God Bless the USA

So there was a pretty amazing scientific discovery that happened today. The Higgs Boson particle was found!!! Yay!!!!

Now I'm not going to pretend like I know anything about this revolutionary breakthrough. But from what I can tell, this is something a lot of smart people have been looking for - for a long time, and basically it's kinda a big deal ;-)

Anyways, why am I even bringing this up? What the hell am I doing discussing particle physics (This does fall into the study of particle physics right???) on a personal blog??

Well, there's a human element to this discovery that's really interesting to me. I felt inspired to write about it, so screw me.

You see, the big researcher guy (the head honcho who made the announcement about the discovery) made it a point to stress that this progress came about due to a large community of people. He wanted to make sure that everyone knew this was a world discovery. It didn't belong to any one person or nation.

In addition to this, I've found myself in a few conversations recently discussing nationality issues. To me, border security is something that's really impractical for the world as it is now. For a whole host of reasons that I won't get into now.

(Not saying I'm in favor of just opening the borders AT ALL. I'm just saying that if you think building higher walls or stronger enforcement is going to solve all of our issues, you're deluded.)

But basically I see it like this, political affairs are no longer isolated, nor are trade markets or Internet connections. We LIVE in a world community now, even the most nationalistic of us has to recognize that on some level.

Therefore, when I see other nations (those in the scientific community have always led by example) so generously sharing information and resources with each other, I become a little frustrated with my own community.

And it's interesting that on this day, July 4th, the day America celebrates its independence, 'we' (America) once again gets left in the dust.

I'm just saying that rather than trying to focus inward and seclude ourselves, we should start changing our priorities. Rather than patting ourselves on the back today, maybe we should reflect and see what we're willing to change and sacrifice to make ourselves better people rather than just better Americans.

Because when we improve the human element, we also strengthen the country.

Let us remember that we are a nation of immigrants - united under that idea that people have the right to choose a better life for themselves and for their children. We are tied together by ideals based on that principal. Not by a national letterhead.