The paradox of mastery: when human ambition confronts planetary physics

“ The whole of progress tends in the direction of solution. Some day we shall be amazed. As the human race mounts upward, the deep layers emerge naturally from the zone of distress. The obliteration of misery will be accomplished by a simple elevation of level. ”

“ While our knowledge and mastery of the planet we possess, and of its forces, are being steadily advanced by scientific discovery, and the researches of the pure scientist are constantly yielding practical results at first undreamed of, it is impossible to doubt that man’s knowledge of himself will make equal [130] progress. And it is not alone the physical constitution of man that will be interrogated. Everything assists the belief that this century will be among other things the century of psychical advance. ”

“ The exhaustion of the coal-fields might slow down progress for a time, but so long as mankind keeps its continuity, its past achievements and its rate of achievement will act as a stimulus and encouragement to further efforts, and new sources of energy will be discovered and utilized.
And so we may feel justified in expecting continual progress for at least a thousand years. Can we imagine the result? A globe laid out like a huge garden, with a climate under perfect control; the internal heat of [86] the earth brought to the surface and utilized as a source of never-failing energy. ”

“ But the human will does not exist in the abstract world of reasoned science, in the world of atoms and vibrations, that rigidly predestinate scheme of things in space and time. The human will exists in this world of men and women, in this world where the grass is green and desire beckons and the choice is often so wide and clear between the sense of what is desirable and what is more widely and remotely right. ”

“ Light, heat, chemical affinity, etc., are supposed to be mutually convertible and transmutable; and, according to the present hypothesis, Will must also be included in this series! But every energy we know in the physical universe is a non-intelligent energy, and, as I have pointed out elsewhere, if we make the human will thus subject to the law of Conservation, it seems to form a unique exception to the law. For we know (if our consciousness tells us anything) that willing is an intelligent act, and we should consequently have this conscious act or intent left over in the equation. ”

“ For millions of years it continued to revolve as a ball of liquid—still -95- cooling—still being pressed very hard at its central parts by the weight of all the gases and liquids round it, till at last the first crust of solid matter began to form on the liquid surface. This crust continued to thicken, but it was subject to many appalling catastrophes and breakages.
We have already used the occurrence of the tides of the earth as an instance of the Sun's attraction. The Sun (and the Moon) attract the waters of the earth, pulling them up towards themselves. ”

“ That our planet was a nebulous mass at a date at most somewhere between twenty millions and one hundred millions of years ago, we have all heard, and we have also had explained to us some of the proofs of this fact. Our planet is still imperfectly cooled. At a comparatively recent period in the history of this stellar universe, this little point of it was a spheroid of glowing vapor, from which the moon had not yet been separated. The present heat of the earth is an indication of its youth. ”

“ Just as 1970 was the year in which we began a full-scale effort to protect the environment, 1974 must be the year in which we organize a full-scale effort to provide for our energy needs, not only in this decade but through the 21st century. ”

“ The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril. There may still be disputes about exactly how much we're contributing to the warming of the earth's atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe. ”

“ "Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its management so intelligent in the interest of its owners that it has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. The human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the state to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners. ”

“ The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. ”

“ We may, therefore, expect that, as facilities for intercourse become more detailed and widespread, the effect will be, not to increase the tax on our nerve force until it becomes unbearable, but to increase our area of selection. There will thus be more consistency in our actual interests and activities and more real harmony and leisure.
The unification of the planet which is being accomplished before our eyes will have some astounding consequences. Mankind will assume a definite mastery of his home in the solar system. ”

“ Portions of the interior of the earth reclaimed and made habitable; all machinery and sources of power wisely distributed and made instantly available for all legitimate purposes. The earth’s surface and the rippling ether in which it swims made into a vast playground of human thought and emotion, and all mankind throbbing in unison to every great thought.
The Earth will have become a sentient being.—It will be as closely unified and organized as the human individual himself. Mankind will be the “grey matter” of its brain. ”

“ We have the air, and the mastery of the air is the mastery of the earth. No one of any ability is organising against us. They have no leaders—only the sectional leaders of the secret society we organised before your very opportune awakening. Mere busybodies and sentimentalists they are, and bitterly jealous of each other. None of them is man enough for a central figure. The only trouble will be a disorganised upheaval. To be frank—that may happen. But it won't interrupt your aeronautics. The days when the People could make revolutions are past."
"I suppose they are," said Graham. ”

“ Also, I am impatient., For a hundred thousand generations, from the first social groups of our savage forebears, government has remained a monster. To-day, the inertia-crushed mass has less laughter in it than ever before. In spite of man's mastery of matter, human suffering and misery and degradation mar the fair world. "Wherefore I have decided to step in and become captain of this world-ship for a while. I have the intelligence and the wide vision of the skilled expert. ”

“ To be scientifically minded is one of the supreme achievements of mankind. To love truth, as science loves it, to seek truth tirelessly, as science seeks it, to reveal the latent resources of the universe in hope that men will use them for good and not for evil, as science does, is one of the chief glories of our race. When, however, we have taken everything that science gives, it is not enough for life. When we have facts, we still need a spiritual interpretation of facts; when we have all the scientific forces that we can get our hands upon, we still need spiritual mastery over their use ”

