What a strange sort of species we are. As all others got bigger teeth, sharper claws, and quicker strides, we managed to tool our way out of the natural reject pile, in turn usurping the top spot of the predatory chain through a cognitive back door. How fitting, then, for our string-tied stones and sticks to themselves evolve to such beasts of devices, able to crater mountains at the push of a button. Like an animal enlarging its own teeth, sharpening its own claws, we have actively re-endowed our own ferocity, so much as to exceed the scope of possible targets. I dare say an animal that could claw the world in two so fairly might.
This is, indeed, where we stand. Majestic creatures that need to be mindful of the animal types that would otherwise tremble and disappear in their newly natural wake. The only classes we tend to intentionally eliminate include the pestilent, and the human, for whom we invented the bulk of our weaponry. Yes, one human may actively prime the harpoon and willfully slaughter every bit of a shark, but the human masses typically do not aim to destroy the shark masses in their entirety, as much as the same actions define both. The fishman wants to both do his job, and keep it, after all. That is the crux of the short-term versus long-term, individual versus collective matrix. Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and eventually, nobody eats.
Collective behaviour is uncontrolled momentum. It can move so slowly, a potentially defective lumbering in fact concealing the ideas and actions that gain in strength, gaining until reaching such a size and speed as to become finally visible and heavily problematic. We are all people without whom the collective entity would not exist, yet we are each near-powerless to drive it off course, like sentient drops in a crashing wave. Six billion handshakes at once and the world could otherwise change overnight.
How tragic, then, for death to sign the long fast one-way road. We began the push early and never relented, having helped along the extinction of species since we were Cro-Magnon. Times changed, and so did the weaponry, the type and lethality marking the nation and age. For us to have survived to this point on the Earthen time line, in bold wars world and cold, have we needed to develop the primary technologies that naturally evolved into planet-destroying arms? While free human hands guided the process at every interval and turn, it is not always that individual freedom that commands the course of history. However much free will you believe an individual to wield, the acts of the group are governed by markedly less. We may never have had a choice.
But was this point really inevitable? A past-looking science fiction mind can posit a possible today with gaps in our developed technological tree. But there is a degree of sequentiality in scientific development. Synchronous inventions, like the calculus of both Newton and Leibniz, underscore this point. As society busies, the minds at the intellectual fringe tinker on to the next available, and rewrite the world’s rules. The zeitgeist informs the hearts of the people and steers our compulsive drive towards progress, drives it off a cliff with an eventually floored, braking foot.
Evolution has a remarkably cunning side that humbles those that over-thrive. Perhaps this is a backup plan that levels uneven playing fields, just as a booming population inevitably stumbles into an equivocating famine. A predator is bones without prey. On a long enough time line, the capacity to destroy must always at least equal the capacity to create, mustn’t it? The balance of change requires the checked strength of the destructive.
If this fails to comfort you, consider that this storm cloud’s lining yields another, peculiar, bitter-sweet bookend: we have entered upon an age of realistic planetary annihilation at the pre-cusp of inter-planetary travel. How delightfully narrative for us to achieve the capacity to destroy our planet along with the capacity to leave it and potentially begin anew. We’re most certainly in the thick of it now. As much as the bookend may seem decidedly more bitter than sweet, it is the only way for us to stick around should our biosphere collapse, or should a once-unitary mass be reduced to continental dust by means of nuclear cluster or the like.
Could space travel have come first, or not at all, or is this critical band of total vulnerability a sequentially encoded phenomenon? Were technology to exist in another world, even with an entirely distinct foundation, could this general pressure point have necessarily come to pass after enough leaps in technological orders of magnitude? No human invented destruction, however much we may have glorified it. Indeed, perhaps the biggest obstacle for otherworldly life to overcome in finding us is the survival through this critical band. The absence of visitation is thus discouraging. Let us hope that our future is not written in the stars.
Armageddon is coming !!!!! lol
I have always said that there are many people that are trying to decide the fate of man. … My belief is envinced in a poem I wrote many years ago. … One line of which was,
“If mankind is the slime mold of the earth orange, it is time to spore.”
From that thought comes my lifes goal, not always practiced, but always a motaviting factor.
