One of the best single lines from any movie ever was from Soylent Green, when Charlton Heston went to visit his buddy, Edward G. Robinson, who’d checked into a government sponsored suicide center, where they’d give you a comfortable room, music and video of your choice, and pump you full of drugs until you were dead.
He was watching a pleasant little nature film when Heston said (I paraphrase) “Wow, the world was really beautiful. I bet people were nice back then,” and Robinson replied “Nah, people were always rotten. But the world was beautiful.”
The Lost World of Son Doong
This little revelation reminded me of that. As humanity continues merrily on its evil little way, with our wars and oppression and false imprisonment and torture and social inequality all over the damned map, there is still beauty like this in the world.
It’s amazing that the cave of Son Doong wasn’t discovered until recently, wasn’t properly explored until 2009. You would think every square inch of the world we live on would have been explored by now, but more and more that seems to not be the case.
Angel Falls, tallest waterfall in the world, wasn’t discovered until the 1930s. (save your ‘indigenous people knew about it all along’ argument. I freely stipulate that I am seeing things from a Western perspective) Satellites are finding ancient ruins all over the place, divers continue to find sunken treasure and deeper divers are continually finding new life forms under the sea.
Humanity may be doomed to be terminally pathetic, but we sure do live on a beautiful planet.
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