Eden said:
I only hope we humans get our act together before colonizing other systems. At our current pace we may very well become a scavenger species, stripping planets as we go.
Yeah. I hope so. I heard some really smart smart guys talk about how the future is all in space. They say we have GOT to start looking to other planets if we are to continue our existence. I watched a show where Stephen Hawking was talking about eventually expanding to other galaxies! The show ended with Stephen Hawking saying that eventually the whole universe will be uninhabitable and we'll have to start looking for other universes to colonize! My god. Already talking about going to other universes when we've never even been to another planet. Not only that, we don't even know if there are other universes.
Wouldn't it make more sense, wouldn't it be a lot more realistic to try to find a way of living on earth that is actually sustainable? We wouldn't have to go to other planets, other galaxies even other universes, for God's sake, if we could learn to live sustainably on earth. Even now people are talking about colonizing Mars as if the near future depends on it. They talk like we have to to colonize Mars because earth will become overpopulated and lack resources. Well if earth is going to become unihabitable thanks to resource consumption.... what makes them think we won't do the same thing to Mars? Or any other planet? Are we just locusts that move from place to place, exhuast all the resources, and move on, or die? I wonder, if we did have the technology to go to other planets, would we be like the aliens from "Indepence Day"? For that matter, from the perspective of every other creature on this planet, we probably
are like the Idependecne Day aliens, and most people don't even know it. It seems nothing is good enough for people. We are by far the most powerful species on this planet. What... earth isn't good enough for you? You gotta go and take over Mars to now? Then the galaxy? Then the universe!?! Then
other universes!!?!!!?! Then what? Perhaps it is time for people to be happy with what they have. Learn to live sustainable lives, and not overpopulate.
If we travel to another habitable planet with creatures of inferior technology.... wouldn't we just wipe them out and take their planet for ourselves? Europeans did it to North America. What would stop us from doing the same to a whole planet? It all just makes me wonder if this desire to go out in to space isn't just an out of control libido. The desire to start consuming at an even greater pace.... a galactic pace. Will we start looking at whole planets as just the next meal? Like we look at killing livestock? Just a necessary kill in order for us to survive? I just have this sense lately that the human desire to expand and consume and overmultiply has gone wildly out of control. Not that expanding and multiplying is bad in itself, but too much growth, too much anything, becomes a sickness. In the human body, overproduction of cells is called cancer. Overproduction eventually ends up killing the whole organism. It is unsustainable growth. Will humans just expand and multiply until they end up destroying all their resources and thus, the whole species?
I don't know. Maybe it's not a bad thing. Maybe it's not even a thing unique to humans. Maybe expanding, and then dying out is just what animals do, or what life naturally does. Maybe life as a whole does the exact same thing that an individual organism does; it starts off small, expands and multiplies, and eventually dies. Some life forms live longer than others, but eventually, they all die. If we aren't going to expand, what else are we going to do? The sun is eventually going to destroy the earth. The whole universe will eventually be destroyed, as Stephen Hawking points out, the whole universe will eventually either expand to nothing, or crunch so tight we won't be able to live. Might as well just consume like crazy while we're here, right? I don't know, I just hope people focus on SUSTAINABILITY instead of always looking for new ways to consume and grow even more.