I won't go so far as to say I lie awake at night worrying about the fate of mankind. I have pills that take care of that. But a good portion of my days are spent in wondering if we really have evolved much over time.
Is it just man's nature to be at odds with one another? I think if all the time and money spent on wars and disagreements were instead spent on good things; education, healthcare, solving environmental problems, lifting up instead of pulling down - what a wonderful world this would be.
Perhaps I was influenced reading Utopia by Sir Thomas More or maybe it was Henry Thoreau in Walden when he wrote:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.How wonderful life would be if we lived life to its fullest No hunger, no disease, no dissension. Just everyone pursuing their dreams to the fullest. Unrealistic you say? But why not Utopia? Why do we have to settle for less when humankind could be so much better than it is?
"I am a bit of a 'dreamer,' so I love fantasizing about utopian futures, and I also love the way you can explore big concepts in sci fi." ~ Rekha Sharma
I agree with you totally. We have the means to make life bearable for every person on Earth -- but we just don't bother to do it. It's shocking, really. It seems our evolutionary history is our downfall, bringing aggression and suspicion and acquisitiveness into the world. Utopia is possible in a conceptual sense, but humans may not be rational enough to achieve it. We hairless monkeys of Earth are very capable -- but only up to a point. I imagine this is a theme throughout the universe. Whatever creatures are out there, they arrived via evolution. And that means the same competitive drives dominate their existence. This is probably why we don't see signals from long-lived intelligent races elsewhere in the universe. They kill themselves, just as we're doing. Sorry if this isn't cheering you up but we have to face the true nature of our predicament, and that means absorbing uncomfortable facts. Humanity comes from a poisoned well.
ReplyDeleteThanks Keith I always enjoy your comments. I going to stick to my belief that there is intelligent life out there somewhere and they just shake their wobbly giant heads when they see what we earthlings are going to ourselves.
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