I’ve been thinking on this topic a lot lately, because there exists a reactionary force in this world which is trying to tell us that there are a limited number of ways to live our lives - to worship, to love, to simply be. And I think for those who advocate this approach, they are overlooking the compelling argument of our shared human history.

Let’s go back to our roots in Africa. It was a good place: plenty to eat, the weather was nice, and if you could overlook the occasional tiger eating someone every now and again, it must have been pretty close to paradise. But at some point, one or more of our ancestors looked around and said something like, “Yeah, this place is great, but let’s go see what else is available.” The original case of FOMO, I suppose. So they left Eden and ventured into the Levant and then onto Europe, Asia, and eventually, the planet.

Along the way, they discovered new things to eat. And that’s what special about us humans: we will eat anything and everything. We eat mammals, birds, fishes, mollusks, and pretty much any other living creature which comes our way. Think of Wooly Mammoths. Huge things. We ate them all.

A few early home sapiens ventured into the sea and likely ran into sharks. After being scared out of their minds, they must have looked at one another and said, “Let’s eat one.” The largest things on the planet – the whale? We chew its blubber for fun.

We eat all kinds of roots, stalks, flowers, seeds, insects, and leaves. In short, if it moves - and if it doesn’t - we eat it.

We eat all these things as presented – raw - but we also boil, bake, sauté, fry, air fry, barbecue, microwave, pressure-cook and broil them. We set food on fire, we wrap it in leaves and bury it in the ground with hot rocks, then dig it up later and eat it. We eat at fancy tables with linen cloths, and we eat hot pockets which we have pulled out of our parkas. And every day, all across the globe, creative chefs are inventing new and different things to eat, flavored with unlimited combinations of spices that we’ve tried in so many different ways.

Once our bellies were full, we looked for a warm, dry place to spend the night. First we used caves, but we soon learned to build shelters. We built them from mud, clay, rocks, bricks, wood, palm leaves – even blocks of ice. And we built them in every conceivable manner and style, and in every conceivable place: on lake shores, beaches, river fronts. In the woods, on the tops of mountains, in the ground, and in the trees. We live in places where the sun will fry an egg, and where it sometimes sets and doesn’t come up for weeks. Any place you can imagine, someone calls home. Some of us ventured into the swamps, with alligators and disease carrying insects, with oppressive heat and no drinkable water, and they called it home. And we’ve done the same thing in arid deserts and frozen wastelands and forests so deep it took modern humans 2000 years to even find the people who live there.

Along this journey, we asked questions. Why are we here? How should we conduct ourselves, and what happens to us when we die? And so we invented gods. Lots of gods. In India alone there are over 10,000. We have worshiped gods that look like us, that look like animals, and some that are a bit of both. We’ve worshiped powerful gods, deeply flawed gods, gods that are angry and some that are gentle and kind. We’ve worshiped spirits that don’t look like anything, or are within the very trees and streams and breezes that envelop us. We’ve tried multiple gods, one god – though we still disagree what this one god should be called, or who his favorite children are. We even worship three gods in one, though the people who came up with this can only explain it as a mystery.

I’m not knocking any of these gods, or the people who worship them. Life is a mystery, and we need a way to explain it. Some of the religious stories and stories of origin that come from this need are wonderful reflections or our predicament, our hopes and aspirations, our creativity.

Obviously, what I am talking about is our pluralism, and how it is fundamental to our human nature. It seems baked into our DNS, and it is, along with compassion, perhaps our greatest virtue. We love variety of alcohols, of clothing ourselves, of styles of expression. In our human history, we’ve tried monogamy, both serial and lifelong, polygamy, same sex, other sex, and a lot of variations in between. We’ve tried as many religions, relationship styles, foods, manners of dress, and everything else we can think of.

Because we are curious. Because it is our nature to do so.

What does this have to do with photography? Well, maybe not much. Maybe I just need to get this out there, and this is my only venue. But one obvious lesson is that we should not let anyone dictate to us how we should live our lives, or practice our art, or that what we see is not real and what we can imagine should be restricted.

Stay curious. Be free. Make art and spray it around!