Eggs Laid by Tigers

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

 

Hope for the future


I spent some time last evening with an old  friend, contemplating the multiple horrors of the 20th Century: millions killed in preventable wars, famines, and disease.  The prospect for the 21st Century did not appear much better, to us.  Drones dropping bombs at random times and places strikes me with a special horror.

 After a while, I remembered reading an article in Science News about how bees and ants make phenomenally good decisions about where to relocate a hive or nest.  Biologists have been studying how those insects are able to make such  good decisions, and an illustration accompanying the article suggests that we, too, sometimes make phenomenally good decisions, as in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Bees and ants have billions of years of experience in selecting nests and hives.  That's plenty of time for evolution t wipe out bad decision--making.  We are  mere infants, by comparison.

But I wonder if,  considering humanity as a whole, we might conclude that our capacity for destruction, which now threatens the species with destruction,  might be ready for a big increase in our capacity to make good decisions.  I know this much:  you young'uns don't think about the world in the same way that those more than 65 think about it.  That gives me nome hope for  our future.



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