I was watching a documentary on television last night about a group of scientists who had a theory about the era of the dinosaurs ending because of an asteroid hitting earth, causing widespread destruction, an ice age and dust clouds that blocked out the sun for tens or even hundreds of years.
It made me think, “WHAT’S LIFE ALL ABOUT?” and also “WHAT’S THE POINT OF US BEING HERE?“.
In the scheme of things, man has not been around for very long. New evidence shows that primitive man has been around for close to one million years, and it’s possible that there were advanced civilizations even before the last ice age, but so long ago that practically all traces have been eradicated. As far as we know (at this time), civization began in the last 10,000 years with Sumeria and Egypt, and India, and that’s only a fraction of time. The modern age with cars, flying machines and space travel is just over 100 years old, which is barely a dot on the time chart of earth.
It’s truly amazing when you think of how far mankind has come in the last 100 years, even the last 50, 20 or 10 years, but if a rock from space measuring no more than a few hundred feet across could destroy life on earth, you have to ask “WHAT’S THE POINT!”
Everything that has evolved, all the creatures, not just man, could be eliminated in a matter of minutes or months, depending on the nature of the impact, and it just makes you think that if man is here for a purpose, then how could out page just be torn from the book of the universe and tossed away forever.
Either that, or are we just a miracle of evolution, maybe one of many throughout the universe, that appears and then disappears in a fragment of universal time without any real significance.
So I ask you, are we really important in the scheme of life, does any great being or life force out there care if we flourish or perish, and what do you think our chances are should another space rock make a bee-line for us?
3 thoughts on “Deep Thoughts”
These are the thoughts that would keep me awake for hours at night as a kid. Seriously. My short answer is…yes, I think we are important, although this life may only be a tiny piece of that. (I’m not a “religious” person, but personal experiences tell me there is more waiting for us) Whether there is a being or a force that cares, I don’t know, but I’m guessing so, as little else makes sense. I don’t think things are completely random, that we “occurred” just by chance or accident.
As far as that big rock crashing into us and our chances…depends when it happens. I don’t anticipate that “god” or whatever, if he exists, will just swoop down to save us, I think he will let us determine our own destiny. Perhaps he knows there is more and there is nothing to fear either way? Or, perhaps he’s just not into micro-management? I do think scientists have increasingly accepted the fact that earth may be on a limited timeline and we need to get thinking about our disaster plan. (ignorance was bliss for a while…)
Wow, Tony. Metaphysical and nihilistic at the same time.
I see the only way for humanity to survive, and that is to colonize space and other planets. There’s a theory that says we must do that before a certain point, or Earth will run out of resources to *ever* reach space. Things aren’t looking too good right now since the most modern propulsion (rockets) still would take thousands of years to reach other stars, which is not feasible or realistic. Some kind of scientific breakthrough is needed that would totally change the way we think about space.
Needless to say, science and scientific progress is the only way to save humanity.
You make a very good point about modern civilization being a very young thing. There’s an interesting theory called “technological singularity” that says the speed of progress keeps increasing geometrically so we’ll soon reach a point where it will be so fast there would be a drastic change in society and an “intelligence explosion”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
Not only that, according to charts it’s supposed to happen around 2035. I think that particular theory is too optimistic though and law of diminishing returns will kick in long before that and the geometrical progress will change to a slower form.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity