Marc Legare is a philosopher and motorcycle adventurist.
He has travelled extensively, worked and lived in Australia, US, and across Canada.
He has a varied working career including: Firefighter, Lawyer, Navy, Motorcycle Importer, plus others.
He chose to return to southern Saskatchewan because of his family's deep roots here.
As a columnist, Legare's columns will offer food for thought.
When it comes to time, we think small. Most of us view time in a framework of a day, week, month, or year. What about our time in history? What does our time look like compared to the thousands of years of past human existence?
No matter what we disagree on when it comes to right and wrong, good or bad, or any of our immediate daily concerns, we can all agree our modernity has placed upon us extremely unusual lives, unknown by previous peoples.
Nothing in human experience compares with the changes our present day world has undergone. More importantly, those changes have taken place in a millisecond relative to the totality of the human era. We see technology as normal, however, when we look back, even a couple of generations, we recognize our modern existence is anything but normal.
Most people of old lived the same consistently similar life as the previous generation. Their lives were predictable. The rate and extremeness of our changes make our current world the opposite. None of us know what the future is going to be for ourselves or our children. Nothing from the past remotely compares to the over-powering and globalized nature of our technological revolution.
Taking a step back makes us realize we are living in an experiment. We are in a universal test tube and it is imperative to look at our modern world as being not typical. Doing so offers us a much needed objective vantage point. That vision can help us acknowledge we might be making fundamental mistakes, or worse, be on the wrong path altogether.
We welcome with open arms every new scientific and hi-tech advancement and believe we are better off for it. Is that not an overly quick conclusion? From a "time in history" viewpoint, it is anything but clear if all this will be a net good.
Are there not some dark clouds looming as a result of the speed at which our lives are changing? Can the human psyche deal with the rate at which change is occurring? Is it damaging us on a deep spiritual, social, or psychological level? It is disconcerting that in our hell-bent race forward, those questions are not being asked.
The plain truth of the matter is we have no idea where we are going or what we are doing. We are moving at a dizzying pace without pause or reflection, yet rumination is exactly what is currently needed due to the unprecedented times we live in.
Whatever your viewpoint, we would do well to acknowledge that our present moment in history is but a grain of sand in the enormous timeframe of our species. We are messing with too many things too fast and our gigantic social experiment has an unknown and yet unpaid price tag attached. That alone is cause to show some degree of caution.
If we fail and our new-aged world falls apart, I wonder if those who look back on us will be kind. That is doubtful because we do not look so kindly on people in our own history books. More likely, if our experiment goes sideways, they will remark what fools we were for not seeing it coming; because for some, it seems obvious.
Let us keep in mind the words of C. Palahniuk, “We will be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
