So I woke up this sunny Sunday morning, logged in to the world wide web and I asked it for some happy news. Alas, what I saw was the same old story. Lunatic leaders oppressing their own people, environmental abuse, economic corruption. And worse.
I've been around the globe enough to know that it's not all bad. But if you're looking to hear something other than quacking, then listening to a duck over and over is what's know as the definition of insanity.
Which prompted me to log off the web and think in quiet peace for a few moments. I thought about political power, and our obsession with it. I thought about individual anxieties, from survival to meaning, that elusive purpose of our presence on this planet. So I grabbed my laptop and started typing away, like a journalist on a tight deadline. Please indulge me on a philosophical parenthesis here for a moment, I hope you'll find it thought-provoking.
Our basic instincts drive us more than we care to admit. I believe humans crave just a handful of things, a list not as extensive as we sometimes feel it is. We all crave love, wealth, direction and meaning. Unfortunately for reasons that still elude us, we fear pretty much everything else. Leaders promise to fulfill our cravings and protect us from our fears. Followers demand their share of wealth and deliverance from evil.
Generally speaking we have very little control over our basic instincts, unless we make it our mission in life to tame them. Whether we believe in evolution or not, I think we can all agree that there has to be a purpose for our basic instincts. We can observe that those who succeed in rising above our raw nature, beyond the average mortal, find a special place in this thing we call life. That promised land is where all humans dare to march toward, as they attempt to rise above their own basic instincts. A number of raw traits that may boil down to just a handful, but I believe there is a precise count that reflects our collective primitiveness: one hundred ninety-five.
One hundred ninety-five is the number of countries we have today. That's not a lot of countries when you consider there are around seven billion of us and counting. But for a species that barely inhabits ten percent of the surface of our planet, we have sure made quite a pomp and circumstance out of claiming every piece of land surface as if it actually belonged to someone. An unfortunate exercise, as our first space travelers tell us that from up there, our political borders don't show up or add up.
To be fair, some of our political boundaries are practical at best. Like the subdivisions of states and provinces within some countries. Private ownership of land, within reason, can be functionally productive. But study your history, read your news long enough and reality sets in: our national borders are what deeply divides us on this planet. Literally, figuratively, and unsustainably.
Call me crazy but as long as we don't go from one hundred ninety-five to one, through democratic and free will preferably, we better hope a large wandering rock does not fade it all to black for us (what Arthur C. Clarke called The Hammer of God). We better hope our own blazing star does not prematurely reach the climax of its own story, exploding into a red giant. Ending any opportunity we had to proudly plant the flag of actual intelligent life in our little corner of the universe. I mean that in the sense that it would be a pity to have had over three billion years, give or take a billion, and not be able to get it. Our lease can expire anytime after that, but our moral satisfaction would be a flare seen by other intelligent life across the universe.
It would be unfair to claim that most humans are not, in their own way and even in a very small measure, working towards the ultimate lofty goal for humanity. But going forward, can we try a little harder? That very small measure may just be what makes our collective existence in a mighty universe a failed attempt at intelligent life.
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"An International Space Oddity"
Our planet as seen through the eyes of the ISS. A 990,000 lb (450,000 kg) bird, with a wingspan of 354 ft.
(108 meters), traveling at 4.8 miles per second (7.7 km/s).
Main video courtesy of NASA
Edited and with soundtrack arrangement by Joe Yanes
Music by:
David Bowie
Richard Strauss
Ludwig van Beethoven
