. . . behaving like the best of ourselves . . .

Now and then words in a book I’m reading jump up and slap me in the face. Gnomon, by Nick Harkaway, has those words. I’m not sure I can accurately describe what the book is about. It’s alternate reality, artificial intelligence, politics, history, and Greek mythology moshed together. I’m not sure if the narrators are insane or if I am.

Reading the novel reminds me of the afternoon I spent at the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Seeing so much of Dali’s work at one time left me disoriented. I drove back to my hotel hoping I wouldn’t get stopped because my head was in that space between being completely sober and functionally drunk. This book gives me that same feeling.

Published in 2017, these two sentences struck me as particularly prescient. 

“No one ever says that people have to be better. No one says that all these things we espouse — these free choices and self-governances — depend on our behaving like the best of ourselves and not the worst.” 

Ponder that. Let the words sink in. The things we espouse depend on our behaving like the best of ourselves. 

What would the world look like if people behaved less like toddlers demanding their way in all things or self-absorbed adolescents screaming their hormone induced rage at everyone and more like adults focused on behaving like the best of themselves?