“Let us lead mankind to the stars.”
Finally! Now I won’t have to worry about paying off my 30-year mortgage! lol
Well said, but I believe we’re also preventing the evolution of other creatures on this planet, so that we can continue our reign. I mean we breed specific versions of animals through farms, or for pets and this greatly hinders what strides can be made. The only foreseeable future of evolution would have to be some sort of organism that escapes to caves or underground or somewhere remote, and learns to live and evolve within those areas, and once it has become a magnificent creature capable of advanced cognition and extreme brute force it would come out of hiding to prey upon humans and other organisms, and replace us as the top of the food chain.
Its our leaders that push us to our destruction and how they make their own people slaves and ignorant, it is our leaders that allow mass corporations to dig up and destroy this earth with its own waste.
We are the bringers of our own doom, this earth will be here long after we are all gone. Perhaps Mars used to hold humans before they destroyed it and moved to earth. Who knows.
Before this world gets better humans need to evolve in the mind and not be dumbed by their governments and religions.
Psychotic Ape makes a good point I agree with, we hinder evolution on animals mainly by destroying their habitats, breeding, ect. However we have yet to halt the evolution of bacteria, we still dont know how to kill a virus (common cold). Weather it be an outbreak, asteroid, global warming, ect. I will not be around so… Not that I myself dont care, but with politicians who dont care about future generations there is not much I can do anyway. A very selfish species, I see it in myself sometimes.
Its inevitable and somewhat regrettable but no not avoidable
global destruction!
There is another option. Just as we collectively created this monster, we can collectively create peace and prosperity for all by refusing to be pawns in the perpetual war machine. Gandhi and MLK showed the way that works: active peaceful resistance.
When the masses refuse to participate in any further “us against them” scenarios there will be peace. When we see that instead of fighting over a limited pie we can embrace abundance for all (but huge greed for none) there will be prosperity.
There is enough food to feed everyone now and always has been; it is only greed that causes so many to starve. And our collective desire for maximum profits through genetically engineered agriculture is poisoning our own food supply.
If you don’t believe me start watching the animals around you that are consuming commercially packaged pet foods. Why are healthy dogs throwing up food? Why are cats refusing more and more foods they will usually eat. The answer is the GMO ingredients in them were intentionally laced with toxins to kill insects. (What fools thought THAT was a good idea - especially if they’re cumulative poisons?)
Instead of focusing on the negative we must start focusing on the solution. By giving our time, energy, and attention to what will improve the world instead of what will destroy it we can change the outcome.
“On a long enough time line, the capacity to destroy must always at least equal the capacity to create, mustn’t it?”
This article embodies every single one of my beliefs to a tee!
Written by a true ledgend that is not affraid to say it and put it out there.
We are responsible for our own demise and our own salvation simply put. I found this article researching “581 c”; A planet that has been found that might be habitable only 120 trillion miles away (10.5 light years). The end of the world is coming and it is not because of an angry mithological “God” nor a natural disaster. It is entirely man-made.
We will never know peace because we have let society go to far, but this is not all bad. Without an economy, without currency, without greed and without government our technological evolution would be less than half of what we have accomplished to this day. We don’t have to wait around for a great flood or a asteriod we are quite capable to destroy ourselves and this whole planet. Even if we move all our most important people to another planet (many years into the future) we will use up all the resources on that planet aswell and possibly destroy it and by doing this we are becoming the parasites of the universe in a crude way to look at it.
So all we can really do is enjoy what we have and make the most out of the short time we have in this life and be someone. What do you have to lose? Get a Job you enjoy that pays the bills, get a nice partner and have a few kids, eat great foods, spend all your money cause you never know when it’s going to be over and aim to be content. It is alot harder to achieve than it is to write but not unatainable for everyone.
One of the best quotes ever “Judgement day is inevatable” -The Terminator.
We really know so little about alot of things that are really important such as: Quantum physics, Gravity, The universe not to mention things we do not even understand about ourselves like how to use the other 90% of our brains or the potential of the human body and adrenaline.
Thank-you for reading my randomly jotted down thoughts hope it helped in any way.