What is the incentive for being the best human being? We have the Nobel Prize, the Mann Booker Prize, the Rookie of the Year Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and more. We award achievement of all kinds.
But what is the incentive for being the best human being? What does that even mean? Does culture ask that of us? Does religion ask that of us? Do we ask that of ourselves?
What happens when we must acknowledge that we all live in both the dark and the light? What do we do with inevitable failure? When in a life are we ever finished with a life's work? Can this work be finished without becoming embedded in all of humanity?
Culture needs such humans and calls them out. They offer us forgiveness, atonement and an image of fuller humanity. Sometimes it seems the only award for this kind of human success is a violent death.
We live in a world that needs all the humanity we an muster, but models it so inadequately.
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