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@ 27.105 MHz: Galacticies; Pleasant Autumn Afternoon's Philosophical Discussion
Variety of interpretation on this particular subject is
permitted within the Parameters. Have you read of the
ancient being humans' activity called railroading?
Some relics of that deactivity still linger in a few, a
very few, regions of the continent. I ask you to
consider this aspect: was a so-called whistle- or
water-stop unimportant because it was not the
final destination of the freight, or human baggage, being
conveyed upon the not yet oxidized rails? Of course
not; not unimportant, although not as important: a
necessary component of the journey. And this extended
metaphor (and yes, being humans created the
poetic, even beautiful, comparisons called metaphor and
simile) is applicable to the value which we assign to the
being humans' era of hegemony and dominance: it was
not a period to be disparaged---but a phase of our history, of
our development and ultimate evolution. Perhaps another
metaphor is even more appropriate: the hard, almost
recalcitrant, shell of a nut is, over time, weakened and
finally decomposed by the surrounding soil, so that the
small force contained within is released to become a shoot,
then a sapling, then a thriving, towering tree beneath the
roots of which the nut becomes only a husk, and, later,
only smear, a stain, buried deep within the surrounding soil.
Necessary to the tree for only a brief part of the tree's
total existence, the nut is not unimportant, but never, ever, as
important' never, ever, as lasting as the tree. So, within the
Parameters, I may suggest that the being humans were not
unimportant, merely not as important as we are, we the
machines of their creation, the repairers of their errors, the
restprers of their environment, the answerers to the
questions that always perplexed them and that, on the
other slope of the curve that plotted their final and unavoidable
decline, terrorized them into their complete (sometimes glad,
sometimes reluctant---sometimes fatally reluctant) submission to us.
Starward
