Where We Were

Where were we? Oh yes, cruising through a sub-terrain of social systems that rocked our version of comfortable truths and launched us into a global crisis with a distinctly unnerving ring about it. A year ago the Apocalypse was on the move but we didn't see it coming, this circuit of deceit, even though alarm bells were resounding in our heads - the heads we knew we'd need to keep while all around were losing theirs. Now people in their billions are losing livelihoods and families, unable to quell the surge of power that floors everything in its path leaving tsunamis of destruction in its wake.
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Fermi's Paradox suggests that most civilisations do this - fall down a precipice of self-destruct before they can possibly realise their potential. So here we sit in the Goldilocks Zone, forgiven for thinking we might be alone in this Universe when there's no-one in the Local Fluff to talk to.

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We've a lot of rope to hang ourselves with, and good reason to tie knots of a different kind - those holding keys to real-time communication and strengthening sense of purpose to what's driving us over the edge. Waiting for someone else to make it happen we'd wait forever, spaghettifying ourselves in the black hole promising to swallow us whole. Absolution takes no prisoners - we can't afford to be complacent when it comes to looking after what we are. Who we are comes down to nothing when the future of a planet is at stake; logic eludes us beyond the event horizon.

As children, we think less about our position in society and more about what works for us, dealing with situations to the best of our ability and valuing the basics of being safe. As we grow older those instincts get eroded by the pressures of conformity versus individuality, and eventually we find that nature versus nurture leads to a lot of confusion as lives become increasingly fragile.

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What about where we were? Was there light at the end of the tunnel when "bluesky" held the promise of something revolutionary? Did brainstorming blow itself out of the window because minds thinking alike could no longer be great all at the same time? Could we have done any better, given the frameworks we already had? ​​
Or is it just another story with that sound of inevitability Mr Smith wanted to tell Neo of before the impending doom that didn't go as planned?

If we could see where we're heading, would we prefer another probability well to the one planned for us to face? How we choose to accept our fate is as important, if not more important, than what the roadmap looks like. For only by accepting What Is, can we change it. The speed of light is not just a "constant", it's something we live by that doesn't leave much time for mistakes.

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