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PROGRESS They come in the night, most of them. When others can't see, can't know. They take you somewhere, away from the familiar, and play doctor. You would protest, of course, but that is impossible. They have ultimate power and you will go with them ... they are quite beyond the petty stance of "macho." Whatever your beliefs before, you will be forever changed after. And you will do all they ask. They are so advanced that we couldn't even conceive an effective opposition. We joked about them in past decades, quite sure in our denial that such fantasies we'd envisioned could never exist except in a dream or fiction. For we knew we were the best that ever was. Constant progress in our Science continued to fuel a myth of technological superiority. Whatever our place in the world, we always had that provincial pride that others were less, or at least not much further, advanced. But we'd made the wrong comparison. We were naive enough to think there was only our kind in the contest. For the legends couldn't be'real, we knew -- they were embroideries born of millennia and, probably, imagination amok. Inventions of a savage past. Irrelevant. Dismissable. Compared to only ourselves, we'd done quite well. 2 But there was another player in the game. A better. A best. For we were centuries behind. Millennia. Their progress could not even be envisioned by our best minds. Their technology was, still, only "magic" to us. Unimaginable. Contrary to our best projection of physics. What they could do was, to us, impossible.For, they knew about time. Unlike our own perception, they knew it wasn't linear. They could manipulate it, like any other factor in any other equation. We didn't know that, yet --couldn't even fully imagine such a thing. So, they were magicians ... or angels ... or devils ... however we'd interpret them at the time in our past. But words are always inadequate for what appears miraculous. Before Pasteur, many thought maggots appeared in meat by a sort of magic, that life came about by spontaneous generation., Or, that "life" could form in liquid by a similar miracle. Such was our belief until the knowledge of flies and bacteria. Before 1969, space travel was only a Vernian fantasy, as equally impossible as taking pictures of the planets or of astronauts "walking" in space. Until the magic is mastered, impossible things will seem forever so, and evidence of their reality can only seem miraculous. 3 Before bread came in slices, we'd simply tear off a hunk of it ... no one would even conceive the use or need for that future marvel known as a toaster. Though quite mundane now, it would have seemed a miracle then ... to say nothing of the microwave. Even a standard convection oven could not have been imagined in those days ... electricity was nonexistent and natural gas was later only a nuisance to those seeking oil ... food was cooked over smoky logs. Ben Franklin's acuity gave us a more efficient stove to warm those too-cold nights, but even that "magic" would be later obsolete.All progress is relative. There are certain tribes of people in remote parts of the globe whose culture can yet be regarded as primitive. Show them a portable TV, and you'd likely be regarded as either angel or devil. Their own customs, beliefs and habits, though quite sufficient to themselves, would allow no instant comprehension of our modern wonders. Any strange culture such as ours, much as a strange Mumbastiwusu tribe, would inspire both fear and amazement. The natives would have no use for conveniences we could now not do without -- technology and appliances we take for granted but which, to their culture, would be useless or fearsome. Such is the parallel which now confronts us -- an advanced species, with technology beyond our present comprehension, gives continual indication of its presence. It knocks at the door. So far, we are not home. Soon, though, we will have to answer. For, progress demands it. |