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I'll preface this by saying I've been reading fiction lately exploring this idea, and I've reached a point where writing and discussing is more productive than just thinking. So, man. Homo Sapiens. An absolute marvel of evolution and microbiology. We did some fairly amazing things in our first 10-15 millennia. Heck we achieved a few things last century that were landmarks for the species. We are a globe spanning superpredator that has exploded in population in a relatively small period of our existence. Quite a lot of that has to do with modern medicine and agrochemicals; disease, blight, and insects are the last "predators" man has, and we're doing a nifty job of controlling them. Child mortality is down, life span is up, everybody gets to leave a little squirt of DNA to walk and talk and remember than for a generation or so. Pretty successful from the perspective of species survival. Aside from that we are failing as a species. I truly do not see us ever leaving this planet, or even really being around in another thousand years or so. I'll be bold and not explain myself. We can all turn on a TV and see what is happening. And we're all complicit in some global disaster or another, even if our contribution is small. Saints and sinners, we all hosed the planet and our fellow man in the rear end a bit. My question is this: Do we deserve to continue existing as a species now and in whatever future form we inhabit, or do we deserve to die out? Be brave with your answers, even if you don't have one. Philosophy, religion, science, art, even concepts like empathy are all good starting points.
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Jun 20, 2018 07:57
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I think we passed a point a while ago where we have basically hosed the planet up so much that it's going into reboot mode. There will be a slow, but irreversible, stage over the next few hundred years where a combination of drought, floods, ultra hard winters and ultra hot summers will force us to use more and more of the planets dwindling resources just to keep alive and once they are gone it's just going to slowly stop for us as a race. Not with a bang but a whimper. And yes, we deserve this.
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Jun 20, 2018 14:04
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Baby boomers do not deserve to exist
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Jun 20, 2018 14:08
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Burt posted:I think we passed a point a while ago where we have basically hosed the planet up so much that it's going into reboot mode. There will be a slow, but irreversible, stage over the next few hundred years where a combination of drought, floods, ultra hard winters and ultra hot summers will force us to use more and more of the planets dwindling resources just to keep alive and once they are gone it's just going to slowly stop for us as a race. If the earth is truly a self-correcting organism, then eventually it’s going to find a way to kill us off. I’d bet some sort of antibiotic-resistant superbug finds its way into megacities and spreads like wildfire. I would think something that kills off 30% of its victims would cause governments to collapse, and that would lead to additional die-offs. And yeah. We deserve it.
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Jun 20, 2018 14:39
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EVA BRAUN BLOWJOBS posted:
How? Violence, crime, and war are at an all time low. Education/literacy is at an all time high. There are still a lot of major problems, but the information age being what it is, they can seem overwhelming. Maybe I'm just too drat positive.
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Jun 20, 2018 16:20
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Jun 20, 2018 16:25
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yeah guys at least we're not cavemen anymore life is great, mcdonalds on every corner
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Jun 20, 2018 17:47
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Something will happen, not sure if it will be us nuking each other, a super bug, or some widespread natural disaster. (All of which are seeming more likely everyday) The real question is if we will be able to recover from the event, and what that will do to us as a species. I honestly believe that our current track is one of self destruction. Its one of the driving reasons behind not having a child. Do we deserve what will happen? I don't deserve it.
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Jun 20, 2018 19:05
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mods change my name posted:yeah guys at least we're not cavemen anymore life is great, mcdonalds on every corner gently caress yeah, brother! *high fives*
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Jun 20, 2018 19:22
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I gave the matter some thought, and honestly? I don't feel qualified to answer this. Humanity has some pretty black stains on us as a whole. We have also managed some amazing things. My take is if we do get mars and moon bases set up and running, maybe we have a shot. Do we deserve it? I honestly don't know.
