Our family makes frequent trips to Epcot. It’s one of the perks of living 15 minutes away from Walt Disney World. Among the many fantastic attractions in Epcot’s Future World® is Spaceship Earth. It’s one of our favorites, not just because of the awe inspiring architecture of the gigantic geometric sphere, but, for me, there is an important message that is so beautifully delivered through the narrator, Judy Dench.
“Like a
grand and miraculous spaceship, our planet has sailed through the universe of
time; and for a brief moment we have been among its passengers. But where are
we going? And what kind of future will we discover there? Surprisingly, the
answers lie in our past. Since the dawn of recorded history, we’ve been
inventing the future one step at a time. So let’s travel back in time together.
I’ll show you how our ancestors create the world we know today, and then it
will be your turn to create the world of tomorrow.”
The future
is quite literally in our hands, just as it was in the hands of our ancestors.
Our choices are not insignificant to the future even if the effects aren’t
easily seen.
Did the
sentient beings who first recorded their knowledge on cave walls know that they
began paving the way of communications for future tribes and civilizations? Did
the Egyptians know when they invented papyrus that they were creating a
technology that would shape the course of humanity? Did they know that paper
would lead us to an industrial revolution where we would learn to press, print,
share, and distribute our knowledge with each other? Did they know books would
take us to a digital space of limitless possibilities? Did those primitive
beings know scribbling drawings on rocks would lead their posterity to a
technological era of instant global communications?
My hunch
says they didn’t. Even so, that doesn’t make their seemingly insignificant
contribution of cave drawings any less essential to the future of our species.
We are the children of cave people, but also the children of Creators—built
from the intelligence, technology, and compassion of our ancestors. We are the
children of Gods.
The future isn’t just tomorrow. The future is in our past. The future is in our present. And more importantly, the future is in our hands. The hands of Creators. The hands of gods.
The future isn’t just tomorrow. The future is in our past. The future is in our present. And more importantly, the future is in our hands. The hands of Creators. The hands of gods.
