Where is life leading us?

Does it ever seem like the world should stop for a second and breath? Life has changed so much within the 20 or so years that I have been alive with the advent of computers, the internet, cell phones, digital cameras, and so many other technological things. If my life has seen so much change, imagine the amount of change that a person in their 80’s or 90’s has seen! And what about the changes that have happened since the beginning of the 20th century?

For most all of humanity, people lived off of the land. The vast majority of people were farmers. Barely anyone lived in cities. Communication was very minimal. Transportation was even more minimal. Comforts like air conditioning, refrigeration, television, and other entertainments were not even imagined! Life was totally and incredibly different for most all of humanity until the last 100 years or so.

So what does this mean? Well, it could mean a lot of things. But I just want to look at one aspect today. I wonder where this is taking all of us. Where is life leading us?

If life were like a graph, try to picture what that would look like. For the first 10,000 years of existence – from before the time of Christ to 1,900 years after the time of Christ – everything was a straight line at the bottom of the graph. No huge changes. Maybe a blip here or there, but nothing huge. Then the line just skyrockets in the 20th century!! It goes from straight and consistent at the bottom of the graph for thousands of years to a sheer vertical rise. It’s not like we had a slow progression of all of this technology – 200 years to figure out cars and trucks, 300 years to get used to computers, and 100 years to understand the internet or cell phones. No, instead, we have all of these changes and technological advances mostly in the last 50 years. And some of them in the last 10 or 20 years! There has been more advances in the last few years than in all of humanity combined (probably, I mean, I’m not a anthropologist or whatever…)!!

But, again, where is it leading us? Are we going to keep having advances at the breakneck pace we are setting right now? If we do, then where will that take us? How easy is life going to get? How hard is life going to get? Is there a ceiling to all of this? Should there be? The world and society and humanity and life have not even had a moment to breathe and reflect. I just wonder if we will look back one day and wish we had.

Where is life taking us? Just something to think about.