Progress

The other day I drove by an old ruined hunk of building beside an abandoned railroad.

It made me melancholy to see such a scene of degradation and it reminded me of the old adage that everything is impermanent. That, though man builds skyscrapers, they don't last forever, and are eventually demolished. This means that man himself is conquerable, because he dies and even his most exalted works are passing. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, right.

No.

A person who would take my sad scene as an example of the impotence of man is failing to see that the railroad and building were most likely abandoned in favor of a more efficient mode of transportation. Or the company who owned it was driven out of business by a superior competitor. Or any number of other scenarios, but in no instance is it a testament to universal failure.

Skyscraper's are torn down by men; not some un-named all-powerful malevolent force bent on the destruction of man. The reason they are torn down is to make way for bigger and/or better things. Nothing is permanent because everything is constantly being improved, and that is the defining trait of human history - progress. It is stagnation humans should fear, not change and improvement.