The Beethoven piano sonatas, pianist Louis Kentner once said, should be presented to the first Martian visitor to our planet as proof of what human civilization is capable of. Here, friend, we should say to the little green men. This is the best of us.
And I wondered what else we could give these little green women to show off. They will have been watching us for a while, cautiously, will have seen us destroying the environment of our world, seen us going to war, seen us hating, torturing, neglecting, damaging our fellow human beings. Seen us blindly following imaginary gods while rejecting the work of our best and brightest scientists.
So this better be good (and portable, can't give them Chartres cathedral, or a Rolls Royce, or Paleolithic cave art, or Hidcote Garden):
A Beethoven Sonata
A Puccini opera
A Shakespeare play
A Jane Austin novel
A Charles Dickens novel
The Magna Carta
The American Declaration of Independence
The Australian electoral commission rules
The Gettysburg address
Newton's Principia
Darwin's Origin of Species
Einstein's General relativity
A Rembrandt painting
A Van Gogh painting
A Stradivarius violin
A Faberge egg
A Tiffany Lampshade
A 'Peace' rose
A Cocker Spaniel
A Sebright bantam
A Bach concerto
An illuminated manuscript
A Macintosh computer
A poem by Keats
A song by the Beatles
Venus de Milo
Michelangelo's David
Rodin's Burghers
Silent Spring
Walden Pond
Pepys Diary
Ann Frank's Diary
A Mozart Symphony
A Michael Leunig cartoon
A Molly Ivins column
A Christopher Cooper column
A Phillip Adams column
A Meissen porcelain figure
A Bolshoi Swan Lake
There, that's my lot. What do you think would make the Little Green Men (and Women) want to have dinner with us rather than exterminating us? We talk every day about what is the worst of us. What is the best of us?
Modesty prevents me including the Watermelon Blog in the list. But green on the outside red on the inside would certainly make those green persons feel right at home. Just saying.
Follow David Horton on Twitter: www.twitter.com/watermelon_man
but NOT THE POND, please. We would miss it so!
http://services.bostonglobe.com/mas_assets/full/1889833800.jpg
Maybe it would be a good idea to take the little green People to Walden pond so they could live deliberately for a while? Then see what they had learned? Agape.
Navajo blanket
Inca gold figurine
Plato's Dialogues
Tao te Ching
Poems of Basho
Hokusai Print
Poems of Rumi
Rublev Icon
Galileo's telescope
Penicillin
Moon rock
Human Genome Map
Seems we're in the same stream of consciousness on this one. Agape. P&L!
Sarum
A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter Miller Jr.)
The Long and Winding Road (McCartney)
The Night Watch by Rembrandt
The Short Stories of Larry Niven
that movie by Kevin Kline where he pretended to be the President
All masterpieces of the West, but the West was great
Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On"
A Renoir painting
ONE FROGGY EVENING
A Verdi opera
A Euripides play
A Goya painting
DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER
A PRINCE VALIANT strip
Bartok's "Concerto for Orchestra"
"What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted"
IKIRU
DUCK AMUCK
TWIN PEAKS
"Red River Valley"
BROKEN BLOSSOMS
A Buster Keaton movie
A Gainsborough painting
Frederick Douglass' autobiography
J. Bronowski's THE ASCENT OF MAN
The Grimm brothers' fairy tales
THE ARABIAN NIGHTS
"Missa Luba"
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE
MOBY-DICK
THE GREAT GATSBY
PORGY & BESS
A painting by Lawren Harris (or any of Canada's Group of Seven)
A Tommy Makem album
Ice cream
An electric car
The Bhagavad Gita
A Sholom Aliechem story
An Isaac Bashevis Singer story
An Edgar Allen Poe story
A Katherine Anne Porter story
A Robert Frost poem
A William Butler Yeats poem
A Sappho poem
ULYSSES
Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party" is one of my favorites. Yet, Georges Seurat's (post impressionist) "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" is my all time favorite. It is something to behold.
O, Desiderata, you are such a brownie.
How about The 'CardioWest' temporary Total Artificial Heart (TAH‑t) was developed from the *Jarvik-7*?
Just a though, my mind is a flood with'em right now.
I was thinking the same thing.
It is one of the reasons my mind became a flood with thoughts, due to Dr. Horton's wonderfully aesthetic post.
It does point to the unrecognised and oft hurtful biases we in the West carry towards Humanity as a whole, I believe this meme is a remnant of religious dogma and antiquated theological and philosophical constructs.
It's hard to break these old bad habits.
Agape. (Love in fellowship of our shared fragile Humanity)
I know how some will carp about representing everyone on every continent and every race, so make it a big, big ol' suitcase and then you can include Wiki the Estonian Nose Piper (perhaps her classic 3rd album).
Really, though, if you had to choose, present the martians with a video of that guy who dove into the icy Potomac to rescue the struggling passenger after the plane crash. That's what makes us something other than an advanced ape.
I was just hoping to stimulate a bit of thought about the good things we do as a human species. What other things make you proud to be Homo sapiens. And hopefully, as the Earth rotates on its axis, yet again, people who are proud of the achievements of their branch of wise humans, will let me know what they are.
Incidentally I deliberately haven't included film or television having considered them elsewhere, and not wanting to produce an infinitely long list.
http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/42202/50_movies.html and
http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/69444/The_box_match.html