THE LARGER

BY JOSEPH BACK

Not so long ago, I inadvertently found out how to make green eggs in real life, without food dye. It turns out that if you ignore them in the fridge long enough and go to crack one open, they might be like the famed snack of Sam I Am. Flipped across the “is” verb that just won’t transfer action (that is, “intransitive’”), it becomes I Am Sam. Same meaning, different order—no transfer action involved.

Thank you Doctor Seuss, for grammatical lessons that don’t take conscious hold for years but still work. Anyway, back to green eggs.

Now eggs are a bit like a miniature state, if you’re into the essentialist view of reality. Essentialism at its roots is the idea that something can’t not be what it—must be what it is, at the core. It’s an idea that has certainly caused a lot of problems in the world when married to Dualism, the belief in two fundamental and opposing principles, of which human ego often dictates itself the “good” side—leading to bad things, as history attests.

On the other hand, the principle known as Essentialism concerned with the “essence” of things can also do a lot of good, within the proper boundaries. In the first place, it stands against “Postmodernism, that bete noire that would reduce the world to a mere chaotic place without meaning.

Which brings me to voting. Now without getting into a somewhat boring heavy handed civics lesson, it might be said that we learn from a very young age in this federal republic of the importance voting plays in upholding “democracy”— meaning “representative republic” to those into details. But let me throw another question out there: why do we vote?—that is to say, what is the ultimate goal of the thing?

Answer this question, and you have the basics of most any government the world over, whether or not it happens to be a republic. Fast forwarding things a bit to thinkers like Plato and Aquinas, the end (goal) of the state and law is justice— not right or left, but the middle way, a “via media” for modern times. It’s when we get away from this essential concept in politics that things tend to becomes a zero sum game of Us v. Them, the court case of the century, but in reality.

Alongside justice is fraternity, without which there can be no lasting bond of fellowship. It is only because of something held or felt in common, after all, that we in the United States of America prefer to get along instead of replay Gettysburg (please no sequel!).

I’m out of word space for now, but for the present, don’t forget the essentials— without them, no society is able to flourish, nor will it, for long.