Intelligence and Reason

...do Not matter to nature and Creation...It is not reason and common sense that decide what happens in the world. Rather, something wholly separate and more powerful-emotion perhaps, or ego, or fate, or physics, or all of the above-have humanity and the planet on an unstoppable path that is and will consume us regardless of what we do. That is not pessimism, rather a recognition that the tide of human and natural history is swept along by forces both in and out of our control, and we are part of the latter rather than the other way around. We see small decisions on Wall street escalate around the world, and small protests grow to topple countries, then earthquakes and storms decimate cities, and through them all the rest of the population reacts and re-reacts as it faces problems of scale that have never challenged us before. I do not witness sufficient political or economic wisdom to avert crisis in either governments, businesses, or individuals, nor the will, and am not convinced that foresight would prevent unknowns from overwhelming us anyway. Rather, I expect that circumstances such as population growth and resource depletion and the inability to control nature and human nature will reach a tipping point, after which whoever survives will, as Jackson Browne so eloquently stated, "...believe that they were meant to live, after the deluge". It is perhaps human nature to procrastinate and disagree, but some problems are too huge to ignore or prevent, and I suspect that humanity does not have more than a century left to decide-if indeed there is anything we can do. Either way, Creation will survive whether we do or not.