Coincidentally, a few incidences involving people’s death/missing happened during the last weekend and became headlines around the world.
In the US, massive shoot developed in a Pittsburgh synagogue, leading to at least 11 deaths.
In Chongqing, China, a bus ran off a bridge into deep water of Yangtze River with an estimate of 15 on board.
In Indonesia, a Boeing-737 MAX with Lion Air crashed into the sea after took off with 189 people on the plane and 0 survivor has been found so far.
[May those taken from us rest in peace]
While there are different reasons (or direct causes) behind these tragedies, they all reminded us of how vulnerable our species is. Technology and society advancements have their own ways of going wrong.
Our ancestors don’t have much direct advantages to survive their world; yet we have conquered and shaped our planet to an ever increasing degree over our history. We can protect ourselves from stronger animals which would otherwise make us their food; we can fight destructive fires which would otherwise burn our settlements; we can cure those deadly pandemics which would otherwise wipe out half of a continent’s population or even an entire regional population…
However, things made to combat threats could go wild and we can’t resist.
The tools we created and the capabilities we built into them dwarf our physical/natural abilities. We are not very much improved genetically as a species over the last 1 million years (and not very much different from genus Pan as genus Home).
Naturally we can’t survive a gunshot and can’t find a way out under deep water from a closed room (e.g. bus, plane).
Although life expectancy has gone from 20 to 40 to 80 and may go to 160 in the future, we are still humans.
Sometimes we just need to forget all those achievements and just be human.
Life is valuable because it is limited. May everyone of us enjoy it.