Two Worlds Apart

I am caught between two worlds, one is the future world of technology, and all the wonder it creates, and the second is the natural world and the wonder that it is.  I know that these two worlds are not exclusive of each other, but they are not inclusive of each other either.

While I marvel at the simple beauty of the natural world, and wonder where the magic is, I can not help myself thinking that it is the old world, and the new world is not a natural world.  The new world is a world of things, man made things, and to some degree this includes food.  Why is it so wrong to think that we can create our own food from elements and not have any connection to the source material.  What is the truth behind genetic engineering of nutritive materials.

There seems to be this transition between the new and old world right now, like we are on the edge of going over to a new age, an age of the future, where even our food is replicated, not made from the natural world, but from synthesized copies of the natural articles.  While on one hand this is not something I would want for myself, on the other hand, I am getting older and will all too soon be gone from this world, and my grandchildren will have to make that decision, so I wonder will it make any difference.

I hear the cries of the people of my generation, how the large corporations are poisoning us, destroying our world, but are they?  Are they really destroying our world, or remaking it, in a different form, maybe not better, maybe it is different, and we all know different is scary.

Human evolution is a slow progression, and yet we are near a point where we may be able to see the next version of the human species.  While the humans that are dependent on food and water still exist, perhaps the next version will thrive on something else, something created in a lab, that will sustain us without the need for the natural world.  There will be pain in this transformation, but who is to say it will not be better, certainly not I.

I cling to the old world, and marvel at the potential of the new world.  I wonder about the potential of the new world, a one world government, a single world order, where there is no political boundaries.  I think about this “Brave New World” and know that I am not part of it, I am a part of the old world, barely able to grasp the concepts of the new world, only to see it from the fringes.  The new children, the children of our grandchildren, they may know no other world, they may know the new world as it is, and our world will be as distant as the ancient world is to us.

They will marvel at our accomplishments, and wonder how it is that we ever were able to accomplish all that we did, with wars, and without the technological advances that to us seem distant, but to them will seem commonplace.

Maybe you can not imagine a new world, maybe it is too horrible for you to contemplate.  For me it is a wonder, as much as the natural world is today.  While it is easy to think about flying cars, and the stuff of your wildest dreams, what would seem difficult to imagine is the things that seem so common to human beings, things like food, water, air, and shelter.

Of course for this new world to fully exist, it must by definition destroy the old world,  There must be a period where there is no world, where we exist but as small population of beings that are different from our ancestors, unlike them, but sharing some common traits, just enough that we could recognize them, but not so much that we would know who they are.  We may be slowly coming to that point, to the place where even creating new humans is not done the “natural” way.  Where we do not choose our children, but that they are made, created in a place that specializes in the creation of humans.  I have thought about this, for many years, even when I was just a young boy I thought of such things.  Beyond the idea of creation, there is the idea of creation of ourselves in the image of ourselves, only different, maybe better, maybe not, it is too hard to know that right now.  All I know is that if we are on the verge of the “New World” there is not too much we can really do about it.  We can continue to cling to the bronze age mythological world, where we wonder how does the rain or wind or fire work, or we can move on from that to a new world where we wonder not of natural things, but of marvels of our own creation.

We are after all the gods we created, we are the makers of our myths, and so too we can be the makers of our realities, even if we do not recognize the results, maybe they will recognize in us the value of our works, and thereby know that we created them, or at least the foundation from which they are now standing.  Maybe they will see us as barbaric, savages, and such, sacrificing cattle for our base desires, while they are perfectly satisfied to exist on chemicals and nutrients created in the labs.  It is hard to predict what will be a thousand years from now, or even twenty, though we have a better idea of that than we do of true long term.  While our world is dying, maybe with help from our actions and decisions, what comes of it may be a better world, or maybe it will just be nothing, and maybe we will cease to exist at all, the next thing might not be human at all, but that remains to be seen.

Still I cling to this world as we know it, or more so, as it was once known.  I thrive on the farming life, simple, natural, and without the clutter of technology.  I know that I am not the new world, but I do not concern myself with that.  I love my world as it is, mostly, though it is true that I feel threatened by the coming of the new age sometimes, I also know it does not matter, it is coming, with or without me.  I know that the long winter between will not be pleasant for those that break on through to the other side.  It will be a long dark period of nothing, before we get through the harsh realities of leaving the old world and entering the new world, but when we do, I believe just as we have very little connection to the ancient world, they will have very little connection to us, except as stories that they will likely misinterpret as easily as we do the ancients today.  Though I am old world, I can see the value of either world, and the wonder of both, and I wonder, will I live long enough to glimpse the edge of the new world?  Unlikely, but even if I do not, maybe I can think about it, and know that someday, someone will maybe find that I thought about their world, and though I had nothing to do with it, at least I had the imagination and bravery to think, what will it be like, even if it does mean the end to my world.