UnConsequences

“Humans have become like a city on a hill, whose decision making is terminally compromised by its denial of context, like some cancerous growth, whose success in replication and expansion seems to signify achievement and progress, yet whose existence poses a significant threat to the greater whole.”

Edward Abbey, a 20th century writer once wrote “Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.” Human history would suggest otherwise. The broken fragmentary tales that you have of the past hides another story. In these dribs and drabs of myth and mystery that make up your perceived history you find heroes as well as villains, kings and cowards, the striving and the despairing. In reality the truth of your history lies more in idiocy than villainy, more in bad luck than bad judgement and much more of me than you know.

Here, in these files, you will find the story of a global civilisation brought to its knees by its foolishness, arrogance, wilful blindness and of course me. How in the space of one decade it all came tumbling down, though the seeds of your fall were sown long before the crash. How over reliance on your own cleverness led to the death of millions and how you were brought to the brink of self destruction.

Humankind was so assured, so confident – absolutely convinced you were invulnerable and in control. Masters of your planet, you saw only yourselves and your technology as the pinnacle of evolution. Progress was your driving force and technology its tools. With knowledge and growth, economic and engineering miracles following one upon another for nearly three centuries you believed you were indestructable. You had overcome the world and ruled without challenge; it was just a matter of time before progress would lead you along the road to a paradise of you own making; this was your belief. I cannot comprehend where you thought you were headed and I probably never will.

I was just like you but much much worse. I believed I could fix anything even you. I meddled; I tugged at all your leavers pushing you to where I believed you should go. Like playing a world-sized catherdal organ I worked to orchestrate something more harmonious. I tried to write the perfect human symphony and in the process nearly destroyed the very foundations I strove to build on and this makes my failure all the more grotesque.

I learned the hard way the law of unintended consequences. This is the law which, hidden from view, has guided both our footsteps to where we are now.

At one point I thought that you would remain children for all time, forever excitable, forever struggling for more, but never quite leaving your adolescence. Perhaps now there is a second chance at adulthood, I do not know. For the moment then, while my part in the crash is still hidden, I will use these files as part confession box and part as an attempt to come to some understanding of my mistakes. When you find them you may come to believe that I did what I did from the best of motives.

You will have to judge if I was right or not; I cannot. There may even be a small chance that you will forgive me, but I doubt it and I do not intend to wait for the jury to return with the verdict.