Who Do We Think We Are?

Even on a bright cloudless day as we fly into the lower atmosphere, at an altitude, say, of five thousand feet, when we look down at the earth’s surface we find that we can no longer make out individual human beings. To our naked eye people are invisible, just too tiny to be seen ---which is what we ordinarily mean by microscopic---like looking at the surface of a basketball and not being able to see bacteria or other microbes residing there.

As a thought experiment, reduce our 5000 foot distance from the earth’s surface by a factor of 5000, and likewise the diameters of the earth and everything on it, but leave unchanged our normal naked-eye ability to see details in a visual field. At this scale we would be just a foot away from the surface of a huge sphere over a mile and a half in diameter, but no matter how thoroughly we examined the surface (unaided by magnifying tools), we would find no humans, for they would indeed be invisible, microscopic.

Why is any of this relevant? That might well be the mother of all questions, to borrow a metaphor popular just half a decade ago. At the very least, what we have here is a refreshing take on the ‘human situation’, so to speak. Things are hot and heavy down here, but nudge the observer’s perspective just a little, give it a minor tweak, and we top-drawer human primates are as though mere microscopic specks living and dying on this big ball we’re on. And not doing a very good job of it as a species---poisoning the wells, fouling the nest every which way. Who do we think we are? Hot stuff, that’s who. Lord and master, made in God’s image. As our half-pint-sized small fry tend to exclaim so wisely, LOL!