It might surprise you to know I don’t disagree. Other than the timeline, I fully agree that our species is doomed, and that doom will occur sometime within the next several centuries. Humans are a tenacious species and likely we will continue to exist in some state for another several thousand years, but likely in a state of primitive stagnation. We already had thousands of years of primitive stagnation, and back then we had resources readily available on the surface of our world like oil and coal easy to access.
Our civilization is unsustainable though. We will at some point cash the checks we’ve been taking out, and then one day there won’t be food on the shelves anymore, there won’t be gas in the pumps, there won’t be medicine in the hospitals and all the doctors will be gone. Buildings will fall and monuments will rust.
Life will continue in a very Cormac McCarthy-esque slow wind-down into an abysmal, long, dark night.
Despite all this knowledge, I still say we should not have fear or despair. We are here and now capable of forging a better life for ourselves, and arguably, more importantly, we can make lives better for others. It’s a fantastic blessing that we exist in this tiny, slim, razor-edge of technology and wonders and plentiful resources. That’s like winning the goddamn lottery. Do you realize how many people came before us stretching back into the dark haze of pre-history who never had a CHANCE of a better world and a better life? Even if brief?
And we’re not done even after we’re gone.
We will leave behind records. We have probes on other worlds and leaving our solar system, there will be a marker into the long darkness of the future that “we were here.” We did that. We fucking won.
The only reason it doesn’t feel like winning is because life is inherently painful and shitty. That’s just our biology at odds with the spark of sapience that is trying to move past it.
I fucking hate the state of our capitalist techno-feudalism world we’re building, BUT I also know where it’s going. If we can just scratch past this state of abject greed and selfish desires for personal gain long enough, we have a very good chance of creating a scion for our future, a descendant to carry the torch. We won’t have the stars. I already mourned that passing, along with many other idealistic fantasies of youth, but we may send new things out into the void, we may actually create intelligences that don’t require meat and food and money who can learn and wonder about the universe.
Again, it’s a miraculous time, we are on the cusp of so much, if we achieve even a sliver of our potential we will have left behind a fantastic legacy, worth celebrating even while our society crumbles into a cesspit of despair, hunger, drug abuse, greed, pain and intolerance and all the other myriad of factors nature is throwing against us.
Take time to appreciate being here, right now, because it’s not going to last but boy was it strange and amazing while it did. Nothing else on this planet did this much. It’s worth a toast.
Right, I’m not saying humanity only has ~80 yrs left, just society. Humanity could limp along for a few more centuries, but it won’t be a good existence.
It might surprise you to know I don’t disagree. Other than the timeline, I fully agree that our species is doomed, and that doom will occur sometime within the next several centuries. Humans are a tenacious species and likely we will continue to exist in some state for another several thousand years, but likely in a state of primitive stagnation. We already had thousands of years of primitive stagnation, and back then we had resources readily available on the surface of our world like oil and coal easy to access.
Our civilization is unsustainable though. We will at some point cash the checks we’ve been taking out, and then one day there won’t be food on the shelves anymore, there won’t be gas in the pumps, there won’t be medicine in the hospitals and all the doctors will be gone. Buildings will fall and monuments will rust.
Life will continue in a very Cormac McCarthy-esque slow wind-down into an abysmal, long, dark night.
Despite all this knowledge, I still say we should not have fear or despair. We are here and now capable of forging a better life for ourselves, and arguably, more importantly, we can make lives better for others. It’s a fantastic blessing that we exist in this tiny, slim, razor-edge of technology and wonders and plentiful resources. That’s like winning the goddamn lottery. Do you realize how many people came before us stretching back into the dark haze of pre-history who never had a CHANCE of a better world and a better life? Even if brief?
And we’re not done even after we’re gone.
We will leave behind records. We have probes on other worlds and leaving our solar system, there will be a marker into the long darkness of the future that “we were here.” We did that. We fucking won.
The only reason it doesn’t feel like winning is because life is inherently painful and shitty. That’s just our biology at odds with the spark of sapience that is trying to move past it.
I fucking hate the state of our capitalist techno-feudalism world we’re building, BUT I also know where it’s going. If we can just scratch past this state of abject greed and selfish desires for personal gain long enough, we have a very good chance of creating a scion for our future, a descendant to carry the torch. We won’t have the stars. I already mourned that passing, along with many other idealistic fantasies of youth, but we may send new things out into the void, we may actually create intelligences that don’t require meat and food and money who can learn and wonder about the universe.
Again, it’s a miraculous time, we are on the cusp of so much, if we achieve even a sliver of our potential we will have left behind a fantastic legacy, worth celebrating even while our society crumbles into a cesspit of despair, hunger, drug abuse, greed, pain and intolerance and all the other myriad of factors nature is throwing against us.
Take time to appreciate being here, right now, because it’s not going to last but boy was it strange and amazing while it did. Nothing else on this planet did this much. It’s worth a toast.
Right, I’m not saying humanity only has ~80 yrs left, just society. Humanity could limp along for a few more centuries, but it won’t be a good existence.