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Jun 20, 2018 20:03
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The Fermi Paradox implies that each galaxy wil have one dominant species that will wipe out all other sentient life forms in the galaxy, whether intentional or not. One scientist recently speculated that in this galaxy, it's our destiny to be that species, because we ourselves have not yet been wiped out, indicating there's no competition- at least, not at the moment. Taking this into account, and keeping in mind humanity's propensity for laying waste to everything we touch, intentional or not- we also have within us the capacity for mercy and compassion, that far supercedes our own individual selfish dsires (running into a burning building to save lives, signing up to join the military voluntarily to defend your nation and it's principles, the entire Normandy operation to name a few examples) so the real question is this: "Is humanity right for preserving life on other worlds, versus another species with no mercy or compassion that would wipe out all other worlds with no regard at all for the consequences". When I look at the situation like that, I have to side with humanity, and hope that we've grown by the time we encounter another species in the distant future. I think it's possible humanity is the very strength we would have to even consider any kind of planetary conquest, just as humanity is what banded us together to fend off external threats to our survival, and brought about the sciences and medicine to help us fend off the unseen threats. We'd need to conquer all the technological barriers to world hop, and a whole heap of medical and genetic hurdles, but that's just it. If we apply ourselves, we can do great things. I think the challenge of space colonization would weed out the worst of humanity, especially with a strict psych profile to make sure candidates had a strong mind to handle the rigors, or breakthroughs in mind medicine that negate those risks. I'm an optimist, so in the end I would have to say yes- we "deserve" to continue to exist, for the sake of those civilizations that will come after us, because otherwise we (and they) will be wiped out. Perhaps our humanity is the rarest life of all
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Jun 20, 2018 20:24
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Splatmaster posted:The Fermi Paradox implies that each galaxy wil have one dominant species that will wipe out all other sentient life forms in the galaxy, whether intentional or not. One scientist recently speculated that in this galaxy, it's our destiny to be that species, because we ourselves have not yet been wiped out, indicating there's no competition- at least, not at the moment. We're a pretty religious animal. I don't know how old you are, but in the 70's and early 80's everything was covered in garbage. People thought nothing of throwing all the trash out of their car window or just pulling up to the woods and throwing bags of it out. A campaign in the 80's to stop littering worked (I know there are still idiots who do it). It's loving unbelievable how, over a generation, we stopped littering like we were. What I'm saying is positive change is absolutely possible.
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Jun 20, 2018 20:28
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spacetoaster posted:We're a pretty religious animal. I don't know how old you are, but in the 70's and early 80's everything was covered in garbage. People thought nothing of throwing all the trash out of their car window or just pulling up to the woods and throwing bags of it out. I'm 52, and yes- I remember how the US looked before the Clean Air Act, and I saw polluted waterways choked with foam from detergents. We're horrible tenants to our world, our oceans are polluted with plastics for the next few hundred years, and I doubt I need to get into fracking or CFCs or radiaoactive and chemical dumping but yes we suck as caretakers, that's a fact. As long as there's no profit in it our social and environmental ills will only get worse, so any monetary-based system is inherently going to be a barrier to advancement because as long as it takes money to accomplish a goal, the goal can always be discarded for being too costly. Lowering costs makes expensive projects more reachable, such as SpaceX's lofty endeavor to re-use rocket parts. That's the kind of forward thinking we need, using capitalism to overcome the barriers- I hope to see an asteroid recovered and processed on the Moon in my lifetime
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Jun 20, 2018 20:41
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Splatmaster posted:I'm 52, and yes- I remember how the US looked before the Clean Air Act, and I saw polluted waterways choked with foam from detergents. We're horrible tenants to our world, our oceans are polluted with plastics for the next few hundred years, and I doubt I need to get into fracking or CFCs or radiaoactive and chemical dumping but yes we suck as caretakers, that's a fact. sounds like we need to get rid of the epa then
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Jun 20, 2018 20:43
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Splatmaster posted:That's the kind of forward thinking we need, using capitalism to overcome the barriers- I hope to see an asteroid recovered and processed on the Moon in my lifetime Capitalism is going to choke us to death to put a few more coins in the pockets of select few who will be too far distant to be affected by the detriment of their policies.
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Jun 20, 2018 20:49
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CommieGIR posted:Capitalism is going to choke us to death to put a few more coins in the pockets of select few who will be too far distant to be affected by the detriment of their policies. I don't think that is sustainable. When all the wealth filters to the top, and 99% have only 1% of the wealth, those corporations won't have customers. That system is doomed to eventual collapse. There will be a "reset" of sorts, until we end up at the same crossroads. The options are corporate dystopian future or something along the lines of Star Trek. Both will fail the first few times likely. My only hope is that the "reset" doesn't take me out with it.
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Jun 20, 2018 22:11
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I think man deserves a chance at redemption. In terms of the time frame I am thinking of it is not something I expect to see in any of our lifetimes but then that is a relatively short amount of time. Just because something has divided us in the past, perhaps for even as long as we know, I think it is a mistake to think that it will always be like that. Racism has always been a divisor, I think we just mistrust anyone that doesn't share the same properties we grew up with(to different levels of mistrust of course). But as races intermingle we should lose that inherit distrust and perhaps racism can be a thing of the past. Religion can also be a large divisor of the populace, but as education is concentrated on the things we can figure out using our senses, religion will probably go away as well. Is it really so scary to believe that you are not going to live forever? Unless something miraculous happens and God shows itself irrefutably to us all. Of course any God that would allow someone like Jeff Sessions into eternal paradise probably isn't a deity I would want to worship and praise. I would love to see mankind fan out into the stars, if for nothing else to see what else is out there before everything hits absolute zero. Maybe there is something better than us out there? Maybe something worse. What if it is just us? There is so much potential out there to fix our mistakes and make new ones. Of course getting off this rock is going to require everyone working together. Just think about crabs in a pot in that sense. Something kind of related that I have not seen talked about directly but would love to get some feedback on is that I do not think we quite understand the effects of growing up in the modern world has on the individual (or group for that matter). Specifically I am talking about things such as targeted customer specific advertisements that just bombard the individual seemingly from birth. What does having everything tailored to you do the persons psyche? Russia proved the potential for using this with their Pro-Trump/Anti-Hillary campaign. Could this be used for good or is it intrinsically evil? I bring this up because I think it is something new we are going to have to overcome. It's strange because I know plenty of people that bought into the Russian's campaign and it is like they have doubled down on it now rather than admit they were tricked by a foreign entity that would love to see America destroyed. Now I kind of want to read The Forever War again.
