Consider this. Our galaxy alone contains billions of stars; while the universe at large contains billions of galaxies. When we look up at the night sky and we see the glimmer of some far away star, that light will have travelled hundreds of millions of light years, spanning eons of earth time, before it arrives to our eyes.
These are pretty inconceivable concepts if one stops for just a moment and considers them.
Considering the magnitude of these dynamics and the forces at play, it sheds another perspective on our own lives.
Why would we be engaged in wars, power struggles, hatred, discrimination and other ills – when the magnitude of the potentials for new horizons are unlimited?
It may seem as if the cosmos is beyond our reach, but I suggest that is not the case and that if we were to focus our attention on developing the technology as fast as we have accelerated the world of electronics in the past decade or two, we could pass over amazing new thresholds.
Look back in your own lifetime – twenty years ago there were no mobile phones, no GPS, virtually no laptops, and many other electronic devices which are now normality in our lives. That is just one avenue of rapid development in human endeavour.
Clearly, when mankind puts its attention on positive goals – it can and does accomplish them.
The pitiful engagements, the wars, the killing, the power-struggles, are engaged upon by those who cannot envision such a future in the stars – but who, rather prefer to keep everyone’s noses and attention fixed on activities which suit some other end.
Whether one believes in the theory of the “Big Bang” – the scientific assumption that the universe was conceived in one spontaneous coalition of forces, or whether you believe that it was created by the hand of some God, does not the change the fact that the scope of the game is so very much larger than the issues which we find ourselves engaged in.
Carl Sagan, in his book Contact, shows us what would quite likely happen on Earth were we to make irrefutable contact with an off-world intelligence. Wars would stop, conflicts would end, and pretty much everyone would be focused on discovering the truth.
Call it “greener pastures” or just the pioneering spirit inside all of us, but when a man finds out that there is a continent across the ocean, with unlimited space and resources, where he and his family can start a new life in spite of the dangers of such a crossing – the small plot of land upon which he lives, haggles and fights for means virtually nothing. Values change in the face of new horizons.
I venture to say that considering the billions upon billions of worlds out there, isn’t it possible that we might encounter other species of like kind or intelligence? If you believe in Darwinian theory of evolution, then surely the spontaneous and sudden spark of life which apparently resulted in mankind could happen elsewhere? Or if you believe that a supreme being is behind the entire show, then surely such a great god would not stop at creating life on such a small planet as Earth, but would grace other worlds with animation and life? There are many theories, but even the most passionate disbelievers cannot deny the fact that purely by numbers alone, the odds of such is not inconceivable.
But that aside, what the sky above us represents is POTENTIAL.
George Orwell, in his book 1984, suggested that civilization is cyclic, and that power struggles between the Worker Class, the Middle Class and the small, but ultimately powerful Wealthy Class, have always been with us and will always continue to be so, in one form or another. There is truth in what he says, and arguably, history seems to support this – except, there is one wrench in the works – the human soul. Our potential and our expectancy of such potential, is immeasurable.
Fifty years ago, no one really knew, or possibly believed, that we would land men on the moon – but we did. The technology that we have today, in our hands, was the subject matter of science-fiction writers back in the 1940’s and 50’s. In less than have a century, we have changed our world significantly.
Where we fall behind is in the humanities and in our own self-expectancy. But even there, we are making ground.
Historical precedence is only a lesson in experience gained. Whereas the future requires visionary courage, faith, the willingness to step outside the box and true leadership skills.
The game of life, where it succeeds and endures, would seem at least, to follow certain natural laws, or harmonics, already set into the very nature and structure of the universe around us.
There is a natural polarity which exists at every level of the world in which we exist. Atoms stay together because of the push-pull, the balances and counter-balances of positive and negative forces within. Our planet is held in orbit by the medium in which it floats; which as Einstein and other scientists correctly pointed out, is not empty space, but in fact, an energy flux, which helps to bind it in connection with other forces and bodies around it. Such is the same with our solar system, our galaxy, and the billions of others which are looped and latched, and spin in a universal harmony.
The evolution of our culture, from mere survival to a higher order of lifestyle, activity and luxury, is a natural evolution too. People have a natural tendency to form bonds and dynamic forces between them – such as the most successful group in history – the family unit. Increased knowledge brings about increased potential and there is no stopping that exponential curve.
Culturally speaking, the platform for our societies must, per force, also follow a natural progression and not one which is brought upon it by past “isms” such as communism, socialism and dictatorship-ism. As people become more educated, more knowledgeable, as they gain more time and freedom to tap into their innate potentials, the world will continue to spin upwards into whole new realms. At the same time, political and ideological platforms must too advance. We cannot continue to operate on ideology laid down generations before which exploited people, capitalized on ignorance, or promised freedoms which it could never deliver. True democracy is anchored in the free will and capitalism of each individual – not collective mentality or governance.
Our very platform, politically and ideologically speaking, must transform and morph with the growing zeitgeist of mankind. As our general humanity grows, as transparency in the world becomes greater, as permeation of knowledge and learning becomes more broadly disseminated, so must our governance. By whatever name it goes by, it cannot be precisely the same concepts as before. Democracy works because people make it work – and as those people achieve higher intelligence, better health and lifestyle – the form of democracy which it chooses must too morph. Nothing is static in this world.
The world needs leaders, at all levels, who envision a greater future for all people. It needs those who inspire, who remind us and our children that we can be everything we ever wanted to be – and that the universe is big enough for all of us to accomplish our dreams.
We have the opportunity to reach for the stars now, to step over new thresholds which will vault us, as humanity, into games which are incomparable in size.
Pragmatically speaking, if you want to get rid of wars and hatred, killing and discrimination, change the scope of the game. Like two kids fighting over a ball, just drop a hundred balls around them – new game, no more fighting.
The game of life does not end here on this one tiny planet. It is even arguably possible that it never even started here – but that is a moot point and is not the crux of this article. But it certainly suggests that if we are to find out the truth about ourselves, that we must step up to the game plate and throw the next ball.
As a people, we cannot permit ourselves to slide back into the mud again, when we could be sailing to new frontiers in the stars.
The Unquantifiable 