Today's image in the Magic Tea Cup was a fish.  Yesterday it was either a butterfly or a small horse, depending on which way I turned the cup.  Both images are were too faint to bother photographing.

Did I mention that you and I share the same DNA even though we are not related by blood?  Yes you.  Our DNA, yours and mine, is 99.99% identical.  Did I also mention that your genetic code is 99.99% identical to everyone else's code?  Our cells--all of us--are 99.99% the same.  The girl you love to hate, the boy who broke your heart, the criminal, the martyr, the celebrity, the nameless person you just passed in traffic, everyone with whom you've ever shaken hands; all 99.99% identical to you at a cellular level. 

There is no Us and Them.  We are all Us and we are all Them, down to 99.99% exactly the same.  If you map our genetic code you find out there is more about us the same than different--overwhelmingly more.  We are 99.99% the same and only .01% different. 

Ancient philosophers say that we are only capable of recognizing faults or character flaws in other people because we bear those same flaws.  The people we hate are actually mirroring what is already within us and our repulsion is our recognition of those ugly things.  Otherwise we don't notice or at least don't have a strong emotional reaction them.  In that vein, what you hate about someone else you only hate because that same thing exists within you.  Same with the people you love or the things about people you love--you recognize and admire what is already within you.  Since we are 99.99% identical under the hood it would seem a huge waste of time to bother singling out someone else for something we all share.  Yet we do, and then think ourselves better for it.

Turns out we aren't better.  We are the same.

 


(c) 2012, ACG