It's Christmas Day, and, irrespective of one's religion, it is, in many ways, the ultimate humanity day. True, it's constantly being assaulted by individual religions vying for supremacy, businesses vying for participant's money, and hackers attempting to steal identities and information, but over the centuries, it has remained the epitome of humanism. It remains a day of reflection on all that makes us human. 


Religions are social clubs consisting of humans garnering others to share in and validate their club's beliefs. Businesses are groups of humans attempting to concentrate wealth and with it, power over others. Hackers are humans and groups of humans seeking to steal something greater than the physical body, like businesses, gambling that accumulated wealth and power will somehow elevate them from the bounds of mortality. All this, of course, is illusion. Reality is the people themselves, and the glue that unites humanity isn't a single religion, business, corporation or nation, it's our uniquely human ability to connect empathically both directly eye-to-eye, human-to-human, even human-to-animal, or spiritually via the common connection to a power admittedly greater than the individual. 

This is what I wish for all those who know me via the university classroom, my authored books, and the many books I've had the privilege of publishing over the years. Happy Humanity.