October 28, 2003
What Do We Tell Them?... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes".
When I was a child, the story of human life was simple and rosy. Mix in the idea that we'd all end up in heaven, and I was presented with an intentionally comforting - if somewhat incomplete - picture.
One element that was missing was a sense for the fragility of life on our planet. Religion aside, it's easily argued that science was just getting started back then, and ever since, science has been hard at work. New facts about our planet emerge daily; new insights into human history do, as well - so much so, that I've begun to wonder about what we tell our children.
It's one thing to wrap the truth in a protective coating so that children can feel safe and secure, but the argument falters, when you don't know the truth in the first place. And what science could tell our parents - and our parent's parents - was miniscule compared to what it can tell us today.
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Let's take the dinosaurs as a case in point. Visit the children's section of any bookstore, and it's obvious - kids love dinosaurs. Now as a kid, I had the idea they had died out because they couldn't find enough leaves to eat on the trees - sort of an over-population-of-dinosaurs theory.
But science today now insists on pointing to the exact spot where that 6-mile-wide hunk of junk came hurtling out of space and collided with us, just as science can't keep quiet about the pervasive global evidence it keeps finding of the devastation that the collision caused. In the aftermath, the dinosaurs were goners, and that was 60 million years, they tell us, before the first humans even showed up.
Try wrapping that in sugar for the minds of the young and impressionable.
And science also doesn't help with the traditional notion that the Earth was just sitting there in anticipation, waiting for us to arrive and prosper. The truth is this darn planet seems to care not a wit that we're here. Otherwise, it would have long given up natural disasters.
Living in San Francisco, earthquakes are a fact of life. Then again, two hundred years ago, there was no San Francisco. And while the scientists have warned us to eventually expect what we locals call "The Big One," do we move? No. We're human. We believe we will survive. Just like the people who live within the reach of volcanoes.
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From Vesuvius to Krakatoa, the historic evidence is undeniable - volcanic eruptions are not local phenomenons. Layers of ash float around the globe, there are fifty-foot waves and weather changes, widespread crop failures and even the demise of culture. Tough stuff. And science doesn't help here either. Recently it determined that a volcanic eruption some 3,000 years ago off the coast of Greece probably wiped out the extremely advanced Minoan civilization.
We are like ants on this planet, and that's a fact.
Still, let's not forget that science is not about rewriting history so much as uncovering the truth. And the more we know, the more the fragility of life on this planet becomes apparent. And this fact does not escape our children. Was anyone really able to shield them from knowing about 9/11?
So, one thought still lingers: Since what science tells us about the world is so radically different from what our ancestors understood, it just may be time to tell our children a new and perhaps scarier story about our humble beginnings. But I have confidence - whatever this story may lack in "rosiness" will be easily replaced by a deep appreciation for life itself.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
