Welcome to the New Year

Well it's now 2012 and the year of civilisation's demise if the Mayans are to believed. There are many out there who prophecise the end of the world is nigh and that we are all doomed. Well I for one hope that is not true.

As a species the human race is the first in our known history capable of destroying itself. It is also capable of overcoming adversity beyond comprehension. We are powerful and strong but at the same time small and weak. We have the ability to do and have already done many great things. Yet unfortunately Newton is right in so much as for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. We as a human race have done many negative and bad things throughout history.

It is the mark of a civilisation that it grows, learns, adapts and achieves a higher purpose. Human beings are a long way from reaching that higher purpose whatever it may be. This is why we have religion and this is why we believe so passionately about some kind of omnipotent higher being. And this takes me back to a discussion that I had as a Varsity student in the early hours of he morning in a cramped room having been out most of the night drinking copious amounts of alcohol. A discussion that was repeated frequently over my student life, yet a discussion that is relevant and important today.

My first degree, physics, taught me that our ultimate goal with regards to understanding the universe was something called th Grand Unification Theory. The idea that all the forces of the universe were mathematically aligned to be part on one ultimate force and therefore co-joined and integral to each other. My friends the philosophers would classify this as some kind of measure of the soul, my theologist friends would call it God. And my legal friends argued that it could never exist as we could not prove it.

And there lies the dilemma for if we are part of some overwhelming force and energy source then by the very nature of force and energy change is inevitable. That means there are natural cycles of everything because one thing that I learned and was the golden rule was that energy can neither be created nor destroyed merely changed.

So I hope the world doesn't end in 2012 but I also hope that we learn from our past mistakes and change our human direction. Kindness overcomes hostility, friendship overcomes pain and love, well that simply make the world go round.

Wishing you a happy 2012 and hope that all your hopes, wishes and dreams come true.