“They didn't understand what they were doing.
I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race.” -Michael Crichton

   Michael Crichton has always been one of my favorite writers, only surpassed by George R.R. Martin and Edgar Allan Poe. If the name sounds familiar to you, it’s because Crichton wrote  numerous best sellers, many of which were turned into films. Does Jurassic Park ring a bell? Crichton wrote it. The Andromeda Strain? Crichton wrote it. Congo? Yep, you guessed it. Crichton wrote it. When I settled upon basing this paper on a Crichton quote, I sat for a good few minutes going over all the things he had said; all the highlights in my books. Crichton was a master of words, commanding them with power and elegance. I’ll probably end up attaching a page or two of my favorite Crichton quotes, and I hope it will encourage anyone who reads this to delve into the wonderful world of Michael Crichton novels. But now to the point.

    This quote weighs heavy on me, and has since I first read it. I think it is the best way to sum up humans. We don’t know what we’re doing; we’re sheep separated from the herd. Or as Crichton might say, ‘A leaf that doesn’t know it’s part of the tree.’ We are beings with immense potential, dropped into the world with no guidance. There are no guidelines, no instructors. Everything we have discovered we have discovered on our own, and I think it’s marvelous. Take a second to appreciate that fact. You’re reading this in English, a language that we created. I’m typing this on a computer, which is technology that we created. It’s amazing how we can learn these things. Our trials and errors yield spectacular results many times. But we must recognize that we do not always succeed. We fail, for we are humans. One day our failures will be too much, too extreme, too disastrous. Suddenly, we will cease to be. We don’t understand what we’re doing. We are mice in a maze. We don’t know where we’re going, but we want to get there. And to add to the challenge, someone turned out the lights.

    So, can we save ourselves from our own destruction? No, we can’t. This is where Crichton’s and my opinion differ. “The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us.” We have been abusing this planet and using it as an experiment for too long. We have done irreversible damage. We are past the point of no return, and that’s okay. The world will run it’s course, and we will end. There’s no reason to cry over it now, for what can we do? Are our ancestors to blame? Yes, and no. They were doing what is hardwired into each and every one of us. Experimenting, learning, discovering new things. Deconstructing the world around them. Part of me believes we shouldn’t blame ourselves for our lack of guidance and our ignorance. Maybe we were created for this exact reason. A trial run of sentient beings left to their own free will. Will they prevail, or will they perish? As I’ve made clear, I believe we will perish. 
“Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.” We have no one to blame but humanity. An act of God killed the dinosaurs. An act of curiosity will kill us.




Michael Crichton Quotes:

“No one escapes from life alive.”

“Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.”

“All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they'll tell you will be wrong.”

“Everyone has a hidden agenda. Except me!”

“Living systems are never in equilibrium. They are inherently unstable. They may seem stable, but they’re not. Everything is moving and changing. In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse.”

“In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.”

“It's hard to decide who's truly brilliant; it's easier to see who's driven, which in the long run may be more important.”

“We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so.”

“The purpose of life is to stay alive. Watch any animal in nature--all it tries to do is stay alive. It doesn't care about beliefs or philosophy. Whenever any animal's behavior puts it out of touch with the realities of its existence, it becomes extinct.”

“Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.”

“Power is neither male or female.”

“In the corner store we pulled fat bottles of water from the shelves. No one thinks it's weird that we have to buy clean water, and that's how I know we're going to hell.”

“Let's be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet - or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.”

“In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom. A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do. A sense that we are not amused.”

“Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes -- with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.”

“Nobody is driven by abstractions like 'seeking truth.”

“Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science.”

“Do you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.”

“They always say they didn't. I never heard of one who said, 'You know, I deserve this.' Never happens.”

“He prays because he knows he doesn't control it. He's at the mercy of it.”

“Nobody dares to solve the problems-because the solution might contradict your philosophy, and for most people clinging to beliefs is more important than succeeding in the world.”