WE CAN SEE IT FROM HERE
Wednesday Feb. 28, 2018
I heard a great talk online the other day; the late Christopher Hitchens – pointing out more poignantly than his typical style, the short period of time ‘we’ have been around. If we humans, as we know and understand ourselves to be, have been walking around for 100,000-200,000 years on this planet which is 4.5 billion years old – he questioned, given the likely collision of galaxies and other potential ‘knock earth out of its orbit’ that given the history of evolution and the time frames involved for the next few billion years, if when the earth comes to an end, will it be humans waving good bye – or will it be some superior species that has evolved and raced past us in terms of intelligence and capability?
Interesting brain candy indeed for humans who will live 70-100 years …
But his words got me thinking – and looking curiously at my dog. Who/what could evolve to overtake humans? A species that exists, one that hasn’t formed yet or an import from another planet?
Aside from ‘food for interesting discussion’, the shorter term questions aside from preserving our plane as a habitable place is whether we are individually or collectively contributing to our own ‘better/continued’ evolution of humans? By that I don’t mean technology. I mean, our physical selves, our bodies and our brains – what are we each doing to ensure we and our future generations of descendants are better, smarter, healthier, stronger and more likely to survive?
I don’t expect Mr. Darwin wrote anything forward looking for our species – because he was focused on how we got here.
We DO know how we got here. Sure, there are missing-links in the path, but get the gist of it.
But where are we going? Sure, we are going to Mars and beyond … but for those of us staying here, how are we developing? And are we focused on the right things?
What comes next?
