[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The match-cut from '2001: A Space Odyssey' spanning four million years: we're somewhere in between and wondering."]
Thursday, 8 December 2011
The non-option of going back in time
The recent, and ongoing, debates on the merits of nuclear power, and whether we need it at all of it's just a motivated laziness in looking for alternate sources of energy (ASEs), has prompted me to evaluate the necessity of technology in life as we know it. In fact, to take the discussion further, I want to know if life as we know it is just an epochal assessment or if life as we know it has become a template for future generations to base their functions on.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The match-cut from '2001: A Space Odyssey' spanning four million years: we're somewhere in between and wondering."]
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The match-cut from '2001: A Space Odyssey' spanning four million years: we're somewhere in between and wondering."]
The penetration of technology is indubitable and has, in many ways, become irredeemable. While many suggest that owing to the amount of environmental degradation the time has come for us to slow down, reevaluate our needs and, if possible, turn back from here to a time when life seemed more sustainable, I believe that in the 20th century, we definitely hit a point of no return. There's no turning back from here. That means we no longer do technology any justice by referring to it as something that has penetrated into our lives, we do it no justice by referring to it as a tool. We ARE what technology is. Even if it wasn't nuclear power that merited this reflection, it would've been something else. Life as we know it, more than anything else, is not sustainable. It never was; it probably never will be.
Probably.
If we rewinded to a time before the internet, before the computer and the transistors, before engines and hydraulics and electromagnetism, before astronomy, geology, meteorology, exploration and trade, before literature, production and communication, we arrive at a point where there was nothing behind us, a point of "zero history". It is when we move back to this point that we truly see where some of us aspire to return to. There was nothing before us to aid us in our future quests except the human body, the then-indecipherable forces of nature, and the human mind: a vast reserve of questions, extremely limited resources, and a helluva lot of time.
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When we started asking those questions, when we started to explore farther into the fog of war, we hit the future. Since then, we haven't turned back because there was nothing to go back to. Everything was an improvement, everything that contributed something to the human condition and alleviated the pains of not-knowing. Do you think it would be better for us if we moved toward a tribal way of life? No way. Sure, we could make love to the environment and not be afraid of nature turning against us in unimaginable ways, but at some point, our basic instincts will take over. They always have, and they always will, too.
The tribes that we observe living in forests and valleys today seem to present a solution to us because we've hit a wall with our energy resources and don't know where to go to from that point on. But without us, without the restrictions and the hindrances we pose to the sustenance of their livelihood, tribes would've become quite something else by now. Even they would've evolved technologically, and invented their own methods of acquiring more knowledge and using it to their benefit. They live in a controlled environment, fighting to remain what they've remained as for the past six millennia. If we all retrogressed to that stage, we'd have gone back a few thousand years back in time, but we'd begin again.
The reason we look to such "reduced" ways of life—reduced by the various techniques at our disposal today—is because we are panicking. We are finally realizing that we, as humans, are unsustainable, and we're ready to take desperate measures to assuage that thought. We are looking at what is not us and joining the dots to give absolute freedom and sustainability. However, in effect, we are bound to give ourselves only the curse of changelessness. All that we have done as humans, all that we have explored and reared and produced, will then lie as waste. Let me tell you, it is easy to join the dots, but that doesn't mean the image will then come to life. There is a lot that we're missing out, perhaps because we're taking them for granted.
Yes, our energy needs are growing. For six thousand years, we've been asking questions and answering them, and this is the point we've come to. I'm not advocating that in that pursuit, we lay to waste all that crosses our paths; no. I'm only saying the answer to our energy needs isn't regression, isn't the reevaluation of everything that came before us. If anything, the notion of future has made us understand that anything is possible, and if something doesn't seem to work out, then we haven't looked hard enough. Simply because our options are significantly unviable ASEs, nuclear energy, thermal power plants and regression doesn't mean we pick regression: we pick what will sustain us in the short-run so that it can power the ideas that will be necessary for the long-run. If we're working to prolong something that wasn't born with the universe, we will take a hit. Let's last it out, not back down. There's a difference.
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