Endeavour

The consequences of mankind's ingenuity and endeavour are truly manifold: we are, after all at the apex - so far as we are aware - of the pecking order on the small blue-green marble we call home: the Earth. What we have succeeded in doing to that marble is, however far from optimal, both to the marble itself, but also to the various sentient inhabitants of said marble, at the apex of which we imagine ourselves as a species, speciously, to be [forgive the split infinitive: you know what I mean, and anyhow, I cares not a jot for the nicety itself]. That we were invested with the capacity to invent beyond ourselves and communicate and disseminate that invention amongst ourselves is of course not unique to us: plenty of other species, mammalian and otherwise do similarly.

Where we have taken our ingenuity of course is writ large in the climate chaos that unfolds before us with ever-increasing ferocity. That we are constantly fighting wars of attrition with others of our species - our brothers and sisters - is likewise writ large in the pages of our various but collective histories. The lessons to be learned by successive generations of our particular manner of ape have been taught, generation on generation; it's just that no-one was actually listening: they were all to busy innovating blindly towards their future and the seemingly obvious utopia that beckoned. I think that sometimes we really need to sit back and take the broader view that utopia actually doesn't exist and our efforts to reach it are futile and inherently self-destructive.

John Harrison unlocked the secret to global travel with the invention of the marine chronometer, the first step in the colonisation of mankind's marble by, well: mankind. The flip side to this new-found freedom of course was the unfortunate concomitant of the axis of politics, power and xenophobia: the freedoms extended by Harrison's technology to the moneyed West served mainly to exploit and oppress those of a different culture and disposition for economic gain; enabling colonisation and institutionalised, mechanised slavery and the rampant commerce that followed.  Seeing both sides of an argument sounds like a trite truism in itself, but it really is necessary: we all live in Plato's cave as isolated minds, connected only by our common endeavour; but that endeavour is more often than not adversarial.

We think tribally because our Platonic selves are capable only of limited interaction with others, and we think, construct and imagine 'the other' only to be a threat to ourselves, rather than simply a slightly different reflection of our own tribe, espousing the same aims and aspirations as our own. My recent slight tribute to those involved in the Arnhem conflict eighty years ago mentioned the words of a member of 'the opposition': a very young SS officer. Robert Kershaw's book "It Never Snows in September" outlines that view from the other side of the conflict in the words of many more ordinary German soldiers, each viewing the world and his place within it also from within Plato's cave. Nevertheless, each of either side under such duress knew the reality of it all: they were simply the ones expected to do the job of others and saw the humanity of their 'enemy' as large as their own.