technobang

“In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?”

Stephen Hawking asked this question two days ago, and I’ve been puzzling over the answer. I’ve read through a lot of rather fascinating answers, most of which involve a massive change in our society. However the general attitude is that humanity is doomed, that we are finally out of our infancy and snowballing down the hill of age. I tend to agree, but not exactly in span of 100 years.

I have no doubt in my mind that one day, humanity’s role on this planet will diminish. There have been 5 major extinctions on this planet, invariably killing off the dominant species populating the planet. The most recent was 65 million years ago, killing roughly 18 percent of land vertabrate families, including the dinosaurs. Extinctions before this have killed off many more species, such as the Permian-Triassic extinction which killed off 95 percent of all species. Frankly, considering the natural history of this planet, I doubt that humanity can survive devastation of that magnitude. So in all likelihood humanity will, like the dinosaurs, cease to exist. Perhaps a new species will dominate this planet, who knows.

But will it happen in 100 years? I sincerely doubt it.

Humanity has lasted for thousands of years. Read: thousands. While no other species was sentient, or developed technology, their reign over this planet lasted millions of years. Humanity has always had the ability to completely destroy itself. There hasn’t been a time where we have not lived in political, social, and environmental chaos. Political and social chaos certainly existed for centuries upon centuries. Stretching all the way back to the Egyptians, the Romans, up to the Soviet Union and the United States. People time and again have fought wars over land, territory, and philosphy only to end in some strange reshuffling of power. And today the chaos continues.

The point is, even though all of these issues surround us, it is not enough to force humanity into extinction. I believe yes it will one day happen, but in 100 years? No. Humanity has been through darker times and pulled out of it fine. I think in 100 years society will much be the same—always the talk of change but no action to be taken. So we’ll see. Will we kill ourselves in the end? I really hope not.

Posted on Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 1:53 pm in Whatever | rss feed for comments| Leave a response, or trackback