Life in the Small World of Humanity

Is there any reason to believe that people will survive the next two centuries? Hell of a question to ask at one AM in the morning when there is no one to answer it except a sleepy cat and me. The cat already knows my sleep patterns have driven me crazy, it likes me that way most of the time. This is like a lead into a creepy novel written by any of the famous horror writers in the pantheon of scary; but it remains a serious question. Can any species survive our dubious gift of intelligence mixed in with the dubious gift of a vast capacity for destruction of the world around us? Is intelligence a curse that has doomed our species or a blessing that will bring us to the stars and beyond?

Not to make light of the topic, few of us can whistle past the graveyard and stay on key all the way. I'm no exception to that rule. Except for a few parasitic and symbiotic bacteria and other fellow travelers we appear to be the dominant species on this poor beleaguered planet. For better or for worse we have been given dominion over the whole kit and kaboodle now with nearby outer space thrown in as a booby prize. Our record of maintaining what we dominate is not very good thus far and seems pretty likely to get worse as this decade proceeds. Seven billion, soon to be nine, of us are busily consuming what the planet has to offer in the way of resources and they are far from infinite. What will we do if the process breaks something that we cannot fix?

There are many of the thoughtful people I know who think we already have done the damage and the punishment is on its way. I'm not quite certain yet, but I do believe we still have time to grow as a species and survive our own greed, folly and other most endearing traits. Unfortunately belief is not quite the same as knowing so the question does arise from time to time at some odd hour or other. Unless one crawls into the creepy cave of solipsism and allows ones own navel to swallow one up totally that question ought to concern us all at this point in history.

Either thousands of scientists are wrong, lying or insane we have a small problem developing with the climate. Either some thousands of other scientists are wrong or we have a few major problems developing with the oceans we depend on for much of our food supply. I could go on listing the long series of problems detected but not yet adequately addressed by either us or our leaders. That would just bore anyone reading this and the cat simply doesn't want to hear it again. She has her ears covered with her paws and is doing what she does best, sleeping soundly by the fire. Suffice it to say that we are in deep doo and not possessed of either the requisite canoe or the useful paddle to move ourselves past it as yet.

The prognosis is certainly grim enough to make my absurd question serious. Is civilization doomed, doomed I say? Does the human race which already has several times the capacity to destroy itself still have half the wit and any of the capacity to save itself. Will Dudly Do-right prevail and the Snidely Whiplash contingent retire to the Hamptons before they entirely ruin the planet in pursuit of paper dominance over a cardboard world? Hell, I don't know and neither do any of the rest of us. The end has been coming as long as the human race has been able to count its own toes and fingers without losing track of where it is during the process of reaching ten. No one event has doomed us, not the black death nor the fall of the Roman empire, not nuclear weaponry nor the creation of other varieties of weapons of vast destruction.

Are we nearing the point where some fatal combination exists that will take us out and leave some microbes a few cockroaches and my mother-in-law behind to mourn us and start over? Not quite but the world is not as clean and good as we found it when Grog fell out of his tree into the cave and Grogess started decorating it with a few delicate refinements. We do clearly need to think about stabalizing things a bit in our surrounding environment. Will we? Some of us already have been. Using up most of our lives in that pursuit has led to little but frustration. The Electorate chose Al Gore in 2000. But the Bush clan still prevailed with its philosophy of: take it, own it and use it up before you die, the next generation is on its own.

Can we continue to make strides toward solving problems faster than we create them. Not with the current monetary system and economic structures intact. Luckily they appear to be cracking and about to crumble which will leave room for something better to be developed. While capitalism is far from perfect, without an alternative system far less flawed than Communism we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes until the fat lady sings. Meanwhile I am going to disturb my cat and take over the spot by the fire to smoke a bit of cigar and then I am going to sleep the sleep of the just, or at least the exhausted until the sun rises in the East.