房龍與地理

April 22 is the Earth Day.  People worry about the deteriorating condition of the earth and the danger of surviving chance of human beings on earth.  This reminds me of a good old book written by Willem Hendrik VanLoon, "The Story of the World", a sister book of "The Story of Mankind", one of the most famous book he has ever written.  Actually this is the subtitle of the book, the original title is "Van Loon's Geography".  The uniqueness of the book can be seen from the first page of the book: "History is the Fourth Dimension of Geography.  It gives it both time and meaning."  The book was written in 1931, not long after the publish of the Theory of  Relativity by Einstein.  We live in a universe of four dimensions-Space and Time.  Similarly, we live in a world of four dimensions-Geography and History.

The book starts with an incredible and shocking story that shows the relatively little significance of human beings in the universe.  All people in the world were put in a box of 0.5 mile on each side.  It was hauled to the top of the Grand Canyon of Arizona, tipped over to the cliff and crushed into the bottom of the Colorado River.  Then came with silence and oblivion.  The human sardines in their mortuary chest would soon be forgotten.  The Canyon would go on battling wind and air and sun and rain as it has done since it was created.  The world would continue to run its even course through the uncharted heavens.  The astronomers on distant and nearby planets would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

The above sounds like a terrible story to most people.  Yes, it can happen one day in the future if we, human beings, do not pay attention to how fragile the condition of our earth to our survival as a species in the universe.  The earth is like a ship. We are all of us fellow-passengers on the same ship and we are all of us equally responsible for the happiness and well-being of the ship in which we happen to be on board.  Let's hope our ship not become Pequod of Moby Dick and our leaders not like Captain Ahab.