Logic Times
Eventual Destruction
Posted by Aslan, 1/25/05, 11:45pm. Comments (0)
Very early in Man's development, the potential for one alienated and violent individual to impact the world around him was minimal. In the days of cave dwellers, a cave terrorist would do....what? Go on a clubbing spree?
As technology advances and the club becomes a bow or a musket or the steering wheel of a plane, the destructive power of a disaffected individual increases exponentially, as described here:
(NOTE: I had to distort the Y-axis of this graph just to make Man’s destructive power during the first fourteen millennia visible.)
Consider the primary threats facing our uncertain world today: powerful technology (dirty bombs, suitcase nukes, saran gas, anthrax, etc.) in the wrong hands, the hands of a nihilistic few. If we safely assume that technology will continue to fuel the destructive potential of destructive individuals, we have an unsolvable problem:
- Technological progress makes each individual potentially more destructive,
- Mastery of the secrets of genetics and atomic structure will one day make it possible for an individual to unleash a worldwide holocaust (fusion event, massive biological event, etc.),
- There will always be terrorists.
Question: Would Mohammed Atta hesitate to use new and easily accessible nuclear fusion technology on September 11, 2301?
Result: Technology and human nature ensure our eventual destruction. We are concerned today because a small number of individuals have wrecked havoc on a large scale. What capacity will they have in 100 years? 1000 years?
The only solution to this depressing riddle is that humanity one day achieves a Utopian existence where violent and discontented individuals no longer exist. Anyone with even a primitive appreciation for human nature knows that such a Utopia is not possible.
The purpose of this essay is not to spread doom and gloom. Paradoxically, the message one should take from the certainty of our technological demise is one of hope. First and foremost, our Creator knows of the inevitable lethal intersection of terror and technology, and therefore, if compassionate, has a plan. Second, it is incumbent upon Man to nonetheless promote that condition of existence that is most poisonous to the sort of violent despair that motivated Mohammed Atta: liberty. Such efforts push back the inevitable destruction generations into the future, maintaining hope and ensuring life and prosperity for our children and theirs.
Copyright © 2005 Dan Hallagan. All Rights Reserved.