Where we are

We think we are so smart. We think we can solve just about any problem by simply applying our brain power to it. We think the world is ours to modify, to rape, to pillage, to destroy, to conform to our will and wishes. We think the world is infinite, without end, deep beyond any depth we can dig. 

We are so wrong. 

We are smarter than some things and creatures, but do not appear to be smarter that the world as a whole. We evolved on this world, are a part of this world, but are in no way above this world. We are not a part of the moon or Mars. We cannot live on either without bringing a part of this world with us. We need to bring our air, our food (a product of the earth), and our water in order to survive for even a short time.

We are small. The earth is large to us but it is small when compared to even the solar system. We are a part of a pale blue dot. There are no borderlines when the earth is seen from space. There is no indication of our buildings, roads, or fields when earth is viewed from a million miles away. 

We lack imagination to guess what is possible beyond our own earth environments. Our expectations are continually dashed when we see the closeups of other members of the solar system. We were shocked at the craters of Mars. We were shocked to find volcanos on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. We were shocked at the varied surfaces of Pluto. 

We have been clever to create our modern world. But we are not smart enough to foresee or try to do anything about the consequences of our shinny creations until it may be too late. We are faced with losing our ice sheets, rising ocean levels flooding our costal cities, increased ferocity of killer storms, massive crop failures, and collapse of out fish stocks. We now hace a hard time seeing the sky through the human-created brown smog in several cities.

We are so primitive we still follow beliefs base on our need to explain things without the proper science. Most of us still follow without question what we are told is the truth as children. believing in our adult Santas, trusting our parental class who have no better ideas than us. Heaven forbid we figure out that, like Santa, it is all untrue. What is here is what we have.

We “progress” down our path too blind to see the our own greed and selfishness, hating that which we don’t understand, not bothering to try to understand. These traits might have been good when we were hunters and gathers, but now they threaten our very existence. We can blow ourselves away in an hour. We can bake ourselves off our planet in a few years. The haves can’t seem to understand that the have-nots are angry enough to fly airliners into our buildings and behead us. We are still fighting millennial-old wars that should be long ended.

Even now, there are serious efforts to put profit before what appears to be our last and best chance for an international agreements and plans to save us from ourselves. Greed and profits before saving anything seems very short-sighted for humanity.

A recent study found that our earth formed fairly early for habitable planets. It could well be that the reason we are not finding other (sic) intelligent life in the galaxy is that there is none yet. Or perhaps they have all gone from early radio to some sort of subspace communication and we simply are not smart enough to hear them. Or, maybe they have blown or burned themselves off their worlds. 

The results for our big brain experiment of evolution are not yet in. For being so smart, we appear to be so stupid. We refuse to see the dangers until we are brushing up against them. The “unintended consequences” of our stupid cleverness will end us all soon. 

We need a great ‘universal’ enlightenment. We need to drop the curtains and our imagined day dreams before our eyes and see who and what we are. We need to work at what we need to become in order to survive and prosper. 

But we are stupid and ignorant and unimaginative when it counts. And now we find ourselves on the beach of a pale blue dot.

To quote Mr. Vonnegut, “So it goes.”