Thank you Brad for your encouraging comments! I do have a very interesting and logical explanation to your question.
I do believe that the human race has reached the next critical stage of evolution, where our advancement is no longer just dependent on our physical adaptations to our surrounding environment but also on the evolution of our global civilization.
Simply put, if we continue to abuse our environment and degrade it, the world will eventually become too inhospitable for us to live in. In this scenario, the human race will either go extinct or would have developed the technology to enable us to live in space independent of the earth. The earth would have simply "shrugged" us off.
Either way, life on earth will continue to exist, with or without us. The key thing to take note of is that life on earth has never been stable. Mass extinctions have happened on many occasions throughout earth's history and evolution has brought the biodiversity back to a certain number again. Life on earth exists as a system in equilibrium with the environment.
Whatever we are trying to preserve now is just an environment on earth that is suitable for human life, which is not permanent anyway. For the continued survival and propagation of our species in this universe (not just independent of the earth), we will have to develop a civilisation with near utopian judicial, governmental, economic, media, educational and social systems. This will lead to the concept of the different stages of maturity of civilizations.
Where effective communication skills are required is really within the global community as a whole, not only between our various governments but also our various multi-national organisations. This is in the pursuit of the development of better systems in the areas previously listed.
Now, the question would be: Can we achieve this technological superiority by the time we reach the critical time where the earth can no longer support human life? And can we continue to develop the systems that we require to survive at our continual stages of civilisation?
1 comment:
Insightful discussion, Jeremy. I really appreciate your effort to think through this answer and the follow up questions. You have hit the proverbial nail on the head. Man is at a crossroads. Do we just become another bleep on the list of species extinctions, or do we move forward, perhaps even off our ancestral home and into realms beyond this earth? The only thing permanent is change, but....
My immediate thoughts are more down-to-earth. I have mouths to feed, a family to protect from harm, a class of students whose hungry brains I must feed. For all of these, I want to act in a way that does move toward balance, and yes, a better chance at survival. Now is a critical time, or so many of the world's top scientists tell us. As more of a social scientist/educator, I sense that in my brain and bones. As one man on a huge earth, I want and need to do what I can do rather than stand back and watch the collapse. Yes, utopian this view may be. But without hope, and a certain amount of courage to look cold truth straight in the eye, all will be lost. Our ancestors and our children's children deserve more of us than the cynic's meds and consumerism's elixirs.
Anyway, again, I'm glad we're having this discussion. This is part of the very process of positive change (in my humble opinion).
Thanks, man!
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