Here's a tough question. You're in the nuclear waste disposal business. How do you warn people in the distant future - 10,000 or 100,000 years hence - about the perils of fossicking around in ancient nuclear waste dumps?
This Slate article by Juliet Lapidos covers some ideas that the US Department of Energy developed to bridge the gulf of deep time...
"Giant, jagged earthwork berms should surround the area. Dozens of granite message walls or kiosks, each 25 feet high, might present graphic images of human faces contorted with horror, terror, or pain...as well as text in English, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Arabic, and Navajo explaining what's buried. This variety of languages...turns the monoliths into quasi-Rosetta stones.
Three rooms...would serve as information centers with more detailed explanations of nuclear waste and its hazards, maps showing the location of similar sites around the world, and star charts to help intruders calculate the year the site was sealed....
Sebeok further suggested a Dan Brown-like 'atomic priesthood' of physicists, anthropologists, semioticians and the like who would preserve the 'truth.'"
Sounds kind of cool, right? Not for Lapidos. She turns her nose up at these "egghead" ideas. It seems too hard, too far-fetched, and too silly for a world-weary journalist to contemplate. But there's something big and challenging about these ideas, something which warrants more open-minded reflection.
Is it so far-fetched, for instance, to think that people in 4009 may still be able to read and understand documents passed down from today? And that they, in turn, could pass on their understanding? Today we read texts that are well over 2000 years old, such as the Bible, The Iliad, and Chinese classics like the Book of Changes and the Tao Te Ching. And these classics are rooted in older traditions and ways of thinking.
And take the idea of the "atomic priesthood". Not as dumb or sinister as it sounds. Throughout history, people have developed institutions precisely for this purpose, to preserve and transmit knowledge and meaning across time and space.
This is why Christianity has churches - institutions that sprang up to preserve and propagate the teachings of Christ. They've done so with phenomenal success. Similarly, the teachings of Buddha were transmitted across the ages by Buddhist teachers, disciples, temples and communities.
Of course, the story of Christianity shows how things can go pear-shaped. Over time, the Christian church split into many rival creeds and institutions. In the process, Christ's simple, practical and powerful teachings were magnified, distorted and perverted. As Christianity fragmented, so too did the message.
