Human ingenuity has driven the success of our modern species for over 50,000 years.  It is the great nature of our species to be able to create magnificent things that ease our lives, free up our time, enlighten us, move us forward at an ever greater pace, and at the same time, they have the potential to destroy us.  Whenever something new is created, even for the betterment of mankind, we cannot know what the final result of its production might be.  As simple as it sounds, I always liked the saying that for every action there is a reaction.  On its simplest level, this may mean that when we speak harshly to someone they may pop  us in the nose, but on  a grander scale there are always unseen affects for everything that is brought forth into our world from an idea to a machine to a theory to a book to a discovery.  We do not have to look very far to see that in the act of publishing The Communist Manifesto, a new political theory brought about monumental changes in the political system in many countries.  Furthermore, by reading something like Animal Farm, we are enlightened enough to see that the reaction to communism in action was not nearly what Marx thought it might be when he first imagined a world owned and controlled by the proletariat. 

Einstein could not help but pursue the atomic bomb as his mind teemed with ability and, yes, ingenuity, but he regretted deeply his part in the creation of a weapon of mass destruction once he saw the reaction (use) based on his initial action. 

Sometimes I think that instead of merely stating, “Let’s create this because we are able to do it”, we should be asking ourselves “Should we create this just because we can?”  We might also ask ourselves, “What will the implications be if we do this?” “Should we do this?” “What are the possible “reactions” or implications of our creation?”

I would actually take this a step further.  Many of us think that none of this applies to us as we are not the next great inventor or creator, but even the act of creating a piece of music can have implications that we might never realize.  When we choose to demand cheap clothing, fireworks, sex, or electronic objects, we put others at risk.  When we choose to have on more electrical lights than we need or to take a twenty minute shower, our actions will cause some reaction in the simplest form.  Some poor adult or child will have to work as a near slave in order to fill our order; the traffic in humans will continue to fill our sexual or labor needs; water will become an increasingly scarce commodity. But here is where it becomes the most critical.  In our desire to stop some of these egregious reactions to our actions, we may harm people.  For instance, if we all stop buying fireworks, what happens to the communities who depend upon the income?  Will there be a means to replace their lost income? 

Thinking is like that.  Actions call upon our deepest reserves to figure out what to do next.  It is easy to throw our hands up in the air and say it doesn’t matter, but it does.  Our ingenuity is our life blood, but we must use it to engineer the betterment of many, not just our own needs.