Regardless of your beliefs as to the creation of the world, we are but children of planet Earth.  We sprout from the bounty of life and sunshine that exists here. With our miraculous minds we are able to simplify our lives through technology and knowledge, but we are doing little more than deciphering the information that has been provided and find ways to take advantage of this knowledge in creative ways. How do we balance our advances in technology and our growing demands with the balanced systems that operate through the rest of the living planet? Are we wise enough to use our intelligence towards means that do not fade the tapestry of life through extinctions resulting from our actions?

Child's Playroom

Imagine a daycare center. Each day, the staff supply the playroom with toys for the children. One area has wooden blocks for building, another has a stack of paper and colored markers for drawing, yet another area has toy cars and planes. Each day 20 children come in the morning to play and each afternoon they are followed by another set of 20 children. The children can play with any of the toys as much as they like as long as they don't abuse the privilege.

On the first morning the children occupy themselves with all the various toys until it is time to leave. When the second group comes in, the toys have been carefully put away by the first children. There is no longer as much paper left as much of it was used in the morning, but plenty remains for the children who wish to draw.

On the second morning, the children play even longer and decide they don't have time to put their toys away. The afternoon children arrive to a bit of a disarray, but easily find their toys and have another enjoyable afternoon playing.

On the third day, one of  the children has decided to draw space ships which enthralls the other kids. Suddenly, everyone wants to draw today. The other toys are complete ignored so that everyone can try their hand and drawing. When the afternoon children arrive, there is no more blank paper, but they do see the exciting drawings scattered around and wish to do the same. As there is no paper, out of frustration the children decide to draw upon the walls their space scenes.

The fourth morning presents the children with no more paper and walls covered in space scenes. They decide to continue the drawing on the walls begun by the afternoon students until they find all the markers have been used up but the orange and the green markers. The afternoon children find most of the walls now covered in space ships and only two colored markers left. They begin to draw with the markers on the walls, but most become bored with the lack of color options and go back to playing with other toys.

Morning five the children have new markers, but they are only available in orange and green. What happened to all the other colors? They have already forgotten there was ever such as thing as paper to draw on. In frustration some of the children begin drawing on top of the existing wall pictures making an illegible mess of green and orange on the walls. Without any blank walls to draw on, the afternoon children begin fighting over the best of the remaining toys while others begin drawing on the wooden blocks with the orange and green markers. Toys are being thrown across the room or pulled apart as the children refuse to share.

On the fifth morning the children find far fewer toys, nothing but orange markers and lots of building blocks.

Easter Island Effect

While technology can achieve amazing goals for us, we must be careful of the impact of our actions. Many ancient human societies achieved remarkable construction and city building only to exert to much a price on their environment until it collapsed under their demands. One example is East Island which was denuded of trees in order to create the giant statues it is famous for. The result was a collapse in the population of the island and the forests have never recovered.