We Are So Great!

There is a delightful man, Professor Rufus Fears, who does Great Courses programs.  One of these is Life Lessons from the Great Books in which he brings an everyday understanding of historical works that speak to us, are written in noble language, and have deep meaning for us.

It is precisely this course to which I am now listening and about which I have had some thoughts of my own.  Not that my thoughts are of any importance to anyone except me but then I write these little essays for me.

The first thing that comes to mind is that some of these great works were written so long ago, yet have come down to us in languages that are completely new to any used at the time of writing, or telling.  Even the Greek and Roman writings are now accessible to us in beautiful prose that we can understand but were written in languages that have since gone out of use, at least in the form used then.

I think this speaks to the scholarship of mankind, that some people would make a large part of their life’s work the assimilation and translation of an ancient language to the extent that they can faithfully translate the ideas given then.  Not just know the meaning of the words but faithfully express in a modern language the thoughts written so long ago by people living then.

Having these works available in words that we can understand also makes me aware of the depth of thought that has existed from the time when we, mankind, received the spark of intelligence that allowed us to express ourselves completely.

It can be argued that many animals communicate within their species and we don’t really know how completely this is accomplished.  Certainly when momma bear roars at the cubs, they get back to her immediately and we can only imagine the communication that takes place among ape and whale families.

We have had the remarkable advantage of having written words available to us, words written anywhere from 3000 BCE to now, in language that we can understand thanks to the work of scholars.

What/who decides what is worthy of posterity?  When one thinks of the quadrillions of words that have been recorded in the span of 5000 years, how is it that certain words are deemed worthy of preservation and others are rolled up like yesterday’s newspaper and put on the fire?

Professor Fears may say it’s natural selection; some may be due to flukes where this or that was found in legible form as was the Rosetta stone.  Thank goodness for that record because it allowed us to decipher the hieroglyphics.  One has to suppose that for all that have been preserved and handed down over the generations there have been millions and millions more that have faded into the gloom of the forgotten.

And we can recall the Egyptian, Greek, Roman civilizations, pre-Colombian American; the Jewish civilization that is still alive and well with traditions that go back thousands of years; Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and other Asian civilizations that continue. 

Yet there are other great civilizations that have come and gone without leaving much of a record.  These were located all over the globe including Europe, Asia, North and South America, Australia, and Oceania.  Without a written record, civilizations disappear with only the trace of artifacts to give us a glimpse but the record of their thinking is gone.

With or without the written record, it can be seen that the modern person is at no great advantage, other than having much more data at his disposal.  The conclusions to which he comes are still governed by memory, imagination, and reasoning.  The record of history shows that the imagination and decision making capability of the ancients and the moderns are comfortably similar.

There is some advantage in the memory category because included in this is all the data that is now available to the decision maker; because it is stored and accessible it is memory.  Yet the decisions made are as alarmingly flawed today as they have been in the past.

Another aspect of technology is communication.  Imagine a great fleet of warships afloat in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, barely in sight of one another.  They are making a coordinated effort to find the enemy fleet and engage it while keeping their position on the globe as secret as possible.  One of these has the Admiral aboard who is directing the effort.  His commands are transmitted via shuttered lights blinking a coded message from one ship to the next until all are informed.  The enemy fleet, found and engaged, was destroyed.

It could have been a 1000 W light bulb or carbon arc, it’s not important, but it wasn't a satellite orbiting the earth after being sent there by millions of pounds of force from rocket fuel, after years of research and development to develop the technology to assemble, launch and operate it.  No, it was a shuttered light bulb no more than 80 feet above the surface of the water.

One can argue that communication is much better now; I would only admit that it is faster but not better.  Being faster; often there is less thought given to the message.  Wars have been fought with communication by messenger and telegraph.  The successful side was the one with the superior strategy and intelligence, not the faster communication. 

Yes, we've come a long way but in essence we are the same human beings we have been since the great spark lit us some 200,000 years ago.  Our senses gather data, our reasoning melds memory and imagination to reach conclusions, and our decisiveness leads to taking an action.  Memory and imagination play a significant role in the equation; they, along with emotions, provide the color that would otherwise make us robotic.

We have children and they are not quite us but are heavily influenced by the genes passed along to them and how they are raised.  In the 200,000 year history of our species, we have arrived to the same point as every other generation before us, now.