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FOSSIL FOOL
Sunday Mar. 26, 2017
Fossils survive millions of years – mountains, plains and glaciers witnessed billions. Humans now hope for 120-130 at the outside statistical best. Seeing more and more people pass 100, or make it to 105 is encouraging but lacks ambition. Why not 200? Or 300?
I’m a young fossil, still wriggling and ready to be pressed into a riverbed and pressed into the earth by an ice age or two …
Food in new forms, new-era diagnostics, genetic engineering of foods and humans – no less unrealistic than living to 120, but then what quality of life should we expect?
Our planet’s capacity to support future population of 15 billion, double today, might appear doubtful I have faith and confidence scientific ingenuity and survival instincts combining will harness new forms of energy – making this rock safer, simpler and healthier to live on.
When everyone wears diagnostic chips in forearms powering that super computer wristband – when all knowledge is available to every human, doled out in age-appropriate versions via that chip starting in toddler-days, what yet-unimagined opportunities await?
I’m hopeful our artificial intelligence will not diminish ours – but rather empower new adventures and creativity … not leaving smart healthy people in idle luxury without purpose. What makes us resilient as thinking feeling humans is stress, tension, conflict and all of Maslow’s needs hierarchy – we need to be challenged. To be shaken up. Stirred to action. Sometimes that comes from looking forward – but more accessible to us all is recollection of moments, events and people who stirred our emotions and triggered our actions. We need more of those. We need to remember those. Without them, how can we imagine the future? Do we imagine it with fear, with trepidation – or with joy, with anticipation – we are explorers. Not long ago we left the great rift valley of Africa, not long ago we explored our world – then space, and next we need to explore within us. Not just microscopic science, but understanding how our minds work – let’s harness that.
Shake things less, stir them more …
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