Observe And Learn: I, Cyborg. Part One (We Are What We’re Made Of?)
Courtesy of www.humanthermodynamics.com/evolution-table.html
Humans have travelled long and far to be where they are now. From measly protein with limited electrochemical perspective we have grown into a sentient, social organization of cultures that have built wonders, broken the atom, ventured into space, recorded their history, and looked in on ourselves as a species in search of who we are and what we’re doing here. It’s one heck of a journey.
And it’s not over. Lest we settle for who we are and where we are right now, trading our trek through the unknown with a seat in the technological cushion, which is another way of saying ‘I’ve had enough and am ready to kick back and turn into a fossil,’ we will continue pursuing our course, looking for new ways to perceive and understand the universe. Our future hinges on it.
Courtesy of www.dimensionsofhealing.com
To do so we need to invent new ways of observing the universe and reality in general. It will unlock dimensions previously unknown to us. To do so we need to discover new ways of thinking. We need to conceive imaginative ways of regarding the universe. Only thus will we develop the technology that will enable us to observe our surroundings in fresh ways. Whether that technology is biological or artificial remains to be seen – though all bets are on the latter, because it has proven to evolve much faster than the former.
Artificial technology is our latest weapon in the field of discovery. It’s what we have been developing and using over the past five hundred years to lift ourselves from the dark depth of the middle ages into the promise of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and beyond. It’s what has freed humanity from the pain of the constricted and labored, placing us on a platform that is potentially boundless, if only we start exercising our newfound knowledge with prudence.
Like it or not artificial technology is here and advancing rapidly. We can undo it no more than we can pretend fire doesn’t exist. Disposing of it is a fallacious belief that bears no merit, an idea nevertheless increasingly popular in numerous alternative fields. It’s an irrational and self-defeating ideal by all means, more the creed of secular puritans and New Age fanatics, who, like their overzealous, religiously-inclined cousins of more established organized dogmas, believe they can undo or repress certain knowledge because they have found its negative qualities to be detrimental to the divine order. In this case divine has been replaced with natural, and this newest of holy inquisitions is targeting technology, branding it as the source of all evil and the cause for the planet’s slow death.
Courtesy of www.therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com
History has shown that such repression never works, promoting the opposite effect, inducing a spurt of what it seeks to repress. If rooted in knowledge and fact, in logic and reason, an axiom cannot be obliterated. It will linger on until it finds the right time to sprout again, taking hold in the minds of men and women who are ready to exercise and use with caution and wisdom their newfound insight.
Technology is here to stay, and those who are fighting for the wellbeing of the planet better start looking for ways to preserve natural order and a sustainable environment within a paradigm that is technologically adept. Lest we take a detour into Mad Max territory, which will not be palatable for anyone, not even the staunchest nature purists. Remember, in a society of little or no organization at all the stronger person wins. It means a return to ‘meanest thug with baddest weapon prevails,’ with nothing to stand in their way. Those who think that this is how society is more or less working anyway right now ought to stand back for a moment and envision the safety afforded to them by the presence of electricity that keeps prisons inescapable. It would be wise to envision what would happen if the grid fell one day and the gates were jarred open. What would happen with millions of criminals out on the streets, running amok, and all alarm systems out of line, and the police overwhelmed, and all sense of control lifted from the system. That’s the kind of society we can expect to live in should we be rid of technology.
Yet technology is not panacea and will not make our lives better if we don’t use it wisely. We have to utilize it to its full extent to find out more about the earth’s dynamic and how everything on this planet is interconnected, how one motion here affects a parameter there, creating long and invisible chain reactions that reveal their effects long after we have stopped making the connection. Known as butterfly effects, these links represent pathways through the planet’s organism that we have yet to observe or understand. We have conceived these pathways, hence the major initiatives and movement toward geo-friendly policies. But we are still not quite there yet. We are still using technology for our entertainment rather than anything else, squandering our best tool in our quest for a better and safer life.
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