mourning the infinite futures of humanity
I always liked reading Sci-Fi. I loved reading about super advanced civilizations, space colonization, scientific discoveries, and humanity coming together to overcome existential threats. The first step of the future is to imagine it, and I’ve always been in awe at the futures of science fiction, because they seemed inevitable. After all, science fiction predicted the internet, computers and cell phones — the prescience of the genre has been remarkable. Of course humanity would figure its shit out one day, just like in the books.
So it hit me especially hard when I came to the realization we’ve squandered all our infinite futures just to prop up capitalism and line the pockets of elderly sociopaths. Don’t get me wrong — I always knew the world was a shitty place, I knew we were destroying it and I knew things were bleak. But I always held onto the belief that someday, things would get better, and we’d live up to our true potential. Even if in the short term things looked bad, humanity would eventually figure it out before it was too late.
Unfortunately, it’s been too late for a while now.
We’re never going to colonize other planets, we’re not going to build giant space stations, we’re not going to overcome our inertia to become a flourishing, civilized galactic people. We’re not even going to do much to keep our own planet habitable. Instead we’re going to extract as many hydrocarbons as we can, killing ourselves and taking the rest of the world with us.
We will never unravel the mysteries of the cosmos, never learn why we were here. We will never know if we are truly alone in this universe. We will never know the answers to the many questions posed by our existence.
I’m grieving for all the scientific advances we will never make, distant worlds we will never know, all lives present and future that we have driven to extinction. I grieve for the collective knowledge we have gained and will lose to time after our cities are wiped from the face of the earth. I grieve the end of the age of “progress” and am terrified at the blackness of what lies beyond.
I believe our sacred duty as sentient beings was to safeguard the only bastion of known life in the entire universe, and we have failed miserably. Earth is the single place in the universe that we know to have life — and we decided to annihilate it for imaginary concepts like money.
And this is the pinnacle of humanity, this is as good as we get. It’s all downhill from here.
How disappointing.
Maybe we’ll reverse the tide. Maybe we’ll dot the world with nuclear plants and solar power and geothermal energy. Maybe we’ll create vast expanses of carbon capture towers, domed cities, and try to undo the damage we have done. Maybe we will mine asteroids for the raw materials we need and give the earth a break from our plundering. Maybe we can pull back from the brink and reorient ourselves. Restore ecosystems, pull back our civilization, hunker down and weather out this storm we brought upon ourselves. I don’t have any hope for this
The hour is very late, and darkness approaches.