The Human Condition

The Human Condition.

It has long been the dream – and oftentimes still is – that one would be able to fly From the Greek poets and Icarus to Leonardo da Vinci and his helicopters and fixed wing flight: we have dreamed of soaring like birds – of leaping from rooftops and tops of cliffs to feel the wind in our hair as does Superman, Batman or Storm, of feeling the wind between our knees and that realisation that we are indeed free.

That’s not the only thing we have dreamed of – of being able to breathe underwater, of being able to see through walls, of telepathy and teleportation. As humans we dream of many strange and wondrous things, everyone has the same dream and everyone’s dream is different – we dream of what we see in nature; we dream of what we see portrayed in movies, books or stories told to us by others; we dream of the one to have fun with and the one to grow old with – we dream of the perfect job, the beautiful house and that car.

But there is a problem. We are human, we continue to dream, but we never get to that perfect place, even if we do get what we believe we want. Take for example that pipe dream to fly – we have, after a fashion, achieved that dream – we mastered flight – or, at least, we built something that allowed us to fly. But what if we did gain the ability to fly? What if we all grew wings overnight? Well, for a start, the fashion designers would have a field day – so would the biologists – but the real question is what we as a race would do.

Sure, I think some fun would be had – some new laws written, some mid-air collisions and mid-air other things, but in 50 years when things have settled down, what would we do?

I think that we, as a race, would become accustomed, then bored, and then we would come back full circle; we would return to our current state – we would let our wings sit, we would cease to use them, and they would become a bore. You would start to see people forming flying clubs – you could go out for a morning fly with a small group of friends, and those who didn’t wish to fly at full pace could perhaps join hover groups and become the joggers of the skyways.

And herein lies the problem – we are seldom sited as humans. We always want that next thing, we always want something more. If we could breathe underwater, we would get bored of that, too. The same applies for telepathy – would we really want to hear everyone else’s thoughts?  Rather, would we want our own thoughts to be heard? And wouldn’t seeing through walls get kind of old – especially if others could see us getting changed, and while personally I think teleportation have a more lasting appeal, I’m sure that even it, given time, would get old – and though there would be fewer kidnappings, taxis and bus drivers would be out of business.

So, what do we do about this? At a time when technology is over-running us and people are doing less yet achieving more, when our science fiction is only valid for a year or two at most because the fiction has become fact, what yet remains?. Take Minority report or Star Trek (the original series); what separates us from them? Minority report? Nothing – all the tech exists in different forms – Star Trek? Warp drive and transporters… and we are working on transporters…

What, then, do we do? Do we continue to dream? What dreams may come? What do we do when the dreaming’s done? What do we dream when the dark days come? But I suppose that the real question of all this is, what is the point? What are we really looking for? What drives us?

There have been several attempts in the past to solve this problem – after a fashion, it has been tried by many individuals, governments, and religious organisations. Hitler tired it with the thousand year Rich; Mao tried it with communism; Julius Ceaser tried it with the Roman Empire; and arguably many of the popes have tried it. But what have You done about it? What have you done to help man be fulfilled and realise potential? Perhaps a better question is, are you complete? Do you still have dreams? Are they being realised? Will you have the same dreams in five years’ time or will they have been dealt to.  In short, what are your dreams worth? Are they bettering you as a person or are they just temporary things that once realised will, like wings, get boring and old. What is your Ultimate purpose? What is it that makes your life worth living?