The Accidental Age

For years I have been searching in vain for a phrase for our period in time. It has stymied me, confounded and enthralled me because surely in naming our period of time, some clarity can come to what is happening in the world. The Accidental Age may not be the most perfect name, but it certainly describes the situation that we find ourselves. Quite by accident (and I mean that in the evolutionary sense) humanity finds itself in the position where a few individuals can perpetrate destruction on a scale never before imagined.

This truly is quite accidental. In my search for some way to frame this current age I began to examine some of my own preconceptions concerning not only the human race, but human civilization itself. I began to realize that civilization is not a guarantee. I have witnessed over the past several years an appalling disregard for the rules that make civilization work. Basic rules. Rules that were supposed to be taught to us in kindergarten. Rules like standing in line.
Who would have thought that people would have stampeded into a Wal-mart simply to get the best deal on a flat screen TV or a new digital camera or cheap toilet paper.

Not just stampeded mind you, but killed a man in the process.

Terrorists run into a hotel in Bombay (oops, Mumbai) and suddenly 200 people are dead.

Greek youths riot and run crazy and attack the cradle of Western civilization.

Tens of thousands of factories close in China.

The prices for heavy metals decline at precipitous levels, as does the price of oil.

And somewhere out there, enterprising individuals who are not interested in the accumulation of wealth, or the progress of human knowledge, or the creation of art...oh no, they are interested only in destruction. They do not think of the aftermath, for the aftermath for them is already guaranteed and they have no concerns other than they are doing God's work.

It really is an accident that humanity survived a population bottleneck, that we survived the last glacial period and that we managed to not kill everyone in the last ten thousand years.
In short, the very appearance of humanity itself might be viewed as a grand cosmic accident.

Life has continued for billions of years without the presence of sentience. Yet here humanity arrives, sentient and ready to act.

Or is our sentience merely an illusion?

No matter, I dub this the Age of Accidents. For the bigger and more complex we grow, the more likely that what would have constituted as a small accident a few thousand years ago (the appearance of a deadly virus for instance) could now become a human accident.