Geof,
Why give human creativity such a short shrift? Look at what we have done and extrapolate what we can do. The advent of science coincided with the Renaissance 500 years ago. That marks the beginning of our understanding of the Universe in a manipulatable way.
250 years ago marks the beginning of the Industrial Revolution when theory gave birth to engineering. It set the foundation for all our technology we have today by marrying theory with its practical expression. The two have run in tandem harness ever since.
Less than 250 years ago modern representative democracy germinated and set root. It provided the benign environment needed for science, engineering and mercantilism to thrive. That enriched the lives of people universally unlike nothing else has in all of human history.
100 years ago we learned how to fly and communicate instantaneously around the world. That latter gift was electronics. 50 years ago we understood physics enough to manipulate nature's matter into fission, generate nuclear energy and, as a side note, create artificial elements that the earth hasn't ever seen since its creation 4.6 billion years ago.
25 years ago electronics gave us widespread use of computers, the harbinger of what will eventually be artificial intelligence. 10 years ago the internet was created which will eventually unite all the tribes of Man and it more than anything else ever done will lead to the death of war.
Pessimistically you can say the first part of this progress is due to Newton and the second part is due to Einstein and that is probably true. 300 hundred years separates them. If fusion and things more marvelous than we can imagine requires another genius of the first magnitude then expect it in 250 more years. Einstein died in 1956.
We have always been afflicted with Luddites. The current spoor are greens, environmentalists, progressives, whatever. What marks them is fear and self-loathing; we are bad, everything we do is bad. Every change is a disaster, nothing good can come of it, we must do something to return things to where they were. They are conservatives actually though ironically they call themselves otherwise. They have no regard for or even the comprehension of the majesty of the human spirit. They are indeed mud-people.
The first evidence of human spirit to me dates back 40,000 years to the cave paintings in France. We have come such a long way and so rapidly recently. In part that is my near physical revulsion for the mud-people. I'm sure their proud ancestry is replete with untold losing battles to stem progress and to stifle the full expression of the human spirit. They are the inevitable friction that tries to retard motion.
Life is good. There is much yet to be discovered. Being a human is good. You are a part of nature as is everything around you. There are no catastrophes looming around every corner, there are no bogymen. Keep a childlike sense of wonder about everything around you. Keep an open heart and an unafraid mind. Fear shackles, particularly the ones you put on yourself. Relish life.
Mariss  |