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Jun 20, 2018 22:17
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The best thing that could happen for humanity and the galaxy as a whole would be contact with a highly intelligent, benevolent and patient race that would see right through our bullshit and dismiss the selfish and wicked from the selfless and kind. Our sex drive is a huge part of our weakness with regards to overall growth as individuals and overall, as a species in that it's a distracting force. Think about all the rules we have in place in society regarding dress and behavior as it relates to our sex drives. Lots of resources are expended on catering to it, products and services, dress and appearance, even our social conventions such as dating and marriage are all centered around procreation. Take it out of the equation and we'd have a lot more resources and focus to getting other things done, and yet the irony is it was our sex drive that got us here to this point in our history in the first place. Unless human overpopulation is checked, we'll starve ourselves out long before we'll get enough people off to be self-sustaining off-planet. Men in particular can be brutish and wasteful because of our sex drives, boredom and testosterone makes us blow poo poo up and burn things down for no other reason than "because" (myself included). Human history can cite many such examples of far worse. Take that distracting force away though and we as a species could get a lot accomplished, possibly at the expense of the species in the future. I look back at past work environments and remember many many instances of cowokers being distracted by flirting and making the mistake of dating and then even eventually breaking up and having an awkward work environment to deal with. That kind of drama can hamper a space mission very quickly, unless you can take human sexuality out of the picture for space-farers on long missions. A visit with benevolent beings would fast track us through the technololgical paradigms we'd need to shift through and overcome to become star travellers though. Maybe that's the global shift in awareness we all need to shove us out of this rut and into a better future. I've never had a problem with "alien" and "angel" or even "God" being used interchangeably, although if you think about it God clearly wasn't of this Earth since He was here before it was and the same holds true for Angels. Maybe the Bible and Torah and Koran as well as other ancient manuscripts and texts are actually just accounts of extraterrestrial visitations in the past, and we're about due for another visit. God I hope so...
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Jun 20, 2018 23:37
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I like to think mankind is the project of alien grad sfudents who haven't checked up on us in 5000 years and they are going to be majorly bumming seeing what we did to the planet
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Jun 21, 2018 00:46
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Jun 21, 2018 01:02
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Bill Watterson is a saint.
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Jun 21, 2018 01:10
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Jun 23, 2018 17:25
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Slavic Crime Yacht posted:Bill Watterson is a saint.
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Jun 23, 2018 19:40
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Having finally gotten around to watching the last two episodes of From The Earth To The Moon, I can't help but feel that yoomanity may have passed our peak. We reached out to the moon, and were poised to go further, but because of silly gently caress gently caress games by politicians, we stepped back from it. It makes so little sense.
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Jun 30, 2018 10:03
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I think some perspective is needed. The upcoming climate disaster and the resulting political instability is going to be a loving disaster of proportions that are incomprehensible. Make no mistake of that. BUT, you could go full bore 4-degrees-celsius-plus change and launch every single last nuke in our arsenals at the same time and the earth would *STILL* be more hospitable a place for human anatomy than mars or the moon. Humans are loving tenacious creatures. Lots and lots and lots of people are going to die, the environment as we know it and basically every plant and animal currently existing are on the course towards extinction we've set them on, society as we know it is going to go up in a violent puff of smoke, and everything is going to get really, really lovely for everyone that's left...but there's going to be people left. Wipe out 99.999% of humanity and you've still got 7 million people. Even if they're sealed up in hab-domes or Sealab 2021 or hiding in caves or whatever.
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Jul 1, 2018 21:02
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Well, in the words of Clint Eastwood.
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Jul 1, 2018 21:10
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drAWo_zFh8M
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Jul 2, 2018 16:06
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IMO the likeliest dystopian future is autistic tech billionaires engineering an artificial supervirus and vaccine to Rainbow Six the rest of us out of their way to a smaller, cleaner, smarter utopia. This being the Trump Wins comedy timeline, they'll all be taken out by each other's independent projects because Bezos and Zuck neglected to coordinate.
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Jul 14, 2018 19:17
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