Resiliency of Mankind

The great industries of this century house mechanisms requiring specific environmental conditions. Coal-fired plants, nuclear power stations, chemical production facilities all contain massive structures and computer-based. These industrial arteries keep industrial environments stable. Environmental conditions are precise, accurate to within degrees. Precision environments are essential; without specific conditions, the facility collapses or must be shutdown. As seen with 3-mile island, Chernobyl and other nuclear devices, if theses specific environments fluctuate, the process hits critical mass. A very specific environmental balance is necessary to maintain functions. These industrial units are on the macro-scale of human ingenuity. We built the largest machines possible. An upper limit of technology was hit. Ecologists call this carrying capacity when speaking of ecosystems.

A lower limit also exists within industry. Technological systems will only be able to reach a certain small size before micro-environmental fluctuations force critical mass within these tiny spaces. Look inside your computer, you will find great arrays of cooling fins and fans that keep your microprocessor from melting down. As we found with our macro-technology, micro-technology will reach a limit. No quantum computers will be found in our technological future. Micro-environmental stability is way too precise -- a precision never approachable. Then what? Will we feel let down?

These two limitations in the macro and micro will also keep us within our solar system. People have been promised a space age that will never come to pass. Our technology will never reach the levels that allow true extra-stellar travel. Simply put, we can't get there from here through technology. Was the space age promised to us? Will you be angry?

Like any ecological system, we have limits defined by our micro- and macro-environment's carrying capacity. Long before primitive primates scurried upon branches in the forests, plants swept across the land. Plants eventually gained the structural integrity necessary to grow into trees. The tallest, the towering gymnosperms, grew higher and higher. At first, successive generations beat out previous by leaps and bounds. The higher they became, the greater gravity tugged on their fluids. Eventually a maximum height was reached for these old rulers of a flowerless era. The maximum tree height remains today at well under 400 feet -- the Coastal Redwood. Don't be let down, technology has a maximum height, too. Then what?

Like the macro-industries of the twentieth century, animals also reached their giant-limit with the great reptiles, the dinosaurs. Scientists speculate why these giants disappeared: climate, interstellar collisions, competition, or all of the above. No one knows for sure. I place my bets on the answer implying that these grand reptiles simply got too large. Their immense size depended on stable temperature gradients: too cold, they became sluggish and inoperable; too hot, they hit critical mass. Slight changes in the environment and these huge beasts would not function. They hit a maximum size limit within a stable environment. As our macro-industries plateaued, we went to the microchip. Similarly, dinosaurs, after cool-down, went to the birds; albeit never minimizing much smaller than a hummingbird. They too have their limits.

After the reptiles, came the age of the mammals. Mammals were more resilient than dinosaurs. They contained internal and external stability mechanisms -- a complex circulatory system and warm fur. Like the smart-bombs of today's war technology, they had smart-physiology. The flowering trees, also having smart-physiology, followed their taller cousins. The new flowering physiology exploded, out-reproducing the gymnosperms. They slowly over took and shaded out their light-dependent predecessor's seedlings.

What does all this mean for the technology of mankind? If we follow the path of the gymnosperm giants or the reptilian dinosaurs, what will happen to our reign? What new form of resilience will develop and cope better than our technology? Mammals lived in the shadows during the reptilian era and blossomed when reptile's time had passed. What reproductive potential lies waiting to succeed our technology? It must live here and now in our shadows -- as patient as a young alder waiting for an ancient redwood to fall. Will it be spawn of mankind or of another species? I place my bets on Man. Our ability to modify or environment through technology made Man of a new phylum. The resiliency of man is far more developed than the gymnosperm, flower, reptile, bird, or mammal. We burst upon the scene as the mammals reached their macro-peak. Then we were the Micro living in the stomping ground of huge horned grazers, giant beaver, immense mastodon and many other unthinkable giant mammals. Most of those giants are now gone -- possibly by the primitive technology of our Paleolithic ancestors. Judging by the nature of today's anthropomorphic globalization, we are seeing the birth of the Age of Man. Now what? What happens after we maximize past the threshold of our global environment -- macro and micro? What new resiliency will burst onto Earth? It may be wisdom. With wisdom we will maintain our size and meet our limits. We will learn how to maintain balance. Neither macro nor micro, wisdom is our capacity. Will wisdom be our future?

