Are we at the Great Filter point?
So much for thousands of years of genius with a moron in control for a moment.
One of the answers to the Fermi Paradox - if the cosmos is so vast and there are billions and billions of habitable planets, then how come we don’t see no aliens colonising us for their galactic empire? - is the Great Filter that surmises that some steps along the road to advanced spacefaring are difficult to climb, such as evolving intelligence, harnessing planetary resources, working out how to traverse interstellar space and so on, and one or more of these steps are so high that nobody gets over them.
Or that the process entails certain risks and most species fail to survive.
One theory is that the simple process of becoming intelligent enough to comprehend the vastness of the cosmos and devise ways of exploring it also carries the risk of developing the technological means to destroy civilisation and that at some point these means will be employed before the space empire gets off the ground.
We may be at that point.
Let’s face it, if an asteroid impact killed off most of the dinosaurs in a relatively short time, we are likely every bit as vulnerable to some comparable disaster, whether natural or of our own making.
It wouldn’t even have to end us as a species, just be dire enough to destroy the advanced civilisation we have created and set us back a few thousand years. Until we lift ourselves up and do it again.
Space is full of asteroids and comets and stuff that every now and then one is going to come along and make things pretty rough. It’s not out of the question, is it?
Maybe it’s climate change creating a war over resources, maybe it’s some devastating incurable superpandemic, maybe it’s a nuclear holocaust caused by some petty ego annoyed over a barbed insult, who knows?
Maybe something else entirely or a combination of all of the above but whatever it is, if our complex networks of trade, supply, and communications are damaged enough, billions will perish and we may not have the resources to repair the damage before it all falls apart.
Accumulate enough power, balance it precariously, something will push it all over.
Lord knows we’ve come pretty close in the past. A single gunshot toppled all the dominos that led to World War One; what if it happens again with nuclear stockpiles?
I see the USA as teetering on the brink of chaos and incompetence, with leadership systems hanging on the whim of one crazy old man. Adolf Hitler wanted to destroy all of Germany rather than give the Allies anything but scorched earth and rubble, who knows what Trump, without any adult control, might do?
Is this the way the world ends? Not with a bang but a wanker?
My own philosophy
There’s nothing much I can do about this. America has managed to put a fragile ego in charge of all the levers of government, just as we have seen with countless other tyrannic regimes, and in the same way that I have no control over the sad conditions in North Korea, the renewed Tsarist regime, or the Chinese monolith, about all I can do about the situation in America is lodge a quiet protest.
If the world blows up, it blows up. Why waste my remaining time worrying about it?
Believe it or not, I don’t even think it’s important.
I am no more than a tiny grain of sand in the eight billion of us on the human beach.
And our world is one of billions.
The human race will do whatever it does without me, and the cosmos will roll along if some epic catastrophe vaporises our planet and everything on it.
I think that if a civilisation - ours or some alien culture - is advanced enough they reach a philosophical position that there’s simply no point in conquering the galaxy.
Because we are already there.
Other eyes regard the worlds under immeasurably distant stars and the consciousness that observes them is exactly the same as that which is peeping out of our own eyes.
Perhaps a little different in sensation and understanding, but the enjoyment, the perception, the awe, is exactly the same.
It’s not about me, it’s about making the most of what I have.
Of course, this doesn’t mean giving up and simply letting things happen, good or bad. We can always choose good over evil. Be the helper. Be the comforter, be the spreader of good cheer. Lift others up. Do your best. In a world full of gloom and hatred, be the light, be the love.
Britni