CHAPTER I

A lovely looking tree

Many people instinctively feel that in today's society, appearance and reality are more and more diverging. Something is profoundly in the wrong. But what is it exactly? We are faced with overpopulation, poverty, climate change and, perhaps, the catastrophe of an atomic war. Distressed, alienated people, destroyed nature and a meaningless life shape our "modern" society.

While every technical innovation is welcomed as progress, the feeling remains that genetic engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence and other achievements are perhaps not the solution to our problems but instead will disturb the equilibrium of life even more than it is the case already, because every achievement seems to have considerable "side effects". For example, the highly praised medical progress is the main reason for the root of most of the problems that humanity faces today, the overpopulation.

Although industrial agriculture allows the food supply for much more people than traditional or natural methods such as permaculture, it ruins the soil in the long run and the extensive use of pesticides causes the disappearance of many species, apart from the dangers of genetically modified food. For each problem solved, several others seem to appear.

The enthusiasm, however, is nonetheless persistent: "We will get things under our control, with more and more comprehension and knowledge, and the resulting technology! We will shape nature as we want, and eliminate all the adversities of life!"

A great promise! In which most people seem still to believe. But actually, who gave us that promise in the first place?

Was there not an abstruse tale talking about a tree, which would be lovely to look at and be funny because it made wise? And of a serpent in a garden that deceived two naive nudes and told them they could be like God?