Who are you, really? The biggest problem in politics, much less love and war where all things are fair, is the elusive nature of our very being as humans on this planet.

For example, all the efforts at emergency redistricting by Trump and anti-Trumpers is predicated on historic voting patterns. But they do not take into account how radically those patterns have changed in the year or so since Trump returned to the White House and is exhibiting behavior that is crazier and more vicious than ever.

As we know, Democrats are winning in districts now that before this last year were solidly pro-Republican. That elusive voter in that voting booth may not be the same person he or she was a year ago.

We know that there are more neurons in the human brain than there are stars in the Milky Way. The human brain is the most advanced aspect of the entire universe that we have been able to study so much more in the last decade, thanks to the James Webb telescope and other things.

Consider this: in humanity’s entire history on this planet, we are at the point now where we can say that we will survive and progress beyond the limitations of this particular planet. That is an immense development of truly cosmic significance, yet it is hardly acknowledged.

We have the technical means now to get to the moon, and to Mars. This means that no matter what else happens, some small portion of our species, with our brains included, will be able to escape Planet Earth in the event of some cataclysmic catastrophe. That is no small achievement for us.

It means we are truly now intergalactic. In another million years, a small time frame in the context of the big picture, we’ll be able to travel to and colonize anywhere to keep our evolution happening, and the biggest first step has happened in our own lifetimes.

There are those who argue that the universe as we are discovering it now is very hostile and unwelcoming. Yes, that may be what it appears to be, but don’t forget that the universe includes us, we human beings, and our precious brains.

Artificial intelligence is and always will be a product of our brains, a by-product, if you will. It is already amazing, but even at its best it is the result of our work, our minds. The fear that people have about AI is the fear we have about ourselves, which brings me back to the main point of this.

So, who are you, really? I suggest you are not one person, but you are an array of potentials. Think of your options at this very moment. How many different pathways of response to this moment in time do you have? You get to choose which one you will follow. And so forth with each moment of your existence going forward. In the domain of politics, the choices you make in the polling booth are reflective of this reality.

The genius of Abraham Lincoln was in the phrase he evoked in his historic first inaugural Address, in which he concluded: “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

“The better angels of our nature” touches directly on our actual condition as human beings. When arguing for a better union, it is essential that the better angels of your nature are invoked to address the better angels of the nature of whomever you are addressing.

So it was in Lincoln’s second inaugural address given as the Civil War was about to end, that he stated, “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds.”