Accident vs design

Our presence on Earth today and life as we know it is pure accident. This was no design. Our planet that we call home today had a violent beginning about 4.5 billion years ago. It was a place full of fire and violence. Its collision with another celestial body, which most scientists theorise to be Mars, separated a portion from the infant planet. That part became the moon. The fact that that celestial body would move to its orbit around the Earth and play the role of slowing down the Earth’s rotation to an extent where life as we know it would become possible is a great example of an accident, both literally and metaphorically.

Single cellular life emerged on Earth followed by more complex life. Darwin’s natural selection showed us that environmental and other factors played a role in how certain traits and physical organs were retained, benefitting survival and further replication. One thing led to another and the next thing was the emergence of a new kind of organism. One cannot draw a straight line from day one to today except tumbling upon different events that changed the direction of life on Earth.

Had that iridium asteroid not hit the Yucatan peninsula in present-day Mexico, the Dinosaurs would still be roaming on Earth. The ice age was followed by the Agricultural Revolution, which gave us the ability to produce food. Man started to focus on capturing more and more territory unleashing the dawn of civilisation and war. That led to Capitalism, which Yuval Harari argues was instrumental in supporting and advancing scientific exploration. On another Earth-like planet, the odds of human beings present and fighting over issues such as skin color, vaccines, cricket and so forth are hardly possible. A different chain of events there may have defined what life or intelligent life looks or looked like. In a nutshell, the history of biology on Earth can be traced more to chance than design.

Fascinating and liberating as it may sound, the state of our environment as it is today and as it is deteriorating by the day, is no accident. This one is sheer design. And by that I don’t mean divine intervention but rather absolutely Sapien-ised, if you will. Climate change is the result of human activity. This is also perhaps the most vivid example of disruption because it has intervened and changed the direction of that mega project that was happening by accident during every step of the evolutionary journey.

Compared to the accidents in nature, our actions rooted in design can bring the evolutionary voyage to a dead end. Historically, the entrepreneurs among us focused on the short term benefit have always done so at the cost of the long term. Stream was replaced by steam, which changed the direction of clean energy production to dirty. Water machines used to be the norm not too long ago. The accident in nature changed the direction of life, whereas man’s design changed the direction of lifestyle.

The unpredictable weather patterns, the lack of habitable lands, the declining access to clean water and fresh air, the thawing of the snow, sea level rise, civil wars, migration, crop destruction, wildfires, super floods, pandemics, and so forth are some of those certainties that will make the future quite uncertain. The damage to the environment has been done more knowingly than unknowingly. This can hardly be classified as natural or accidental.

While the evolution of life and the journey toward intelligent life on Earth was the result of uncertain and unknown accidents on every step, the future of humanity’s fate is quite uncertain due to known actions. If we do not abandon the usage of fossil fuel, and we are not, then the unpredictable weather patterns, unknown floods, unseen heat, and unheard of events as a result of the chain reaction of climate change would become our fate.

The accident caused us. And we are ending us by design.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 13^th, 2022.

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