[photo: Great Wall of China, 2012, JAVanDevender]
When it comes to expense, dedicated effort, toll of human lives in construction, exploitation of available technology, etc. perhaps no other human endeavor stands as high in testimony to man's achievements as the Great Wall of China.
Certainly more impressive things in an absolute sense have been accomplished. We have gone to the moon... we have changed the world through communications... we have advanced in medical technology beyond anything ever imagined... and, let's face it, we have come up with more extraordinary ways to maim, terrify and kill each other than all who ever went before. But, when one walks the Great Wall and realizes how far it extends, how difficult its location, how primitive were the tools and how marvellously complex it really is, then it does appear (and is) impressive.
Yet what is it, one must ask, that is the most prevalent effect of all such accomplishments? Are we to gain from these great endeavors such as the building of pyramids, the advance of technology, the construction of great cities with their attendent provision, that they stand as testimony to man's indomitable will, his widely celebrated ultimate ability to overcome whatever circumstance or obstacle confronting his ambition? At root, is man always the pioneer, charging full tilt at the imposing wilderness, facing its terrors, finding a path through its shadowy terrors, and ultimately standing, iron-jawed and victorious, on the mountain precipice gazing at the beautiful valleys he will descend to inhabit?
Certainly that very ideal has formed the story line of countless novels, histories, movies and poems. From the Odyssey to Shawshank Redemption and Star Trek, man has found himself down but never out... and with pluck, ingenuity and grim determination, has perservered and conquered.
So, it would seem that this is the lesson which the testimony of man's achievements might teach us. But, I ask, is the the effect of that particular lesson itself? Is it not true that the most prevalent effect of man's achievements is to lead man to focus on himself... to form undue high opinions of his own capabilities... to be way too quick to pat himself on the back... and, most disastrously, to face horrible possibilities with smug complacency, unduly certain that, whatever may come, a way will be found to make it alright.
It is at least debatable whether or not the Great Wall actually furnished any military advantage to the Chinese people, or, it it did, was it proportional to its great cost. The greatest return on investment to man's achievement in walking on the moon was ultimately the technology itself... the few hundred pounds of moon rock's brought back were not that impressive. Our great cities exist in amazing complexity, but the human toll is enormous also and the lives aptly described by Thoreau:
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Human achievement, after all, is just that. It never escapes the "human" part. It carries with it, not only the evidence of ingenuity, but also the testimony to finitude, to broken-ness, to pathetic wishfulness, to the longing for transcendence but to despair of the same. Man looks at the stars and sees himself, his achievements and all his glory as nothing but an anthill on the picnic ground of God.
What all human achievement should teach us is humility. "For what is man that You should take note of him?" Man stands as testimony to the One who created Him. All of man's achievements must confirm that testimony, and further it, by pointing to the Creator who has created sub-creators whose finite efforts metaphorically point beyond themselves to the beauty to which they can only aspire.
Then it is that lifting our eyes to the heavens we can say... "Thank you for giving me life and breath and being so that by some achievement I can by some measure imitate Your work and thereby bring glory to Your name."
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