Only a Blip
by Odin odin@aflx.com — Read all 3,869 poems by Odin odin@aflx.com
Stephen Hawking has a long list of warnings about threats to humanity.
Credit: Flickr/NASA HQ PHOTO.
“Humanity should focus its efforts on exploring other worlds that we might inhabit, and to get there, Earthlings may need to ride on a beam of light,” famed physicist Stephen Hawking says.
Hawking made his remarks today (June 20) at Starmus, an arts and science festival in Norway whose advisory board he sits on. In his speech, he reiterated his belief that humans need to explore space to avoid the dangers of our own finite world. And then he described how humans could one day travel on a beam of light, harnessing the power of Einstein's theory of relativity to reach mind-bogglingly distant planets.
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Only a Blip...
by Odin Roark
How elusive,
this hide and seek cosmos,
allowing us to remain
but a blip,
tenuously safe
on Time's infinite screen.
Existence forever changing
lures man's eyes and ears
toward layers of nothingness,
whose density
remains temptingly
the everything of epiphany's lair.
To be there with distant stars,
we exercise our prerogative.
We dream another learned entitlement
continuing to play out assumed superiority.
Yet…
For some thinkers,
perceived freedom,
with its implied randomness
remains an unrealistic concept,
logic dictating correct thought and action,
conclusively deterministic.
For dialectics can develop conclusions
arising from given sets of postulates or premises,
but,
resignedly,
that is all it can do,
incapable of generating premises itself,
resulting experience remaining sterile,
capable only to expand.
not to grow.
Such is the state being void of creative ability
Still…
Our spec-identity on infinity's screen
deludes itself with a Pac-Man sense of conquest,
consuming all it can,
Unaware its insatiability.
This paradox of creativity and devouring
will inevitably reduce our sentient existence
to an even smaller blip,
eventuating cosmic dust
swirling within reason's captivity,
perhaps paving the only way
to be with the distant stars.
My reason for the exercise was twofold: first, to make these promising business leaders socially responsible for their profit-making activities. The fact that the ozone layer is no longer in danger because of changing the way business is done is a good example of how we shape the future. The second lesson was that we would need to entrepreneur our way off the planet into outer space as soon as possible to avoid astronomical disasters. It is finally happening with Space X and Virgin Aerospace, among others.
In spite of Hawking's fear of extraterrestrials, I still believe that superior intelligence tends toward good rather than evil. Like you wrote, logic deterministically leads to correct thought and action.
Ron
perceived freedom,
with its implied randomness
remains an unrealistic concept,
logic dictating correct thought and action,
conclusively deterministic." Ah, logic!
Love ya!
Jane