“ Are not these two forces only different manifestations of a more general force? Many eminent men are much inclined to admit one or other of these hypotheses. Still, up to the present time, the facts do not seem to me to shew much agreement with them. Etherodynamy is displayed even in space and among the stars by variable, localised and temporary phenomena; the action of gravitation is one, universal and [9] constant. Man has always been able to exercise a certain amount of control over the former; he can produce at will light and heat; modern science cannot act upon the second. ”

“ May we not be content with the few millions of years of growth that remain to our race before the earth grows cold? Is it not foolish to look into futurity so curiously? What matters it whether chaos comes again in far-off ages?
But we still insist. We desire, vainly or justly, yet ardently, that the world shall answer to our moral needs not by accident, not by the way, not for a time, but from its own nature and forever. If we can see that present progress is an indication of the nature of the universe, that the present is a symbol or a specimen of eternity, we shall be content. ”

“ Mankind cannot survive forever tied to the cradle of the Earth. In perhaps six billion years our Sun will burn itself out, exhausted of its thermonuclear fuel. But Earth should become uninhabitable long before that. Nuclear war, asteroid collisions, or innumerable other planet-scale disasters could wipe out much of terrestrial life including mankind. The human species remains at risk until humanity extends itself beyond its homeworld. As a young person eventually must leave his parents' home to seek his own path, so must mankind extend its grasp far beyond its ancestral birthplace. ”

“ Now, if we remove the Earth from its place in the centre, and make it whirl round and round unremittingly, what will be the consequence? Simply, that it will act like all the other globes, and be enrolled in the number of the planets. Then all its terrestrial majesty will vanish, and the Earth will have to abdicate its imperial throne. [Pg 175] Men, too, will lose their human majesty, and be deprived of their supremacy; they will be left alone with their rags, and miseries, which are not insignificant. ”

“ We must all die; nor leave survivor nor heir to the wide inheritance of earth. We must all die! The species of man must perish; his frame of exquisite workmanship; the wondrous mechanism of his senses; the noble proportion of his godlike limbs; his mind, the throned king of these; must perish. Will the earth still keep her place among the planets; will she still journey with unmarked regularity round the sun; will the seasons change, the trees adorn themselves with leaves, and flowers shed their fragrance, in solitude? ”

“ But we know how limited is human power. We are not masters even of the mechanism of the body; the movements of organic life are independent of our will; we can neither command the stomach, the lungs, nor the heart: that marvellous process of absorption and elimination, that perpetual movement hither or thither which constitutes the essence of the assimilative function, goes on in us—as in all living beings, animal or vegetable—completely outside our sphere of activity. Then, without quitting our planet, how numerous are the movements which still escape the human will! ”

“ II Once--it is a thought which troubles us--once it was a simple enough matter to be a human being, but now it is deeply difficult; because life was once simple, but is now complex, confused, multifarious. Haste, anxiety, preoccupation, the need to specialize and make machines of ourselves, have transformed the once simple world, and we are apprised that it will not be without effort that we shall keep the broad human traits which have so far made the earth habitable. ”

“ When one of us conquers hate, hate does not thereby cease out of the world, since others still hate and suffer hatred. So with other delusions, which hold us in bondage to material things, and through which we look at all material things. When the coloured veil of illusion is gone, the world which we saw through it is also gone, for now we see life as it is, in the white radiance of eternity. But for others the coloured veil remains, and therefore the world thus coloured by it remains for them, and will remain till they, too, conquer delusion. ”

“ The key to addressing climate change lies in action. In implementing the Paris Agreement, we must maintain continuity and honor commitments. We must not be diverted from our course, turn about, or pay lip service. All countries should actively fulfill the NDCs they themselves have set, and turn goals into concrete policies, measures and actions. ”

“ I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the Paris Agreement, done at Paris on December 12, 2015, do hereby accept the said Agreement and every article and clause thereof on behalf of the United States of America. ”

“ Bert gasped.
A group of tiny figures broke away from the rim of the space station. The tugmen were coming to help.
Then Kevin grasped the hideous truth. There were not enough rocket pistols to bring the men to the full ship and return with any reserve to guide the projectile.
"Get back!" he shouted. "Save the pistols. We're coming in."
Behind them their only chance for life continued serenely upward into a new orbit. There, 900 miles above the earth, it would revolve forever with more fuel in its tanks than it needed.
Fuel that would have saved the lives of 90 desperate men. ”

“ For us life is a matter of our personalities in space and time. Human analysis probing with philosophy and science towards the Veiled Being reveals nothing of God, reveals space and time only as necessary forms of consciousness, glimpses a dance of atoms, of whirls in the ether. Some day in the endless future there may be a knowledge, an understanding of relationship, a power and courage that will pierce into those black wrappings. To that it may be our God, the Captain of Mankind will take us. ”