Do you remember what you wanted to become as a child?
Did you have answers towards the question "What will you be? What will you become?"
My answers where mostly given to end the questioning. Honestly, I did not know, what I would want to become. Yes, of course, it was tempting to imagine being a medic, a scientist, an astronaut and so on, but that was never really enough. Enough in terms of really being able to identify with these roles. I could not really imagine myself being one of these.
Still I had strong belief in choice and the chance to find my way to make a bright future come true.
Speaking of which, I was a great fan of Captain Future. I started to watch nearly every Sci-Fi Movie that was screened on TV. (Having grown up in Eastern Germany there was no other way than to watch western TV stations. I also turned to Danish and Swedish ones, who would broadcast in English and show local sub titles.)
Then I became a great fan of Star Trek. Mr. Spok became the true idol. Pure logic. Brilliant deduction from observation and, delivering solutions that respected the root cause, not just the symptoms. And again and again, pure logic and cold deduction at work. Fascinating, indeed.
But not being able to turn myself into a Vulcan I developed strong sympathies for the coolest person on the Enterprise ever: Scotty. Brilliant in problem analysis and, providing solutions for the "impossible". Yes, we know, it was never really "impossible" in the first place, but the perception of the problem made any solution to it seemingly that.
I ended up with plans to become a physicist rather than an engineer, which stuck for a long time. But then live got real and I became a real estate manger, and turned into a web developer, programmer, systems and networks engineer. (I have been programming computers since I was 12, or should I say, since we where 12, as I started out with a dear friend on his dad's computer. Hey, we did pair programming before anyone even coined that phrase. Well, the two of us could only use this very one computer, so we just did it together.)
In Physics you never ask why anything is as "it" is, but rather, how can you describe "it". That extends then to whatever changes the state of "it". This way you come to conclusions of cause and effect, which might look like an answer to the question of "why".
Nowadays, I am quite good at analyzing situations, or rather "complex systems" by example of state in relation to environmental influence, detecting problems within, and finding their root cause. (If you look through any network operation center, you'll find people with these skills in the majority.)
What I loved most and still honor most in Star Trek is the vision of a future, where human mankind has advanced, where we live in green cities, with communities intact. Communities, where neighbors care for their neighbors. A future, where we have tackled the problems of our planet, if only short for having saved Wales and other species. Still, this is the future I wanted to come true. A future, where every human being on the planet can live a life that is worth being called HUMANE. A future, where the tribes in the woods of the Amazonas still can continue to live as people in the woods, without us forcing them into our high tech world. A future, where no one must starve, where everyone is respected and has full access to all information available and, free access to education. I know, this might sound like Utopia, but then again that is the idea of envisioning future, no?
Prospections like the worlds of Star Wars or even Mad Max made me sad as they carry the idea of the evil in us winning - our ruthlessness in destroying the entire planet, our ignorance towards the death of all life on earth in case of atomic war. Heck, for crying out loud, all these creatures and plants and organisms where never our enemies. We just share a habitat with them.
Now, what happened to our future?
Please, take some time and, remember your dreams for the future or human mankind as well as your own.
Please, look at the world around you, as it is now.
Is this world, the one you live in, still in accordance to what you had imagined it to be?
For me it is not. For me our future is bleak, as is the future for any living being on earth. We are on the brink of killing our planet, by destroying the balance within the habitat.
