There are days when all is golden and the sky is soft and life is a smooth breath that we inhale without thought to its origins.  Yet on this planet we are interconnected now in ways heretofore undreamed of;  the pain of one drowned at sea or trapped under the earth is known and felt by all, the heartbreak of a lost child is our sorrow, the horror of war, of the tsunami and the earthquake and the tornado causes us all to shudder in reply, our most personal thoughts spinning unseen through space, colliding with others, a jumble of impulses magically bestowed as a crown of communication. 

     Communication.  Within that word, the root itself is the essence of togetherness, of non-alienation, of the sharing of the bond of our species.  Ah, but beware the saber-tooth at the door of the cave who has morphed into a tiger of other stripes.  A stripe labeled hunger of body, spirit and mind.  A stripe called disease and pain.  A stripe named poverty and illiteracy.  A stripe branded prejudice and genocide…

     We together, the human commune, our thoughts whirling through space, do slay the beast together, one stripe at a time.  We must, or else we are destined to remain forever entrapped within the cave.