Yes, I do believe that Man has the power to avert/modify many a gloom-and-doom scenario but probably not all of them. You see, it is quite impossible for Man to reverse the inexorable operation of natural law, e.g., the flipping of Earth about its axis every 24,000 years so that the north pole becomes the south pole and vice versa.
In one of Shakespeare's plays we see a couple of lines that go something like,
"The fault lies not in us but in the stars that we are underlings..." and someone said, "The stars incline, they do not compel.
"When beggars die, there are no comets seen,
The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes" (and, I believe, princesses, too.)
Recall that Comet Hale-Bopp came and went last March and Princess Diana died a few months later. There are folks who noted that 1997 was a very unusual and eventful year. We have had the Bre-X Fiasco, Marshall Applewhite departing for Hale-Bopp with 38 of his disciples, the ravages of El Nino, the death of celebrities, gold being consigned to the doghouse, the South-East Asian Crisis, a President threatened with impeachment, the looming Gulf War (that might evolve into WWIII), and gold being consigned to the dog house, etc, etc. |
