We Have the Answer

 

The Question

“If it happens that the human race doesn’t make it, then the fact that we were here once will not be altered, that once upon a time, we peopled this astonishingly blue planet, and wondered intelligently at everything about it and the other things who lived here with us on it, and that we celebrated the beauty of it in music and art, architecture, literature, and dance, and that there were times when we approached something godlike in our abilities and aspirations. We emerged out of the depthless mystery, and back into the mystery we returned, and in the end the mystery is all there is.”

James Howard Kunstler

          I ran across this quote this morning while looking for something entirely different and was stopped in my tracks by its prescience. I am absolutely astounded that humanity has achieved so much and so little at the same time. I think of all the wonderful art—Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Picasso, Van Gough—and all the brilliant literature of all the ages, the architecture and the medical breakthroughs and miraculous cures—all rendered by human beings. And at the same time, here we are trying to wind down a 20-year war, and watching the “enemy” massing on the borders, ready to step back in. In the same week, we have the gathering of the athletes of the Olympic games, citizens going to outer space in a custom-made rocket ship, and floods and fires and massive destruction because of what we’ve done to our planet. We are both the most brilliant and most destructive creatures who ever lived. As the quote above notes, we have “something godlike in our abilities and aspirations,” housed in the same container as our reptilian instincts. 

          I suppose the question is, “Which one will win?” Will our genius apply itself to survival or self-destruction? Will we see that genius in a future world, or will we return to the mystery from which we emerged? When half of our people refuse medicine that would save their lives and the lives of their children, I lose hope. But when I see the lovelies at the Olympics, and hear their take on the world, I have hope. When I think of the races of brilliant people who no longer exist—Incas, Aztecs—I know that extinction is possible. I just hope that we wake up in time to apply our genius to solving the problems that confront us. It’s all up to us, isn’t it?

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane