Part 1: A Malleable Earth

  2007-03-10


Over the large course of human history, we have generally thought of the world as being a fairly constant, eternal, immutable object, as a whole. And as we have journeyed through the centuries, I believe that has become something of a great misconception. Increasingly we have taken on the responsibilities of gods unto ourselves, terraforming vast swaths of land and seas to suit our fancies. By unlocking the power stored in hundreds of millions of years of the Earth's photosynthetic activity, and harnessing the very power of the sun itself, we have been able to create weapons and machines that surpass any of our ancestors wildest dreams or imaginations, save perhaps that of Jules Verne. As we have become "gods", we have grown powerful in technique and ability, defying even death itself in our power to heal. This has however not changed who we are fundamentally as a species, and so we use the weapons of terror against each other for idealogical or other needs as we always have, dismissing the fact the consequences have only been magnified. At one point, an emperor had the power to declare dominion over his people, but we now have power to declare dominion over creation itself. Perhaps at once point Rome could have leveled Carthage, destroying its every structure, but now we can make it uninhabitable by any man or beast for tens of thousands of years. And so we have. Oh yes, our power and appetite for destruction is unrivaled. Witness the devastation of the 20th century in which modernity brought the terror and horror of concepts like genocide, made possible by computers, or atomic weapons made possible advanced physics and engineering. And even now, we witness the change of a climate cycle which has been with us since the dawn of humanity. And storms now wrack our coasts and millions die from droughts. We build our tower of technology to the very heavens and defy God or Earth to intervene. How long will it take us to realize that we are not gods?