This week we (the royal we) started rewatching Battlestar Galactica. I ordered the Blu-Ray set a few months ago while thinking about the cyclical nature of history; I was noticing a lot of things happening in my life that paralleled random stories in Greek mythology and even the Bible.

All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

I’m not sure when I started believing this, but I think about it often. People who know me have probably heard me say that “Time is a circle.”

Well I’m sitting here watching BSG, and what does Caprica 6 frakking say to Gaius Baltar?

“All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.”

Cool, so that’s where that came from, and that’s probably why I was being pulled to the rewatch.

I won’t spoil BSG for you (go watch), but it’s about the last bit of humanity’s fight to survive after our homeworld’s destruction at the hands of the artificial intelligence we created.

The artificial intelligence in question attacks, harasses and belittles the remaining humans, insisting that we don’t deserve to live. They go on about how violent and selfish humans are; it’s in our nature to destroy, so we deserve destruction.

Another show I rewatched (and ordered on Blu-Ray) recently is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. This series also has characters who have a distaste for human nature; the homunculi see humans as being weak and stupid. They treat us like pawns in a chess game that we aren’t aware is being played.

I have to say, I have been guilty of falling victim to this way of thinking. I used to believe that “people suck; there are only exceptions.”

I, personally, am a human. I spent a lot of my life being resentful of that fact. I was like Leeloo in the Fifth Element when she’s learning about war. I’d seen the dark underbelly of humanity– I’d grown up in it, and I struggled to understand why humans deserved to have dominion over the Earth.

Even though I had examples of what a good person looked like, I held to the belief that they were the exception. It was very black and white, too. There are good people and there are bad people.

Well that ain’t right, chief. No person is all good. No person is all bad. Well-meaning people are capable of causing harm, and those who have made bad decisions their entire life are capable of turning a corner.

Human nature is not evil, nor is it the epitome of empathy. Human nature is tenacity.

Human nature is getting shit done. Human nature is never giving up. Human nature is “We can do anything we fucking want to do, as long as it’s a common goal.”

In Battlestar the goal is to survive and take care of each other. In Fullmetal the goal is to survive and take care of each other.

Both series show us the ugly side of being human, fighting for what we know to be right, and the sacrifices that are often made under pressure, but they also highlight the more lighthearted moments that we really live for. The reasons for our tenacity:

Sharing a laugh with people you love. Eating some good frakking food. Exploring a new place. Experiencing the blossoming of a new romance.

Just take a second out of your day to look out on everything humans have created. Think about all of the fighting and disagreements, the compromise and understanding, the number of words that have been exchanged throughout time to get us to where we are now.

Think about how many people had to live and die to make it possible for you to be sitting here reading this. Think about the smart brothers who made it possible for us to interact on these little magic boxes.

Try and hold love for humanity and everything we’ve been through. Try and remember we’re all here trying to do this thing together. Nobody knows what the hell is going on.

We’re all just fighting for our lives out here.

Please be good to people. It’s good to be good.