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power to evoke emotions and attitudes, the power to trigger us into
action. We ought not to inhabit only the world of the myths; we
have to take our responsibility by analysing them, also to see what
a myth evokes, for good or for evil.
Scene 10
Responsibility
In us
our heritage,
matter,
information,
and a box
full of stories.
Between
hope and fear
our neighbours
life
here on Earth,
between
hope and fear
the great project
of thought
and compassion
on a road
of freedom.
Taking stock
We carry with us, or rather, in our bodies, our language and culture,
our heritage. Our heritage is material. The stuff out of which we are
made is dust from stars (see scene 4). We inherit also biological
information, useful recipes for making a human, recipes which have
emerged in the course of a long history. Nature does not need
a recipe to make salt out of sodium and chloride, but to create
haemoglobin, the red oxygen-binding chemical in our blood, the
body needs a recipe, instructions which are available in our genes,
78 Creation: From Nothing Until Now
our DNA. Salt would form without any history; substances such as
chlorophyll (in green plants) and haemoglobin are products of a
history in which our heritage has been tested and expanded (see
scenes 5 and 6). Our bodies, our brains with their potential, our
responses: everything is a product of history, materialized as
biological recipes. Again and again we have to do with our biological
heritage. That is not a burden, but the basis of our existence. Thanks
to this biological heritage we may feel, think and act.
Our heritage is also cultural. Human languages embody know-
ledge about the world. Different legal and political systems and
etiquette show how people may live together. Religious traditions
with their rituals and stories are part of our cultural heritage too.
We inherited the critical traditions, the social critique of the prophets
(see scene 8) and the intellectual and political critiques of modernity
(see scene 9).
Our bodies and our cultures present well winnowed wisdom,
tested in many generations. However, that does not imply that
everything that has been wisdom in the past still is. An unrestricted
 Be fruitful and multiply is no longer wisdom when six billion
humans are filling and subduing the Earth. Wisdom is bound to
circumstances, and these can change. Wisdom is also related to a
goal; the wisdom physics offers is quite insignificant when facing
the death of a friend.
Progress?
In these scenes we considered a long development. New possibilities
emerged: heavy elements, life with purposiveness, humans with
consciousness, science with explicitly articulated knowledge. Has
this made the world a better place? Is this a history of progress?
In the twentieth century humans have massacred humans on an
unprecedented scale. In itself, killing of others of one s own kind
is nothing new. It is part of our history of the last millions of years.
Similar behaviour has been observed among chimps. However, even
if the frequency of killings has not increased, their efficiency sadly
has. A relatively recent step has been the development of nuclear
weapons that can destroy whole cities.
We humans are not only a threat to our fellow humans, but also
to other species. This too has been going on for ages. When humans
entered a new territory they first hunted the easiest prey. For the
dodo on Mauritius the beginning of the end came when Dutch ships
Scene 10. Responsibility 79
dropped their sails on its shores in 1507. Most of the big mammals
of America became extinct some eleven thousand years ago, around
the time ancestors of the native Americans crossed the Bering Strait.
At Hawaii various birds disappeared when Polynesians discovered
the island, 1500 years ago. Flightless birds were eaten to extinction
by the Maoris of New Zealand. Species other than homo sapiens
have shown similar behaviour. European cats and foxes imported
to Australia have eaten the larger part of the small marsupials. Their
decline is no threat to the predators themselves, since they change
prey easily. Humans too are very flexible.
Some animals have finished it for themselves. Reindeer flourished
on St Matthew Island in the Bering Sea: 1,350 reindeer in 1957,
6,000 in 1963. They ate lichen faster than it could recover. After the
harsh winter of 1963 1964 there were left forty-one females and
one sterile male. Early in the twentieth century rabbits were intro-
duced on Lisianski, an island west of Hawaii. Within ten years they
had eaten almost all plants on the island, thus undermining
the conditions for their own existence. On the island Earth we may
follow a similar course. We have no natural enemies that constrain
the population size. Death toll due to contagious diseases has gone
down enormously. We easily change prey, and modern technology
has created the possibility of accelerated growth. We too can be
caught by the ecological limitations of our own  island , just as the
reindeer of St Matthew and the rabbits of Lisianski.
An ecological crisis will not hurt all in the same way. Hence,
ecological problems may generate conflicts about water, oil, heat
and food. Let me give one example. Life in Europe is dependent upon
the warm Gulf Stream that crosses the Atlantic from the Caribbean
to north-west Europe. If, due to the greenhouse effect, there is more
rain in the northern Atlantic Ocean this warm Gulf Stream might
fall away. In consequence the climate in Europe would become simi-
lar to that of Canada; Newfoundland is south of the Netherlands.
Canada houses and feeds less than thirty million inhabitants; Europe
more than five-hundred million on a similar area. Would hundreds
of millions set off to warmer regions? A change like this could
happen fairly abruptly, in the course of a few years. It would have
dramatic consequences for relations between countries. Whether the
falling out of the Gulf Stream and subsequent lower temperatures
in Europe is the right scenario, is not clear yet. Perhaps some other
consequences of the human induced greenhouse effect may be more
important. Whatever the particular events, changes in climate
80 Creation: From Nothing Until Now
and ecology might create geopolitical tensions of an unprecedented
scale.
Science and technology have expanded our capacity to modify our
environment so that it better serves our needs. We can now inten-
tionally modify all three aspects of our heritage described above.
Setting up nuclear power plants, not to speak of nuclear weapons,
reflects our ability to transform matter; chemistry and material
sciences can create stuff with an incredible range of properties.
Biotechnology is the ability to modify intentionally the informational
heritage as coded in the genes, in humans and in plants, yeasts and
animals that we eat. Our cultural heritage is changing due to the
ability to store information in print and electronically, and even more
to the ability to spread information across the globe. In a sense, there
is progress in power, and thus in freedom, but it is progress with a
prize; the risks are enormous as are the surprises due to unanticipated
consequences. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]