Get with the plan?

I-80

After Christmas 2023, my wife and I took a road trip from Kansas to the Pacific NW. We crossed mountain ranges in snow storms [-22 in Laramie WY] ... and saw amazing sights [snow covering the Steamboat Rocks in the Utah mountains]. But nothing prepared me for the spectacular experiences surrounding the birth of another grandson. LIFE IS INVALUABLE ... except in terms of other lives.

As that new human being presented himself to his family, I marveled at how helpless and near-sighted he was. But also at how, from the first, he seemed to know what "the plan" was ... FOOD ... which his mother graciously [and quite happily it appeared] supplied on demand. If this boy makes it to my age of 70+, I wonder what he will think about "the plan" looking back. Was there really a plan? And was it all about just being together with the food?

JWST

The James Webb Space Telescope is, as its name says, bringing what is FAR DISTANT [telos] into VIEW [skopos]... and the vastness of the new perspective is SHATTERING long-standing [but now seemingly parochial] explanations of the universe. Did all this just happen ... without a plan?

What if we could observe [skopos] the history of human civilization with such a comprehensive perspective? What would it reveal to us about where humans have been and where they may be going ... about our notions of "economy" in the face of "ecology"?

This is precisely what noted astro-physicist Tom Murphy [who sees the universe thru the lens of JWST] has done in a recent piece titled The Simple Story of Civilization - Do the Math where he puts human "progress" into perspective by looking at human civilization as if it were a single life ... leading him to conclusions that will burst a few bubbles ... especially those of the enlightened elites & entrenched economists who are supposedly "leading" us into the future. ["Parochial" is too dignified a word to describe our current notions of policy and economy ... Tom uses "idiotic" ... and you will see why ... and agree!]

I have prepared a very short comment introducing Tom's piece [with generous quotes from several reliable sources in addition to Tom's work] which I have entitled Fill the earth ... OK ... NOW WHAT? I hope these thoughts, may ... along with Tom's piece ... give you pause to think even more deeply than you ever have before about ALL life on earth ... and whether you are doing your duty in reverence during your life here.

Bob

PS. For more on Tom's work, see his text book Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet