(originally published in the Ukiah
Daily Journal May 24, 2015)
Despite my retirement from teaching
last June, I’ve continually realized how much is still to be learned – and taught
in life. One of my favorite activities is what I call “mind meandering” here on
this small earthen ball spinning in airless, chunky soup which we call space.
Ahhh, here we go a-meandering…
Space, the last frontier – a nod to
my fellow Star Trek fans – is a huge something to ponder with our little minds.
All of those existential questions usually come to the surface: How did we get
here? Where is here? Why am I here? Etc, etc…
Believe me, I have no answers, just
theories – which is all anyone could really have, since we’ve not been able to view
our universe from another vista point or read a book written by a space
traveler (sorry, Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers
Guide to the Galaxy doesn’t count as
a reference book on this subject).
Although noteworthy earth and sky students
Copernicus and Galileo studied and questioned our universe five hundred years
ago, it has taken many more scientists and their proven theories since then to
bring us to our modern understanding. The caveat is that a few more hundred
years from now, humans will look back and again realize how much is yet to
learn.
As I substituted for a middle
school class teacher last week, I was impressed by the passion of a young student
in the class, Jade. Hopefully, we all were made aware of how much we humans
must continually learn during the lesson. We watched a video on Galileo, a
practicing Catholic and amazing stargazer who chose to believe the facts of his
heavenly studies which clashed with Church doctrine at the time, unfortunately transforming
the Church into his nemesis.
Galileo claimed, “I do not feel
obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason,
and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” A good philosophy even
today.
Since humans have only been on this
planet for a relatively short time, neither the medieval nor modern age has
dealt with cataclysmic changes. It seems our planet has spun for millions of
years between those earth-changing events. Yet, from many pulpits as well as
scientific platforms, various authorities pontificate on the possible modes of
destruction for which we are bound as a planet. But when? Some may say next
month; others may predict major earth disasters a few millennia from now. Who
knows?!
The big questions we’re asking
today is HOW will we do ourselves in – will it be Fire or Ice that makes life
on earth impossible? (poet Robert Frost has a comment on that.) And, what can
we do to keep it from ending badly? Hmmmm.
Multiple storytellers have too many
possible scenarios to count. And, scientists cannot come to a consensus on this
point, either. It is one of the big mysteries - - and I hope we’re wasting our
time and imagination, to be honest.
Post-apocalyptic movies have been
around since the 1930’s, starting with Deluge
and Things to Come – what? Never seen
them?! Maybe you’d like more recent films like Mad Max – Fury Road (2015) where you’ll hear, “My name is Max. My
world is reduced to a single instinct: Survive.” OK.
Or there’s a more plausible television
series, Revolution, where a universal
power blackout makes surviving too difficult for most who are dependent on
electricity and internet; despite being violent and back-to-basics, it imagines
that some of us would be on a “journey of hope” and a rebirth of sorts. Check
it out on Netflix – only two seasons, 2013 and 2014.
I would like to think that we can
continue to adapt and create ways to manage what’s happening to us and our home
planet. It’s what we’ve been doing as a species since we came into existence.
In recent history, modern humans
moved from problem areas like the Dust Bowl after long droughts or rebuilt
populations and cities after Black Deaths and World Wars.
Some interesting studies mentioned
in a Time.com article explore the idea that many of our human physical changes are
due to not only genetics, but also to our cultures. The National Academy of
Sciences posed that cultural factors tend to have much more prominent impact
than natural selection in the shaping of future generations. So, everything
from what we eat for lunch and the number of our offspring could affect the
future of our species - as well as a lack of rainfall and ozone changes!
Should we make changes in our
behaviors to do less damage to the future of young Jade and her descendants? Of
course, but will that be enough? And, if it’s not, can we load up and move to a
healthier planet somewhere in the heavens? Maybe. Who’s to say that will not be
possible in another millennium?! Look at all the changes in us and our home since
modern homo sapiens evolved about 100,000 years ago.
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