Direction of Humankind

Earl Nelson

Instructors Name

Class you takin'

May 27, 2011

Direction of Humankind

I believe that while the pursuit of technology is seen by many to be a negative aspect of humankind due to the perceived straying from nature, it is actually a positive direction for humanity. There are several reasons I take this stance. The first being that it is in human nature to embrace technology. The second reason being the intent of technology. My final reason is the use of technology and how it expands and actually parallels nature.

For as long as human beings have existed they have used tools to enhance their harmony with nature. If any person takes one look around it becomes apparent just how far humans have taken technology. The walls we build for our houses though seen as out of place in nature aren't as distinctively human as some people would like to believe. For instance certain primates create makeshift houses out of bamboo and large leaves from bushes.

"Unless we want to return to the trees it is impossible to remove all technology. The fire we use for heat, the shoes we wear on our feet, and the clothes that cover our bodies are all examples of technology. The use of tools is a part of our existence as human beings"(Dee Neely Technology)

Continual pushing of the boundaries in my opinion draws us closer to nature. Imagine if we did not have the technology of today. We wouldn't understand nature as well. We wouldn't understand things ranging from parasites in water to the boundaries of space. It is in the same way we might have been wrong in not imagining it possible 11,000 years ago that hunter-gatherer life would so suddenly give way to domestic agriculture, or that it would take a mere 1,000 years for people to spread from the then uninhabited land of what is now the U.S.-Canadian border to the tip of Patagonia, or that more Native Americans would die from European germs than on the battlefields. We aren't ignoring nature we are imitating it as Aristotle once pointed out. (Book 2 Physica )

I believe that it is not possible to ignore nature even with technology as it is essentially the ruling factor of our lives. We benefit from nature because as children most of our interest came from nature. Dean (1997) writes that "an enveloping wild landscape...[is] central to our original understanding of the world and our rightful place within it" . I feel that there's a strong balance between nature and technology that must be achieved. There's so much that you can do with technology that you wouldn't have if you only went the nature route.

A lot of people in this world can't even get jobs without the advances of technology. Who can really say that the Internet is a more