Opinion/Editorial
TOWARD A DISTANT DAWN
The human species is diurnal. That means we are awake in the day and asleep, for the most part, during the night. At least that’s the way our survival is likely to be optimized, as our physical tools do not include night vision, refined hearing, or intently accurate smell. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a certain nocturnal nature given to so many of us. Many humans prefer the night and sleep through the day, taking advantage of technology to make this uncommon conversion safe and more satisfying to them.
Our lives are controlled by the daily motion of planet earth. We stop and go with our movement around the sun. We evaluate things based upon twelve (or so) hour cycles. Even our decisions of cultural choices in things like race, attitude, mood, and appearance have everything to do with this day/night cycle. Black is okay but white is preferred, in almost everything. Black is the color of depression while white is the color of expression. In coloration, black is the absence of all colors while white is literally a mix of all colors.
The perception of the present and future are often expressed in terms of the day and the night. Nights are darkest just before dawn, which is anything but true but symbolizes attitude rather than the result of astrophysics. Light at the end of the tunnel is perceived to be a light of hope visible across a landscape of darkness or the black of night. Night vision devices were invented to see in the dark for use in a jungle war where darkness was cover for almost all combat operations. This huge advance, the conquest of darkness, a momentous breakthrough allowing freedom of movement, understanding, and perception in a world always half in the dark has never been perceived or used as life-changing for every living human. In fact, night vision devices, for the most part, remain very expensive and relegated to the military or sportsmen. Why is it that night vision capability has not swept the planet? Why is this conquest of these most feared times, occupying half of our lives, not viewed as one of the most revolutionary inventions of all time?
Humans take to change slowly. They give every appearance of changing quickly and wanting to change even faster. But, in truth, the species is one of satisfied dominance. New technology is more feared than adopted, and when adopted, only grudgingly. Nuclear technology is another powerful example of this simple species-specific fact in action. There is no question that splitting the atom and being able to extract billions of ounces of energy from every ounce of matter, now that it is possible (and has been for nearly 75 years), should be intently worked on and perfected to set the world free of all other pitifully inadequate sources of energy. But nuclear power languishes because human beings are afraid of it and fusion power would change everything we do, think, say, or are beyond recognition.
The same is true for night vision. Our species could this very day shed our daytime work ethic and break free of earth’s rotational rules. Humans could ignore the night or incorporate it properly into a claimed part of the universe already owned by the species. But we don’t do that. We don’t even consider doing that. Not because it would not be safer or more productive to do so. We don’t change because we don’t want to, and it is this undiscussed feature of our innate makeup we must address to elevate our entire species to the next level of our development. Today our populations languish on a plateau of scientific advancement that leaped forward so fast for a hundred years that it left the human mind and its huge emotional complex behind.
For the past twenty years, humanity has taken a breather. Will we be unable to accept the changes that must come for us to continue and absorb our triumph over the night or will we springboard from this reactionary creationist plateau of celebrated stupidity to charge into inexorably distant but more comfortably visible dawn? The human species, existent for almost three million years, is notorious for making clear, accurate, and quick individual decisions of merit. The species in groups…not so much. There will be a distant dawn coming, and the question is really one of, will we be here to greet it?
