It is now 2010 C.E. The age before us marvels the will as well as the mind, when one thinks of the technological wonders and human horrors that are potentially within our reach. Our technology-- and our relationship with it—can produce a future with divine possibilities or destructive consequences. The human race stands at a very interesting, yet trying point in its history. The evidence of an unsustainable population growth, coupled with social and economic issues that have never before been of such a magnitude, will either catapult humans into a new stream of consciousness concerning our relationship with the earth and with each other or, pessimistically, will kill us. On a centurial timescale the tipping point has been reached. How we navigate through the social, cultural, and scientific waters of our age will be the pivot point of humanity’s next greatest epoch.
There are visionaries we should be listening to—scientists, mathematicians, economists, ecologists, teachers, professors, theorists, theologians, philosophers, and writers. These visionaries are of our present age and of ages past, for the act of envisioning is to see an aspect of life more clearly than others. It’s this power, this imagination coupled with cognition, that can transform a society’s world view and alter the course of human behavior.
It’s easy to speak in generalities such as these. To say outright that the world has issues does nothing to solve them. This blog will focus on those writers and thinkers who have a unique outlook on the human condition. That’s everyone who has ever written, you may be thinking. True, but even ancient writers were writing for ancient audiences, who suffered through their own problems and produced various forms of culture to understand the world and their time as it pertained to them. How does that help us today? How do those texts speak to us in 2010?
Prometheus was a god in the Greek mythology who stole the fire from Hephaestus’ forge and gave it to us mortals. Fire—or more specifically the act of creating it—was top technology in the time of the Olympians. Punished for eternity by being chained to a high rock, Prometheus was fettered for having taken knowledge of the universe that changed human history. We’re duplicating this scenario now. Humans have successfully melded man and machine into bionic symbiotes. Gene splicing and genetic engineering pave the way for a wholly novel way of treating previously fatal disease. The Internet and the gadgets that access it are becoming faster and more functional, allowing us to share data with each other at unprecedented levels. We are harnessing the powers of nature itself—science is our fire.
But Prometheus suffered for it. Well, in a sense so are we. Let’s imagine that Prometheus conferred with Zeus and made a diplomatic arrangement. Instead of stealing the powers of the universe, Prometheus taught mortals the consequences of such power before it was exploited. Such a parable seems laughable until one considers the capacity humans have for learning. It is this capacity that I will explore on this blog. How do we implement the technology we’ve obtained in a manner that is productive and not destructive? Lastly, we need to continually apply the lessons given by writers and thinkers of the past to our issues, to our needs. Our future will be bright only as long as we confer and begin a discourse with the past. Prometheus must be recast and repurposed. The use of technology should not result in punishment, but rather, should result in a clear recognition of our role as a leading species among many on this planet.
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