Film composer, Charles Roland Berry presents his ideas on 21st Century survival. What is it we most need to survive as a species?

What would better, more accurate, more reliable, more useful self-definitions look like? What primary facts about ourselves are essential to daily decision-making, and to our personal health and happiness? Let's start with a list of things humans need, beyond air, water, food, shelter, and sex now and then:

1. Spiritual experience. Beauty.
2. Free Will.
3. Primary self-definitions.
4. Secondary self-definitions.
5. Truth.
6. Joy.
7. Creative Action.
8. Satisfying Work.
9. Kindness.
10. Social Interaction.
11. Ideas Beyond Individuality
12. Courage

Even now, some people will say: “Look here, Charles. It is not possible for any individual to honestly care about the other 7,799,999,999 residents of Planet Earth. Our imaginations never extend that far. Tribes have always fought for supremacy, and piles of dead bodies are inevitable.”

I would propose, our imaginations can easily encompass 8 billion people or more. Currently in Newport News Virginia, the aircraft carrier, USS John F. Kennedy is being built at a cost of 13 billion dollars. If we can imagine that price tag, we can imagine 13 billion individual people.

We might also consider, the closing charge used in all Masonic Lodges over the past 300 years: “Every human being has a claim upon your kind offices. Do good unto all. And finally my Brethren, be ye all of one mind, live in peace, and may the God of love and peace delight to dwell with you and bless you.”

If we truly believe piles of dead bodies are inevitable, we will continue to create those piles of dead bodies. One generation to the next, forever. The word “inevitable” is a self-definition, not a fact of existence.