On my way into work this morning, while stopped at a red light in Cambridge, a long dump truck filled with dirt passed in front of me. I suddenly realized I was looking at a moving part of history. That earth was being removed from the city to allow for further expansion and development -- to be replaced by concrete, steel, and other man-made manufactured products that will eventually become just another area in the city of Boston.
As our civilization grows and changes we seem to feel the need to also change the earth on which we reside. The more we learn about and understand how things work, the more we want to change and shape them to fit our needs and desires. This fact seems to apply to even our bodies; the more we understand how they work the more chances we will take with making modifications and "repairs" to them. We pop pills because their side effects seem to fix, if only temporarily, some ailment we're currently suffering. Doctors use metal rods, drills, and screws to "repair" a badly broken, biologically alive, bone. Entire hips are replaced because the patient is told there is no other option. We have special chairs for our backs, special shoes for our feet, sun glasses to protect our eyes, sunscreen to protect our skin, vitamins to give us our daily nutrients, and the list goes on!
If humans have survived for as long as they have, at least 200,000 years, and they have survived that time period with nothing other than what nature provided, then what makes the humans of the past 100 years special enough to need all kinds of extra gadgets and technology to help them survive? In our quest to better our lives and cure common ailments, is the human race looking, and subsequently moving, in the wrong direction? Are we entering into a technological "dark-age" of mis-guided knowledge, advice, and teaching?
Speaking of history…
You ever look at an open field, or a wooded section and wonder about the people that walked or lived on that ground so long ago?
Or look at an old home, either in good or bad shape, and wonder who lived there and what they were like? Like my first house I bought, it was built 1940. I would often imagine whom lived there and how they spent their lives in that house. The old coal chute, shower in basement, the attic, the smell of the home cooked food, the lost keys and marbles I found in the ground by the backdoor… if only the walls could talk…
I wanted to leave a little something about my life in that house and hide it, but I never got around to it.
I do that all the time. It’s amazing how differently people lived only 100 years ago.
When I walk by a huge rock, I wonder how many other people have walked past that rock, looked at it, and touched it. Maybe a soldier in the American Revolution, or an Indian hunting a moose, or even a dinosaur millions of years ago! I wonder what I would see if the rock had some how kept a video recording of everything that walked past it.