As I sit here in front of my compute I am thinking back over the previous 12 months. It has been exciting and exasperating, wondrous and terrifying. I can now look back over half a century and I’m amazed that we made it.

Seriously people, think about it. We poison the air, we poison the water, we poison the food. We fight to the death for reasons that don’t make sense to the rest of the world. We are greedy and selfish and even when we are told that what we are doing will kill us, we keep doing it.

Do we deserve it? Do we deserve a future?

I am an unrepentant optimist. There is good out there. There are masses of people working desperately to save us. I don’t understand the evil but unfortunately I do understand the apathy.

The one thing evil needs to thrive is for good people to do nothing. And to our great shame that is exactly what is happening. I weep for the children who know only hunger and war. I weep for the disenfranchised, the dismissed and the disavowed. We are better than this. But there’re always excuses. “We should take care of our own first.” “I can’t afford it!” Or my personal favourite: “It’s not my job.” These are actual statements that I have heard people say.

Well, it is our job. We need to take care of everyone, here and abroad. That super latte half foam decaf you have every morning could fund so much if you would just rethink your priorities. And that’s just it. Our priorities. Those who have don’t want to share and those who don’t have are desperate to share.

I have loved ‘Star Trek’ since the very first episode of the very first series. The world they showed was one of peace and inclusion. People were labeled by what they did, not who they were. People were judged for exactly the same reasons. It was the 1960s and I believed in the ideal. I still do. My dreams are a little tarnished around the edges but I still believe. I believe that there is good in people. I believe that we are one people and I wished we all acted that way. I want there to be a future that includes everyone. No exceptions. Evil exists because apathy exists. One can negate the other. People, we’ve got work to do!