Rough Draft # 1

( I had a hard time starting this paper, and I am still searching for more quotes from the text to support my ideas. It is pretty choppy right now...but here is what i have so far.)




One of the greatest rights of human beings is the power to think. In both Kim Vicente‘s ‘The Human Factor’ and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” the authors challenge their readers to take a deeper look at the meaning of their text. They debate the good or evil of technology and the affects which it will have on the world. How far is too far? When will our desire to be bigger and better no longer be a gift, but a curse?
In “Cats Cradle” Kurt Vonnegut almost mocks the way which we exist. He talks about religion and the beliefs which humans hold. His main point is that we believe what we are told, and many of us refuse to question. Christians believe there is a God. They do not need to see him or have proof. They have been told that he exists, and that is enough to keep their faith. Perhaps people do not question their religion because they don’t want to know the truth really. Religion is a comfort. We need to believe that there is a point to our existence, and that we have been placed on this earth for a reason. If there was no life after heaven, reincarnation, or any form of life after death, what would drive us to want to live purposeful lives? He refers to a “religion” called Bokonan often throughout this book. He says that Bokonan is based on lies and there is no real truth in this world. When talking about Bokonan’s cosmogony of how the world came to exist he says, “And what opinions did Bokonan hold of his own cosmogony? “Foma! Lies! he wrote, “ a pack of foma!”(191). Perhaps humans think too much about things which do not matter, and choose to completely ignore the things which need to be paid more attention to. Instead of being so consumed by our religion, maybe we should begin paying more attention to the impact that our technology is having on the world. The character of Dr. Hoenniker almost takes the role of god in a sense. He is so powerful and smart that he was able to kill millions of people with the creation of an atom bomb. In the end, he also destroyed the world with his creation of “ice nine”. It was not God that we had to be fearful of, but man himself.
Kim Vicente also touches on this idea in “The Human Factor” where facts indicate that perhaps it is not technology which is “bad” but humans. Our desire to become the best and most advanced may in the end be our ultimate down fall. At what point will we be content with our achievements and be able to live at peace with what we have evolved into? At this time in our history, it is hard to grasp the idea that we may ever reach a point in our lives where we decide to no longer keep pushing our limits of knowledge and create new technology.
The greatest problem with technology is that is used by humans, and created by humans, leaving room for human error. A nuclear power station ( created by humans, and operated by humans) caused a catastrophic event of historic proportions. Extremely advanced technology was placed in the hands of a human who did not have adequate knowledge of the system. This human error of placing technology in the wrong hands lead to a nuclear explosion. For 9 days the fire from the nuclear power plant burned, releasing radioactive particles into the environment. “The six hundred people unlucky enough to be working at the plant that evening received very high doses of radiation and many later suffered lingering or fatal diseases. The 116,000 people who were evacuated from the neighboring farms and town received lower but still significant doses of radiation. The 600,000 military and civilian workers who heroically helped put out the fires, evacuate the public, and clean up the disaster were also exposed to high levels of radiation. The number of cases of thyroid cancer among children in the area has increased. One of the most significant health effects of the Chernobyl accident was the mental anguish and trauma experienced by the local population. Large areas of land can no longer be used for agricultural purposes and food is still monitored for radiation over an even larger area. (12). The impact of this explosion transcends to geographical borders such as the Soviet Union, England, Scandinavia, Southern Europe, Canada, United States, and even Japan.
If one man made invention can affect the world that largely, what will be the affects of an incident like this in years to come when the technology is even bigger and more powerful?
Humans must find their limits. Technology placed in the wrong hands will ultimately lead to our termination. However, it is hard to try and place limits on technology when so many of our advancements our seen as nothing but good. It is hard to tell a doctor that he cannot take his stem cell research any further. But should he take his research further? If we have the ability to clone someone, should we? Just because we can do it, does not make it right. Yes, cloning could save many lives and cure many diseases, but we would than have to place limitations on what or who can be cloned. If people just decided they wanted to clone themselves all over the world our population would double within a year. There would not be enough resources to support a population that large.
At this point in time, it is hard to look to the future and imagine a world that has become destroyed by technology. However, technology is beginning to evolve faster than ever before, and it is a problem that we must always be worried about. Humans are considered animals, yet we are the only animal that seems to have the desire to constantly evolve and change our way of life. If it is not broke, why do we insist on trying to fix it? In “Cats Cradle” Kurt Vonnegut writes,
"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;Man got to tell himself he understand." (182)
I think in this passage Vonnegut is referring to this desire of ours to always change. Tigers have been hunting the same way which they have always hunted for thousands of years. Birds have been flying the same way since the age of the dinosaurs. Their whole way of life has been the same throughout their whole inhabitance on earth. Yet, man cannot simply be content with one way of adequate survival. They are plagued with the need to think about everything, and always want more. They don’t want to just simply survive from day to day the same they always have. Humans need more, we need to push our limits, we need to find our breaking points. In the end, this will be the destruction of ourselves.