-- Whether y2k is a 2 or a 10, our Resilience is why we will be okay!

-- hindsight is 20/20 (___@___.___), December 14, 1999

Answers

We're a stubborn but very recent genetic aberration with selfish and self destructive tendencies. Don't kid yourself that we're special. The squirrels will do much better when we've gone.

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), December 14, 1999.

Servant,

Hello. I think you're making the assumption that people WON'T change. They can, if there is enough motivation. If Y2K is a disaster, I think that will be motivation enough for people to re- examine their priorities.

Sure, some people will never change, but to generalize about ALL of the earth's population is not an accurate evaluation, that's called labeling. It might be expedient, but it's not correct.

God Bless and best wishes to you.

-- Deb M. (vmcclell@columbus.rr.com), December 14, 1999.

You omitted ONE very important fact(exception) which only the humna race posesses.

WE are the ONLY living beings ever to inhabit this planet that is smart(?) enough and technologically advanced enough to potentially destroy the entire planet, not yet directly(the power of an H-bomb, which can be constructed to ANY size without limit, hence gigatons, required to destroy the Earth by physically blowing it to pieces is on the order of thousands of gigatons--it would have to have far more power than, say the Ixtapa meteor that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs 63 million years ago, or Tambora, which blew apart all at once in 1815, creating an explosion that was heard thousands of miles away in London), but INDIRECTLY an H-bomb explosion of huge magnitude would render the entire surface of the Earth uninhabitable for generations, at least, and since we don't have the technology to live like moles for that long, it would finish us.

On the PLUS side, WE are also the only species capable of perhaps saving the Earth from an apocalyptic asteroid or meteor that is on a direct path for collision.

Simply put, our cerebral cortex "sprang up" too quickly to subsume our more basal brain structures. For a good read of this, try the book, written in about 1963, called" The Ghost In the Machine."

And, Yes, I did find out about it while wondering about a song by The Police.

-- profit of doom (doom@helltopay.ca), December 14, 1999.

Sure, humans are great, blah blah blah, but never underestimate the very human flaws of greed and pride.

Greed is what makes countries attack defenceless countries. (You got oil? We have guns. We take your oil. Any questions?) It is what motivates those people who are artificially inflating the stock market behind the scenes, as they see their shares gain in value over 25% per year when, in fact, the company is not even turning a profit.

Pride is what makes someone expose himself to someone's wife or daughter in a hotel room. Why? Not because it's gratifying in any physical kind of way, but because it gives him an exhilerating feeling of power over another person, ANY person. It is what makes someone bomb an aspirin factory in Sudan based on only the flimsiest of evidence without consulting Congress or even most of his military advisors. Why? Because he CAN, and because no one can stop him. Pride is what motivates a man whose greedy impulses are already fully satiated. It is not enough for the proud man to be rich, he must be revered or feared on a level that puts him above other men and on a par with the Almighty. Pride has a mean streak and is even more dangerous than greed. Why do they call pride the Deadliest of Sins? A man who has fallen from hubristic heights becomes a vengeful, hateful man, gaining sheer pleasure out of bringing suffering on others.

Our own evil threatens to do us in. This cannot be said for the dinosaurs who were just trying to stay fed and lie around in the sun...

-- coprolith (coprolith@fakemail.com), December 14, 1999.

I enjoyed this for the intellectual stimulation of it, but, sadly, it is one thing to assert the future well-being of the species and another thing altogether to survive personally. For any one member of the species, like you or me, this sort of thinking is merely entertainment of a high order, but no real comfort, except to the degree we value abstractions over sensations.

The Stoics tried to wring the last bit of value from this sort of thinking long ago, but IMHO they only succeeded in submerging their emotional lives to the point where they were less than fully human or fully intelligent.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), December 14, 1999.

And what do we think brought the world into the 'DARK AGES'.

-- Tommy Rogers (Been there@Just a Thought.com), December 14, 1999.