I am generally able to avoid fits of depression– when I am taken by a mood it is usually more a mania than a melancholy. Still it can be very, very hard to remain blissfully optimistic and truth to be told it is likely quite unhealthy. I have noted before that it is important to take a view from a different perspective from time to time as a sort of reality check (this from a writer who purports to have lived more than 3 millennia- irony knows no bounds).

That in mind I have to wonder if mankind’s slow, steady climb up from ignorance, brutality and despair is merely an exercise in finding a sufficiently lofty perch from which to leap to its collective doom. Empires and shining examples of civilization have risen and fallen throughout recorded history, but in most cases each iteration left something of itself behind for those who remained to build upon, so while the chart of human progress is marked with peaks and valleys the general trend has always been positive. Even the Nazis contributed as the warning case: “don’t let this happen to you”. What makes me wonder, the thing that sometimes fills my heart with a cold, white void, is the knowledge that humanity cannot endure too many more collapses without the aforementioned trend beginning to reverse.

Humanity presently occupies a very precarious perch: with a world population of some 6+ billions the margins for error are becoming extraordinarily thin. It is not so much a matter of resources for the west has demonstrated repeatedly that technology and determination offer hope in the face of even the most stridently catastrophic prophecies, rather it is a question of what cultural direction will mankind follow? Will it have the courage and the energy to stare down the challenges it faces over the coming centuries? This is a perpetual question as there is no absolute or irreducible answer- it is measured instead in terms of desire, hope, aspiration and daring. Sometimes I fear that humanity may be found wanting.

When the United States made her landing upon the surface of the moon there were many who saw this as the first step in a logical process that would lead to further, greater exploration and exploitation of outer space. Those with a more pragmatic viewpoint recognized that the moon landings were little more than a political victory. Yes, good science flowed from the Apollo program, but the ultimate purpose was simply to show up America’s ideological foes. Nonetheless, the west was poised upon the brink of great achievement, advancement far in excess of what the world has seen between 1969 and today. I was living in the desert in the southwest, one of a collective of would-be artists and deep thinkers seeking Truth through simple living, carnal excess and chemical enhancement of perceptions. Even those people seemed to understand what could be, and also to realize that it would never be, not with the way the world worked then. America lacked the will, or perhaps the foresight, to take the next step, and the world suffers as a result.

Since then I have yet to shake my firm belief that if humanity fails and remains trapped upon this small and ultimately doomed sphere future historians of the declining ages will point to the twentieth century and say “This is where Man went wrong. This is where He took the wrong path. This where We sealed Our own doom.”

I remain an optimist, but on those nights when my mind wanders in to dark, cold corners I can only hope that time proves me wrong.

Posted on February 14th, 2003 by Zsallia
Filed under: Philosophy