The Opposite of Cynicism is Engineering

When I find myself losing faith in humanity, I look to its scientists and engineers.

For instance, under a kilometer of water, we can dig many many more kilometers below the sea floor to extract huge amounts of oil. That oil is shipped around the world in a vast interconnected trade network of ships, trains, pipelines, and freight trucks. The world produces over 90 million barrels a day of this stuff, and we chew it up almost as fast. But on the whole it isn't wasted. The oil is brought to refineries where it is cooked, cracked, processed, and decanted into products and by products that make up plastics, rubber, asphalt, car lubricant, medicines, gasoline, jet fuel, and electricity.

Now, we can have endless meaningful debates on the consequences of this industrial activity, and how it balances against alternative energy sources or its environmental impact. However, that doesn't diminish the awe inducing accomplishment that such an effort not only exists, but is so well built and tuned that we often take it for granted.

Another example is our accomplishments in space. It's no small feat to put something in orbit, let alone send people to the moon or probes to the outer limits of our solar system--and that's just the beginning of what we've done. Hundreds of satellites litter Earth's orbit, taking weather measurements, watching for nuclear launches, providing telecommunications for people in remote terrain, and locating people's position with a precision which is jaw dropping.

Let's think about Global Positioning System satellites for a moment. These metal boxes are 20,000 kilometers above the Earth's surface. You can fit one and a half Earths between us and these satellites, and they are moving around us at 3.8 kilometers every second. If we were driving down a highway that fast, it would take us just three hours to drive around the whole planet. And despite how far they are and how fast they're moving, they can identify where we are up to 3.5 meters. That's like throwing a dart from Honolulu and hitting as dartboard bulls-eye on Maui--while moving at Mach 10.

Finally, if the accomplishment isn't enough, just remember that all this knowledge and skill is learned. We pass the vast expertise from generation to generation; genetically and biologically, we're no different from our homo sapiens ancestors from a million year ago. The only thing that separates us from them is education. If one day everyone died except a baby boy and girl, overnight our species would become just as ignorant of the wonders of the universe as we were when we lived in caves.

I wrote all this because I watched the Space Oddity music video, which embodies the dreams and fascination of space that kids had who grew up in the space age. Then I watched it come true, reviving my hope in humanity for another day:



It's 9:15pm and the stars are out. If you need me, I'll be in space.