"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." I cannot reference the quote at the moment. It flashed up in some strange airline movie. It somehow fit. I was noticing the landscape below and saw two sets of lines: 1 set regular, crisscrossing, hard-edged, the other winding, interweaving, varied. Nature is an abstract painter. It's impressionist strokes forming grand structures but designed to be observed differently at the microscopic level. We on the other hand, attempt precise order. Our structures only grandiose in our own scale.
But, our lines are permanent, if anyone or anything ever finds this planet it will know we were here. I have just been to a place that reminded me that we are both of this world and apart from it. We may shield ourselves or change the environment, but on this planet we are native. On this planet, the air, the water, the terrain, our co-inhabitants, are all very much part of us. It has been our home and our teacher. It has presented climates which we can thrive in naturally and those which require all our ingenuity to survive in.
It has also indicated its limits. It can destroy thousands of us in an instant. It can also slowly cripple us. Remind us in minuscule degrees that our technology is not perfect and that it can exploit these imperfections. Change the pH slightly and our planted crops die. Temperature variations warp our metals and reduce the efficiencies of our fuels. We are in the end fragile creatures underneath it all. Without protection of some sort, we will die of exposure or heat stroke outside of a belt of 80 degrees. There are very few places we can live year-round. We must move to survive. We must adapt to endure. But adapting is exactly what we do.
I have spent a week a year in a place the planet indicated was off limits. A remote spot on one of the more inhabitable continents. A place that resembles the planet's lone natural satellite as much as it does other parts of the planet. A place where the ground destroys tissue and the air can choke. A place where the temperatures reach the full range of habitable and the lack of humidity can lead to death in hours. The planet has coordined off this area. Our tiniest relatives do not live there. It is a place devoid of life. While we have adapted to the more median areas of our planet, other lifeforms have adapted to the more extreme and remote... none have adapted this place. This is our cue. We shouldn't be there.
But we go. We go to prove we can. We go because it is difficult. We go because 50,000 of our closest friends will be there. We also go because this strange place offers the freedom of being disconnected and exploring limits. We bring parts of our world to this place and create things that simply cannot be found anywhere else. We build monuments to the ephemeral. We test ourselves. We rely on others. We learn about ourselves.
Nature lets us come. It will even let us stay... for a while. But one by one either our resources or our resolve runs out. We are pack animals. We cannot stay in such a place long without a community. The resources needed to inhabit such a place permanently would take significant investment. The sun would have to be used for everything. There are no microbes to absorb our waste. There is no earthbound water of note and very little in the air. Your very presence there would change the ecosystem. The absorption of airborne water would have a noticeable effect on the humidity. The placement of structures would affect rainfall and thus ground surface. It is a place we were not meant to be and it will fight us for as long as we stay.
By the way, the quote is Voltaire. I knew I liked it. I'll be returning to the best of all possible worlds.
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