Humans: Explorers or Settlers?

Man- The Quintessential explorer

The monsoon season has commenced in Mumbai. Any average Mumbaikar will reminisce of the numerous drenched walks back home. The plethora of Chai-Pakoras photos of the first rains gives us a sense of normalcy that something anticipated has arrived. Nature has given us seasons. The cyclic nature of the seasons give us a sense of stability. The months of June- July is the start of another season- Academic results announcements of the matriculation and Higher matriculation of students. It’s a downpour of Emotions-Ecstasy and in most cases disappointment (because the eternal pursuit of self-made unrealistic expectations). These results are treated as a single most focal point of our lives that define who we shall be in the future. This scene is perfectly encapsulated in the Bollywood film: “Lage Raho Munnabhai”- in which the character Batuk Maharaj (in our case: Society) apparently defines the future and decides on the collective psyche to path of ‘success’.  For most of us this path (Engineering or Medical) is a well-documented series of years and years of mental conditioning for the sure shot chance of successful (underlying meaning: stable) lives. We define our life graph through graduation degrees, plush jobs, powerful designations and dollar/ Rupee Earnings. The bare reality is that we strive hard to adhere to this path and settle into the pair of gloves of Sustenance which is stitched by the ‘idea of stable lives’.

Christopher Columbus' sea exploration of Americas

A brief history of mankind shows man to be the quintessential explorer. The sea explorers, land explorers and with the advent of Space X we have space explorers too. The bug of curiosity always defined us as species on the earth. Even the female protagonist in horror movies must check out the knocking on the door in the middle of the night even when she inherently knows that the ghost stands on the other side. In fact, I remember one of my childhood incidences where I purposefully cut my palm with a blade to test its sharpness. There was an important lesson of inquisitiveness though I had to pay the price of this curiosity with a visit to the hospital. I’m sure each one of us had this in-built curiosity to explore the unknown. For primitive man, it was the pursuit of finding food which led to mass migration from Africa to the other continents. In every era, curiosity led to new explorations which painted the future.

Neil Armstrong: Space explorer

The 1800-1900s was a glorious time for the human explorers. Science, Astronomy and Geology progressed leaps and bounds with man’s scientific curiosity. Men all around the world contested the discovery of new elements in the periodic table. The scientific curiosity peaked for Humphrey Davy and he discovered at least 6 elements in the periodic table. What was the need for them to find out the age of the earth or the mass of the earth? Something which led them to the concept of carbon dating and the formation of the constant ‘G’ to calculate mass of objects. What was the need to find out the speed of light or sound? It gave us answers to the way Galaxies and stars were born and behaved. Light was made up of various wavelengths and that’s why the sky is blue. Different wavelengths of waves gave rise to infrared and X-rays which have immense use in medical and electronics. The new-found knowledge of tectonic plates told us about the history of continents and the composition of earth’s core. The liquid core of the earth is responsible for the earth’s magnetic field. This magnetic field has helped us survive by deflecting the harmful cosmic waves.  These cosmic waves from the SUN are filled with energy which are trapped in our atmosphere in the oceans and the forests. This energy gets translated into food through photosynthesis which sustains us. The carbohydrates, proteins and fats fuel the engine of human curiosity. The earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old. If we condense the entire earth’s age into a day starting from 12 a.m., man appears to have arrived not before 11:58 p.m. And in those 2 minutes has managed to explore the previous 23 hours and 58 mins and the everything between an atom and cosmos. The body of work done to define the universe through observations, quantum equations, chemical experiments, industrial revolution and a deeply ingrained quality to explore is beyond human calculations.

Humphrey Davy- Discovering new elements

The big question to ask is are we producing explorers or settlers through our education system. Are they both correlated? Albert Einstein and the great Indian mathematician Ramanujam are paragon of individuals who did not do well in their educational system but went onto changing the world with their contributions to theoretical physics and mathematics. Yet here we (I am guilty to this too) fight for every ounce of appreciation derived through marks and equate our self-worth to it. The path to stability crosses this bridge of matriculation marks, competitive exam rankings for Engineering and MBAs. Family status is defined on how well we cross these bridges to become successful in life. It is the new Game of Thrones in our current lives: House of Starks and Lannister are replaced by House of Engineers, House of Doctors and House of MBAs which fight among each other for the Iron Throne of Stability or ‘Success’. Glorious it may sound but we are nothing but settlers.

IS there a need for explorers in today’s world?

In my childhood, Mathematics was my favorite subject. I enjoyed geometry. I had formulated a theorem on equilateral triangle area through use of medians. For me that moment was a Eureka moment. Needless to say, that moment was short lived as I was taught about it in the next year in school. This experience gave me a brilliant insight. Is there anything remaining to be explored? The answer is Yes. Even though the world is finite, our realm of imagination has not reached that finite number.  Then why do we struggle to tune our mental frequency towards efforts of foraging into the world of unknown and explore. The threshold to get into it is too high for us. Let me illustrate with an example of elements in the periodic table. A simple idea (not simple at that time) of electrolysis isolated the metals Calcium and Potassium and Humphrey Davy got the credit of discovering them. All the elements naturally occurring have been found. The newly found elements do not even last for more than a second in the nature and the efforts to isolate them are tremendous (May be 1 in a million efforts). When we know that the threshold is so high, we naturally refrain and go to a peaceful life of a ‘Settler’

Man's next goal: After exploration/sustenance, how to make lives better

Then where does this tussle of Explorers v/s Settlers leave us. The human brain is not the best in the world without a reason. Now we try to find out gaps in the current world and try to use our intellect and energies to bridge them. We try to improve the efficiency of our living. In other words, we try to make our lives comfortable and there is a whole scientific ecosystem around it. Start Ups evolved to deliver food and medicines to our home. Entertainment on one touch. Work from home to eliminate real estate costs and have a comfortable homely experience for employees. Invention of automatic cars for us to conserve our energy in shifting gears. Robotic surgeries to better medical results and painless procedures. High rise buildings to accommodate all our dreams to live in the big city of opportunities. “Lets make things better”-  said Philips to this lifestyle and we gracefully agree.

Man’s search for Meaning in life started with exploration of the unknown, transitioned through settlement and now boiled down to better this life. Let’s explore and continue this wild ride into the unknown.

“Exploration really is the essence of the human spirit, and to pause, to falter, to turn our back on the quest for knowledge, is to perish”      – Frank Borman