We Humans are Capable of Greatness
2560 BC – The Great Pyramid of Giza is completed
280 BC – Aristarchus of Samos presents the first known heliocentric model of the universe.
1040 Ad – Movable type system printing press invented by Bi Sheng
1687 AD – Newton discovers the Law of Universal Gravitation
1787 AD – United States Constitution adopted
1902 AD – The Wright Brothers fly one of the first heavier than air successful flights
1915 AD – Albert Einstein publishes the General Theory of Relativity
1957 AD – The first orbital satellite, Sputnik, is successfully launched
1969 AD – Man lands on the Moon
2001 AD – Human genome sequenced
In a mere 6000 years of human history, we have come far. Humanity has achieved many great things: engineering marvels, scientific breakthroughs, incredible feats of intellect, creativity, and simple persistence. What our species can accomplish truly has no bounds except the ones we place ourselves. Since the dawn of time, mankind has reached ever forward, pulling itself through the ages even as the world lay in turmoil. 5000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians pooled the most brilliant minds of the time to build the Pyramids. In ancient Athens, a community of 100000 people produced much of our modern basis for democracy, freedom, science, and philosophy. Coliseums, temples, great histories and works of art and reason – these were the progeny of our earliest days.
But the great achievements of our past were destroyed and, for a time, forgotten. Yet human progress is never truly forgotten. It lies dormant until the world rediscovers it in earnest, once again elevating humanity to new heights and inspiring to ever more spectacular feats of greatness. The words of Socrates and Aristotle still enlighten the world, Roman ruins still dot the landscape, having waited for the generations that will appreciate them once more. The achievements of our ancestors are so great that we sometimes take them for granted, forgetting to awe at the unimaginable wonders they left behind.
Yet no matter the past successes of our species, our greatest days lie ahead of us. Less than a hundred years took us from first flight to stepping foot on the moon - imagine what we can do in a hundred more? A thousand? Around the world, millions of people are devoted to furthering our understanding of the universe we live in, working to take the next ever-so-small step in the direction of human advancement, working towards the fulfillment of our potential. We have photographed distant stars, built soaring structures, and discovered DNA, the language of life, yet we can do so much more.
All that we have accomplished, we have done in the face of terrible danger. Separated by borders, culture, language, religion, race, hindered by lack of funds and time, threatened by imminent war and destruction, we have still made progress. If we could get to where we are now in spite of all the obstacles, divided by the petty distinctions between us, imagine what we could do now, together? If all our brilliance, all our creativity, all our dedication and our passion and our sheer willpower could work together to a common goal, what could stop us?
Nothing. The relentless march of time moves on, and we will move with it. We will continue to develop, to evolve, to adapt. Even as we fight amongst ourselves, spilling rivers of blood for supremacy over a small patch of land on a small blue dot in the vast expanse of reality, our species will grow. We will become, in a word, better – wise, experienced, and able. What is merely possible now will be done, and what is still impossible will be become possible. As a species, as a people, we will achieve the unachievable and accomplish things unimagined by those who came before.
Just as we look back now and wonder at how far we have come, so too will future generations do to us. They will marvel at the changes we have endured, the successes we have had, the failures we have overcome. They will honour and revere those who brought us forward. They will ask ’How could anyone ever have doubted what we would become?’ And they too, like us, will turn around and look forward, and wonder how they will live up to the examples of their ancestors. And they will remember that we humans can accomplish anything. They will remember, in the words of Carl Sagan, that ‘We humans are capable of greatness’. They will take the next small step forward, for all humans then and now. They will pass forward the torch of all humanity.
****************************************************************************************************** This post inspired by the below video. Even if you don’t read the post, please take 3 minutes to watch.
April 27th, 2011 at 9:49 AM
This video and its relations/cover versions never fail to give me goosebumps – your post makes a great accompaniment.
“It will be a species very much like us, but with more of our strengths, and fewer of our weaknesses. More confident, far seeing, capable and prudent.”
There is something so powerfully unifying to know that from our (and every) vantage in history, we seem to be at a pinnacle, but to realize that we will be surpassed in ways that we cannot yet imagine. To know that when future humans look back on Earth, and its history, we will appear as infants in the scope of history – as the peasants of the Dark Ages, or nobility of ancient Egypt might seem to us now – ignorant of what possibilities lay beyond the horizon of thought, blind from self-importance and narcissism for our current times.
In times we have every reason to perceive as dark, or hopelessly flawed, Sagan’s calm narration of a boundless future are hopeless in the way that Borges’ words are here:
- from his wonderful fictional essay, “The Library of Babel”
Thanks for sharing,
Mr. J