This I Believe
By: Sharon Ferrell, November 2005

Authoress' Notes: This was a short essay I did for class, based on a NPR essay competition. Some of this goes over what your basic Internet fan of my work knows, but I still think it's a enjoyable read. :)

It’s hard to believe someone as cynical as I am believes in anything. Well, I believe in a lot of things, most of them aren’t very positive. I believe the human race is generally lazy and ignorant, and that we’re mostly still just animals with all the selfish survival instincts an animal possesses in order to make it in this dog-eat-dog world. Yet that’s not what I’m writing about. There is hope to this sad tale of ignorance and selfishness. As sentient beings, we all have the power to rise above our millions of years of genetic programming. We possess a little bit of celestial insight called conscience. It is that, and only that, which puts us above our fellow animals.

I myself have grown to have a distaste for my fellow high school classmates, to put it mildly. There’s just so much drama that goes on in the average high school community, with relationships that barely last a month, backstabbing, changing sexualities, drugs, and other things that come straight out of a soap opera. I always related to adults more since they are usually more predisposed to act more on their principles than going out and doing anything to be popular in social circles as most teenagers are. Teenagers seem to be more likely to act upon their primordial social survival instincts than adults, for they are still forming their own personal ethics.

I’ve explored my own personal ethics extensively all on my own, disdaining organized religion for most of my teenage life. Instead, I wrote stories, often telling of the nature of sentient beings. One of my characters is a completely new form of sentient life, a confused little robot that offered an outsider’s perspective on life in a scornful society. At one point she is pushed to the edge by a lazy peer and hurts them, and then came to realize that you often had to have self-control when others don’t. In contrast, animals could get away with attacking when provoked, because they can’t be held accountable for their actions. Stealing, murdering, adultery, and other lovely habits are commonplace in the animal kingdom. What is it that should stop sentient beings from engaging in these habits? Conscience.

Humans are the only sentient beings on this planet, which I feel is a pity. Sometimes I feel as if some animals would make better people than humans, which may or may not be true. Humans do not possess the loyalties and nobility of a domestic canine, nor are they as in tune with the natural world, or at least hey aren’t anymore. Yet what would animals do with sentience? Would they follow down the same reckless and planet-destroying path as humans, or blaze a new trail? Maybe sentience is as much a curse to the planet as it is a blessing. Nevertheless, again, there is the wonder of conscience. Do sentience and conscience come hand in hand? I personally hope so.           

Humans are sentient and have free will and can do what we want with it, good or bad. Conversely, we also have conscience to guide our choices. There is hope for mankind; you just have to look past all the politicians quarreling and vapid drones of TV adoring masses. There are still selfless people who work themselves to the bone for others, even ignoring their own needs. They can be friends who stay up past reasonable hours to comfort you in the dead of night, or they can be random strangers who do things for you out of the goodness of their heart. Rare as they may be, they are what make life worth living. It is this belief that keeps me from becoming totally jaded.