Small World

Our Earth has 7 separate land masses (continents) and 4 isolated oceans where countless living things of all sizes, shapes, and functions can be found. Each of these living things is pretty much confined to a specific territory where it will spend its whole life. The human population numbered in the 7 billion can be found only on the 7 land masses. We have built roads, bridges, trains, cars, ships, and airplanes so that each person can go wherever one wants and spend one’s life however one chooses. But, in reality, most of the people will spend their life working for a living in order to raise a family. For leisure, most people will socialize with friends, go to a restaurant, and or see a movie in the local area. Once a year, most people will take a vacation and venture out of the familiar confine to visit relatives or sightseeing in faraway places. Today, from newspaper, TV, and Internet, each person can know what are happening around the whole world while staying happily in one’s small world.

City

Most of the population is concentrated in the cities that have sprung up all over the 7 continents to accommodate the ever expanding human inhabitants. The city provides the basic necessities for its people to spend their life in a relatively peaceful and comfortable environment. There are:

1. Hospitals to relief pain and sufferings,

2. Schools to offer education on how to live in the city,

3. Markets to provide food,

4. Transportations to help people get from one place to the other,

5. Law enforcements to make sure that people resolve their differences in civilize ways, etc.

   To live in a city, each person only needs to learn:

1. Laws of the land,

2. Rules and regulations of conducting private and public affairs,

3. Skills to work in an office, factory, or entertainment, etc.

Knowledge

The city is built from scratch over several thousand years by countless people with the accumulated knowledge in:

1. Archeology – It teaches how to look for and dig up our past,

2. Architecture - It teaches how to build structures that are pleasing to the senses and that can also withstand the ravage of weather and time,

3. Agriculture – It teaches how to grow crops under adverse environmental conditions,

4. Politics – It teaches how city shall be governed, how and what public services shall be provided,

5. Engineering – It teaches how to apply scientific knowledge to design and build machines that improve the quality of life,

6. Sociology – It teaches how people from all walks of life can live in harmony,

7. Laws - It teaches the importance of law and order, how to enact, enforce, and embrace the laws,

8. Economics – It teaches how to improve and conduct business, etc.

Challenge

Most people are contented to live in the city for the material comfort, physical safety, social interaction, and let other people to worry the challenges that our civilization is facing:

1. How to find more natural resources to provide the energy demanded by the city,

2. How to grow and cultivate more food to feed an constantly expanding population,

3. How to prevent nations from going to war over ideological and territorial disputes,

4. How to find cure to the constantly mutating diseases and virus,

5. How to prevent the global warming and the extinction of the endangered species,

6. How to control the proliferation of the WMDs, etc.

Solution

It is no small task to keep 7 billion independent-minded people happy, healthy, and hopeful. It is by no accident that through the ages, there were leaders who knew when and what things needed to be done and people with special talents who knew how things needed to be done. They had the ability to venture outside their small world to face and solve the uncommon problems that exposed:

1. The infinitesimal world of the atom – the building block of all animated and in-animated things.

2. The chemical world of Carbon that no living thing can do without,

3. The biological world of DNA that contains the blueprint from which each living thing is built,

4. The artificial intelligent world of Silicon that makes the computer, internet, and iPhone possible,

5. The infinitely large world of the Universe that is the home to billions and billions of stars including our Sun, etc.

   The world we exist in is more than that meets the eyes. We are the only living things on Earth with the ability to understand its complexity, to find and make use of its hidden resources, to figure out how the journey of life started and the process that lead to our emergence, to ponder who are behind all these intelligent designs, what the plan is installed for us and the destiny awaiting. Each person lives in a small world and can comprehend only so much. Together, over times, the Universe will be within our reach.