Small

I had a moment of clarity this morning. I realised how absolutely small my own mind was. Now, I'm not a moron and at times I've even been considered intelligent. So what was it that made me realise how small my mind is? For the past 18 months I've been living in Sydney, a city of four and half million people. I can't conceive of that many of anything. That number is simply beyond my comprehension, I can't understand the implication of 4.5 million. To me it's a pointless number since it just goes into the realms of big.

Now in the scheme of things, 4.5 million is small, tiny even. And I can't imagine that number in anything except as a number.


As a secondary part of this realisation, it started to become apparent to me how big God's mind is. While I don't understand 4.5 million, there are 6888 million people on the planet (6.9 billion) at the time of writing. And from what we are told, this number is also meaningless. Not because it is beyond comprehension due to it's massive nature. Instead of that, it's because it's such a small number that it doesn't even really register. Just think about that for a moment.
The population of the earth is such a small number that it doesn't really matter. It barely rates as a statistic.

OK, stop thinking about that now. Blow your mind on this little chestnut now. God knows every person on the earth individually. Every single one. With room to spare. Physically, emotionally, psychologically, everything.
To write out the genetic sequence of a single human being would apparently take the entirety of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. To put that into context, if you stack the full set, it comes in at roughly 2 metres thick, almost 6 foot and 7 inches. Multiply that by 6.9 billion.
I won't go into number of cells in the human body because that really is meaningless numbers with ten trillion.
The human brain itself is still considered the greatest computer built due to it's incredible processing power and the level of it's contextual separation. If there has been one goal of software advancement, it has been to achieve this. God not only can do it (look at the human brain for example) but knows each different one individually and completely.
and I can't comprehend the number 4.5 million.

Optimism

Frank Fenner died on November the 22nd. His first expected time of death was during the mid 50's when he knowingly injected himself with a virus in order to prove it's safety. In 1980, he announced to the world that smallpox no longer existed outside of laboratories. Earlier this year, he announced to the world that we would be extinct within 100 years. To come to this conclusion marks a drastic change in the way he thought thirty years ago.

And there in lies one of the problems. Optimism is only short lived. Almost by definition (at least in my experience as a pessimistic realist).
Humanity can't cope with positivity. We see it in the news. Only one day in three gives us a positive news story and these are usually shunted to the end of the paper or the report as a 'human interest' story.

For Frank Fenner to inject himself with Myxomatosis, a virus which he had studied strictly for it's fatal capabilities took optimism. He did it for the express purpose of proving its safety for humans. And his gamble paid off. Myxomatosis was used for 40 years to keep the rabbit population controlled in Australia.

For Frank Fenner to announce that smallpox no longer existed took optimism. Everyone knows about carriers. His announcement marked the point at which vaccines were made. If there was even one carrier who managed to pass on the disease, there could have been monumental casualties before the vaccine was distributed again. Now smallpox only exists in two places, a vault in Atlanta, and a vault in Koltsovo. Here it is used to study virology and to develop vaccines for other diseases.

For Frank Fenner to announce that the Human race was doomed, all he had to do was look around. He gives a few reasons. Overpopulation (he is quoted as saying "If you want to protect children from the vast number of infectious diseases, vaccination is by far the best way to do it. If on the other hand, you wish to act against overpopulation, don't vaccinate anyone, including your own children.") key among them. Other reasons include Global Warming or Climate Change and a lack of food (causing wars as a result of the distribution).

I don't particularly want to answer any of these as I think I've discussed most of his concerns in some way or another during my time here. However, what I want to do is consider briefly the difference between his optimism and his pessimism.

For his optimism he risked death at his own hands.
For his optimism, he worked day and night for something that would statistically never affect him.
For his optimism he was rewarded with a literally changed world.
For his optimism, he achieved something that had never previously and has never since been done (the eradication of a infectious disease in humans).

For his pessimism, he gave up.