Moondust

A good passage

How’s that for contradiction, for equivocation? And in this, Apollo also seems to me to be the most perfect imaginable expression, embodiment, symbol, of the twentieth century’s central contradiction: namely, that the more we put our faith in reason and its declared representatives, the more irrational our world became. Sane political leaders contemplate the mutual destruction of their societies; greater wealth led to greater dissatisfaction; faster communication which should have made life easier made it harder, because suddenly we expected everything to happen instantly; more efficient food production led to poorer health... the list could go on and on. Seen in this light, Apollo has something to teach us as we enter a new century of genetic modification, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology. It’s a cautionary tale about that most fundamental human of human tragedies – the tragedies of Macbeth, Othello, Faust, Kennedy, Nixon, Aldrin... once again, you could list them forever: wanting something so badly that you end up destroying it. Hubris. Mary Shelley would have swooned. A century and a half after she wrote Frankenstein, which many consider the progenitor of modern science fiction, here was her monster made reality.