Sagan’s frown

I just finished watching the 1980 documentary series “Cosmos”, by Carl Sagan, the other day and got a somewhat depressing perspective of what has happened since.

This was a DVD version which featured a Cosmos Update at the end of most of the episodes, in which, 10 years later, Carl Sagan gives us a look at what’s going on. Sagan is always harsh on such events as the Dark Ages and the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, and, rightly so, on any event in which fear and superstition undermine the development of science, sometimes to disastrous consequences. Sagan’s fascination with the Library of Alexandria is awesome. In one episode he names it the place he would be, if he could travel in time and space to anywhere he wants. In another episode, he describes how the Library contained 123 plays by Sophocles, only something like 9 of which remain today, that it would be as if we had the text of such plays as “A Winter’s Tale” and “Love’s Labour’s Lost” by a William Shakespeare and only knew of the titles of others by the names of “Hamlet”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “King Lear”, “Romeo and Juliet”…

The 13th and final episode of the series is all about how humanity is on course to destroy itself, and questions about whether perhaps this is the fate of all technical civilizations, that perhaps in the cosmic scale all civilizations across the Universe promptly self-destruct immediately after achieving high technology. At the Cosmos Update at the end of the episode, an older Sagan speaks hopefully of fundamental changes in popular consciousness and the overcoming of ideological barriers exemplified by footage of the Berlin Wall being torn apart and Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem De Klerk shaking hands. So this was in 1990, and looking at history, I have to think that the single event that has set us back since then has been the election of George W. Bush as president of the United States.

I’m not saying he single-handedly did anything, but 8 years of policies from the world’s most influential nation inevitably have huge effects on the status quo of the world, and the general disposition of people and of other leaders across the world. I would like to know of a single event that may have undermined the development of humanity as a society more than his 8-year tenure as the US President. I know well what frown Carl Sagan would have on his face, were he still alive today.