants give us electricity without carbon loading of the atmosphere but it leaves us with 10,000 years of toxic radiation wastes.

Morphine makes a crushed limb bearable to live with while it heals but it can also take over ones life and destroy it.

A stick of dynamite can clear an ice jammed river or bring horror to a open-air market.

A child can be a beautiful being to behold who grows up to be a great teacher or the next serial murderer.

Taxes can fund medical services for all, build great cities in which to live, support higher education and buy bullets and bombs to kill and destroy.

Fossil fuels have made our society possible and raised humankind from the muck and mire but it also heats our biosphere to a point where we may not continue to comfortably live.

Herbicides, Pesticides and fertilizers make the present-day crop yields possible to feed the world, but these same agents slowly modify and kill our bodies.

Death causes us grief and sorrow at the loss of loved ones, but without it we would not be able to live on this planet for very long.

Life without death would cause horrors beyond comprehension.

Decay dismantles all of our edifices, turns virile bodies into frail elderly adults, and spoils our food but without it where would a dead rat go? Ten million dead rats?

If this world was perfect how could anything move?

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen.

The heavy elements were crushed into existence in the center of dying stars that exploded and gave us carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, nickel, iron, arsenic, plutonium, uranium…

Nuclear reactors make heat for steam to generate electricity and they make plutonium for bombs.

A bullet can save you from a predator or take the life of your spouse in the heat of anger.