h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Everybody!

h2g2 seems like an excellent forum to discuss, "What's it going to take to get us, mankind, to grow-up?"

So let me take a go at it by starting with:

Take a box full of loaded pistols to a child care center. Spread the guns around the rooms among the children, even cock a few so they only need their triggers squeezed to fire, and watch the results!

Morbid you might say. Yes, I would be the first to agree; however, is mankind's present state of maturity, as a whole, much different? We've placed innumerable "loaded guns" amongst ourselves: nuclear, biological and chemical weapons are but one example. Religious, ethnic and cultural intolerance another example. Environment destruction yet still another.

For as long as a species our numbers were few, as in pre-industrial revolution times our insults to each other and to the earth were relatively inconsequential...and even less consequential before the advent of sedentary agriculture. However, that is no longer the case. Every hour there's more and more of us and less and less of everything else, except perhaps our effluent.

Yet during mankind's mechanistic-technological ascent, IMHO, I can not see any comparable moral or ethical maturation. Behind all the NATO's and the UNs, within all the nation states, permeating international, regional, and local business, right down to neighbor-to-neighbor, collectively we're still a bunch of "hairy apes" contesting every tree and leaf. Please! Yes, there are always bright spots of human compassion we oh so love to pat ourselves on the back about, but that's all they are, spots in a sea of anthropocentric spoil.

Recently I read where scientists on Long Island, New York State, USA are either close to or already producing "black holes". Hello!...folks we only need to produce one to gobble up the whole planet...poof! we're all gone.

Jeff Goldbaum so aptly put it in Jurassic Park (the movie), "We're so busy figuring out "how to" we never asked "should we". That speaks reems about mankind's maturity: collectively, we are so entranced with our abilities that we have not once come to grips with, stopped ourselves and asked just because we can figure out how to make something or do something, and sometimes even say something, we never take the time to figure out the consequences of our words, or our actions, or our constructions.

Don't get me wrong here, folks, I'm not a Luddite, quite the opposite actually. I'm an inventor and an investigator...and a bit of an instigator as well! It's just I keep seeing the potential consequences of much of what mankind is doing to the earth and ourselves as sheer folly...if subatomic physicists want to experiment with energies that potentially could create black holes, great; just do it out in one of the La Grange points where being sucked into their own toy won't suck in the rest of the planet along with them! If mankind just has to build hydrogen bombs, great; just don't build them anywhere near the Solar System where exploding such is bad for every thing's health. If "you" just have to manipulate virus and bacteria to make hyper-lethal organisms, great; just do it beyond the farthest edge of the Milky Way Galaxy, NIMBY!

We rationalize and say if not I then he will...so, therefore I must too. Such narcissistic illogic has filled our history books with social and environmental catastrophe ever since we started having history. And now we're capable of completely destroying ourselves along with every other kind of life (possibly excluding deep living microbes & cockroaches). Is that something to be proud of? Possibly, no wonder we can find no trace of intelligent life in the universe...everyone else is tip'e toe'n around very quietly since we climbed down out of the tree/up out of the cave/squeezed together out of mud, whatever.

As a species our prowess technologically has vastly exceeded our ability to accept the consequences of these "strengths". For example: NASA keeps killing astronauts on such a regular basis its own acronym has become known as, "Need Another Seven Astronauts"...geeez! With each shuttle loss it has been conclusively shown the root cause was the same thing: arrogance of consequences. That's not a isolated or aberrant behavior either. NASAs repeated failures is only representative of the greater failure of mankind to protect itself from itself...to grow up .

Recently there was a excellent newspaper comic series, "Pogo". In it the lead character, Pogo, sublimely stated the crux of the matter: "We have seen the enemy, and he is us."

So, having said all that I pose this question to everyone who chooses to reply: what's it gonna take for us to grow-up as a species. What's it going to take for mankind as a whole to provide the same loving, nurturing care as devoted parents we give our children – as loving wives/husbands we give our spouse? What's it going to take for mankind to take care of the Earth like we take care of our yards and gardens?

...and please, could we get beyond the "tragedy of the commons" here!

Consciously caring for all,
Grady Lavawolf & The Siskiyou Pack....ah'whooooooooo!

Hello and welcome to h2g2, Lavawolf!

If you have a look at your Message Centre on your Personal Space (about a third of the way down), you'll see Reefgirl has given you your official welcome to the site. If you need help and she's not online, however, you can give any of us ACEs (including me) a shout

I read your post with interest - it might work even better if you turned it into your first Guide entry rather than posting it here

Hi Lavawolf and welcome to h2g2!

If you want to get a discussion going, I warmly recommend posting this in a new conversation at the Forum: A1146917

Who knows - you might even find one of the current discussions interesting enough to join!