Here's one from the BBC that's just inspiring and staggeringly beautiful, imo ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=2HiUMlOz4UQ&vq=large
A 3 minute montage of the variety of human environments and lifestyles on our little planet Earth.
Every image a story, a human story, a human life ... full of the utterly unique and individual joys and sorrows, comedies and tragedies, victories and defeats we all either share or live.
Seeing this, would an advanced alien invader be moved to spare us as noble (if somewhat pathetic and backwards?) creatures ... or want to remove us from the world for being the ruiners of the otherwise beautiful Nature?
Begging the question: is Nature "beautiful" until it is percieved as beautiful by Man's aesthetics? Because when we chase the Tyger it may be beauty ... when the Tyger chases us it is Terrible; but it has to be like the poem says:
you (and tyger) are children of the universe, we have a right to be here.People are more terrible in being too often tygers I fear than tygers are beautiful at being human. The thought crosses my mind "there then is the glory of being human, that the comparison can be made." except that, given humanity, when we fall short of that ... we are less righteous than the tyger when they are merely being the best tyger they can be.
And who sez tygers cannot feel beauty?
Here is my moral dilemma: I catch myself sometimes having more sympathy for the tyger than the man, especially when I realize: tyger doesn't have anywhere else to be, but we (viral, ignorant, world-ruining Man) could leave the tyger in peace if we just lived up to being better Human.
I see a terrible secret in myself: I would trade more humans for better humans. I would happily have human cities (see Dubai's moonscape skyscraper in the video) set in the midst of undamaged Nature full of happy tygers. I would happily have these cities surrounded by fields of bleached human skeletons where the tygers came and fed and in doing so reminded us: the cities are Man's but the world is not.
"
HumanPlanet" ?
Don't let
me choose. Don't try to tell us (to protect anyone's greed or ignorance or profit) that we cannot choose.
I would sell us out to the first alien invader that offered. I would sell us out to the first tyger who asked.
See? this video inspires not only a thousand human stories to be written but also bouts of eco-terrorist mania!
on the other hand ... how much terror does Man inflict upon the innocent world (and upon Man too) unchecked ... when no one stands up against Man ???
Such are the torments of the video, imo. Is there even a freakin' tyger IN IT? I forget.
Someday though our children's children will forget there were ever tygers alive in the world, and they'll look around them and see nothing but a world full of shabby souless automatron humans, and ... well ... I dunno. Pitiful.
Human cities surrounded by human bones and happy tygers. that would've been my vote. A happy human city full of happy human folks who get along just fine, because we figured out a way to keep the tygers happy outside.
Oh ... and more hijinx in physics, speed of light and Einstein theory possibly broken, evidence of particles possibly taking other-dimensional short cuts thru spacetime ...
That was amazing!
