CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter –
I’m really sorry I made
somebody pay $30 to get me Michio Kaku’s The
Future of Humanity. Fortunately, I can’t remember exactly who gifted me
with this book, at my request, or I would feel even sorrier.
Old people are not easy to
gift. We have too much already. Basically our gifts are things we can consume
and read, meaning White Castle gift certificates and books. We read the books
while recovering in the hospital from the White Castle sliders.
I read a lot of brain
science stuff anymore, for I’m interested in how the brain creates the mind, or
vice versa. I think that’s important for incarnational theology. In fact, Helen
and I will soon be subjects in an IU study on “aging and cognition.”
I don’t read original
research, of course. That’s way beyond me. But I get a lot from the
synthesizers, like Malcolm Gladwell and Oliver Sacks and Daniel Schachter and,
especially, Michio Kaku’s The Future of
the Mind.
So I asked for the Future of Humanity as a gift, assuming
it would be in the general category of Kaku’s Future of the Mind. Not so.
Its basic premise is: The
world is coming to an end, because it will burn up, so we’ve got to get to Mars
and other places in space as quickly as possible so we can survive.
The book is basically a
synthesis of current research and theory about how we can colonize space. And a
lot of faith statements like “Mars will be easy once we have learned how to
terraform it.” Yes, and I’ll make the big leagues once I have learned how to
hit a curve ball.
The only future for
humanity, Kaku and his ilk are convinced, is in space.
The book should be called The Future of Billionaires, because Kaku
is quite enthralled by the billionaires who are financing space exploration.
And, of course, they are the only ones who will ever get to go live in space. I
mean, when the earth burns up, it’s going to take all the rest of us—who don’t
have a billion for a rocket--with it. [Then the billionaires can repeat on Mars
all the original sins that have made humanity unhappy and the earth
uninhabitable.]
I have some inside
information on this. Chris Voorhees, a little boy from one of my churches—the
son of our choir director and organist—is working with the billionaires even
now, primarily to mine useful metals in planetoids. When his dad and I talked
on the phone a while back, I asked how Chris was doing. “Oh, he’s a rocket
scientist,” Larry said. “He designed the Mars rover.”
“But he can’t do that,” I cried.
“He’s only six years old, and our daughter babysits with him.”
The future of my
mind doesn’t look so good. Somebody needs to synthesize Einstein and the
space-time continuum for me!
As we celebrate, properly
so, the anniversary of Apollo 11, it might be good to remember that if we can’t
conquer the inner space of humanity here on earth, just transporting it to a
different outer space isn’t going to do much good. The future of humanity has
to include the love of humanity, or there will be no future, on Mars or
anywhere else.
Don’t waste your money or
time on The Future of Humanity. We
must, however, expend our money and time on the future of humanity.
John Robert McFarland
“The future isn’t what it
used to be.” Yogi Berra
“If people wanted you to
write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” Anne Lamott
I really like this all, but I really like your next to last paragraph. Can I use that as a quote in my classroom?
ReplyDeleteLinda Malone
DeleteYes, Linda, please use any of it that you wish.
Delete