The Impotence Of Mankind

Earlier this summer, a bredren and I were reasoning together and we got to looking at the night sky. The stars appeared bright and gleaming and then we started to talk about what it must have been like for thousands of years with these stars as the main means of navigation and the inspiration for mathematics, science, engineering and so many other things. A learned person could look up at the heavens and tell you their location, the season, and knew the patterns of constellations. However when we looked, outside of noticing the dippers and the North Star and maybe a planet, we were both completely ignorant to these things the ancients once regarded as the most basic facts. Even simple farmers and shepherds sitting around their fires would have known the night’s display. They may have not known exactly what stars were, but the twinkling canopy that covered all the earth was studied by all of the civilizations with wonder. When did we trade in this vast knowledge and curiosity... these tools and skills? GPS navigation is available to anyone who can afford it and we can find our location in an instant via satellite whether we are in the Amazon rainforest or the vast ocean. Besides, we can barely notice the stars now with so many artificial lights overpowering the night where we live. This is but one example of something that we’ve traded in for ease and convenience. Yet, have we jeopardized the very progress of humanity for the sake of having more amenities? Has mankind become impotent?

The whole world has gone soft... overexposed and mentally obese. Humanity has become distracted by nonsense and the comforts of life, and because of it we are confounded by the basic essentials that once brought us forward throughout thousands of years of history. Understandably, technology is something that improves and the older ways of doing things become archaic and needlessly complex, but now even our attitudes have changed. Instead of searching for truths and studying things for ourselves, we click our way through Wikipedia and trust it for our answers while we forget whatever we found and its significance within a few minutes. There should be no reason to "reinvent the wheel", but now we don’t even have to spend our time learning how. Our news media is more about opinions, gossip and sensationalism instead of informing people of real issues of society and situations across the globe. People know more about a celebrity’s sex life than relief efforts in Haiti or conflict in the Congo. We trust the internet to network us with friends and lovers and we are rarely shy to expose everything to them, but we can barely socialize in a normal environment. How come you can update me on what you’re eating for a snack but you can’t greet me in the street? Everybody can post some foolish video clip on YouTube, but cannot bother to do something remotely constructive or innovative. If all that energy and time went into something intelligent we just might be all better for it. We don’t know where our food comes from, but we sure know how to eat it all. We don’t know how things are made or what resources are used to create them, but we all use them. We can’t stop an oil spill but we laugh at the notion of God. In fact, we have even lost touch with ourselves to the point where we now watch reality shows to tell us what reality is. No matter if people say that it is only entertainment, if you watch it enough you will begin to judge things based on the norms you are most exposed to... which for some is MTV and so on. We allow ourselves to be herded around like cattle, barely aware of our existence and being overfed by corporations and systems that exploit our abilities and intelligence.

I am no purist by any means. I am part of a generation that clearly has more at their fingertips than any before us. I use the internet for learning, socializing and entertainment. I rely on digital maps. I use technology in all kinds of ways, my laptop, cell phone, iPod, my blog, etc. and it is all great. There is nothing wrong with having these benefits. Yet at the same time I know that I do not possess the ability to do many other things that are considered the bedrock of civilization. The less I know, the more dependent I become, the more unsure I become, the less innovative I become. I don’t expect us all to be expert navigators or botanists, but it seems as if our drive to learn and achieve as a whole is lost. As a teacher, I see this often in our younger generation, who dismiss the work it takes to become educated and productive as a waste of their time, time that they would rather use on frivolous things. Lacking common sense and responsibility is a much bigger problem than our growing inability to do things for ourselves because we can relearn how to do certain things. If we bothered to cultivate the earth and sustain ourselves, if we could build and repair more, if we read more and studied things for ourselves more, if we truly socialized more, wondered more, created more, and had more faith in the Creator, then we will probably continue marching on for thousands of years more. If not, our impotence may eventually lead to our demise. When we lose the spirit behind our humanity, we lose ourselves… There is an African proverb that says, "a child who is carried on the back won’t know how far the journey is". Let us each get up and walk the rest of this journey on our own two feet... before Segway machines replace our ability to even take a step.

Backward Never, Forward Ever,
JAHsh