Alan Alda was interviewed by Denton on Elders recently, and one of the things he reminded me of was that Humans are a baby species, we’ve been around 10,000 years and compared to most other species who’ve been around millions of years we really are a speck in time.
When we talk about the future of the Human Race we get all defeatist and think about nuclear wars and climate change and so on. Admittedly Nuclear war would pretty well fuck us, the few people that would survive wouldn’t have many resources to rebuild, the Earth would be contaminated… it’d be a lot worse than Noah’s floods.
But climate change… well you know ‘The end of life as we know it’ …yes. But that’s not saying much. ‘Life as we know it’ has supermarkets, cars, economics and a whole bunch of other things probably not vital to the survival of the species. Enough people could survive with enough resources that humans would bounce back. We’ve survived Ice Ages before, it wiped out the majority of the worlds humanish population, but humans are resourceful and can survive such disaster. Clothing, fire, scaring the crap out of bears and stealing their caves.
Not to survive intact, not to bring our cars and credit cards with us, probably not to get to colonise Mars any time soon… I think we’re a long way off those kinds of sci-fi dreams. Realistically we probably need to learn to survive as a species before we ascend as beings…
Think about it though… Humans, resourceful Humans… where will they be a thousand years from now, a hundred thousand years from now, a million years from now?
I like the idea of moving to different planets. Like, the arseholes can have Mars, the greenies can have Earth, since they love it so much. I think humanity is becoming that diverse that the biggest problem we face is our diverse opinions. It’s almost like we are never going to agree on anything anymore. From disagreement comes fury, anger, hate, separation. In a future that worked were humans got along, ultimately to me that means we need to agree on a lot of base stuff. More than anything I wonder about the human brains capacity to evolve outside of its animal instincts. These come back in to play in the stark moment – rape, loot & murder. But further violence in all it’s forms is what scares me the most… it’s something we keep at bay as best we can as a species. In fact we deny it the right to be expressed. So I imagine a future that has lots of footballers and factory workers and tradies and corporates. They are the lizards of humanity, with tough skins and survival instincts. But in my mind that is not evolving – evolution is to move away from this animal. To move into a more compassionate, intelligent being, where force and conquering is not the sole means of progression.
hey Elgar
you bring up so many interesting points. I think it’s the frontal lobe which is the animal instinct, the violence and fear etc. The Gut reaction as opposed to ‘reason’. And It has shrunk in our evolution, Society, the world that we’ve build requires to a large degree that we move away from those reactions. Yesterday on the radio they were talking about (on rrr) a survey which looked at the value of various occupations, they said that Lawyers and Advertisers were among those who were least valuable to society. Hospital cleaners were worth ten times the average worker in what they contributed to society and Early Childhood workers were worth seven times… this shows that aggression, disputes, power aren’t the part that makes society work, it’s the vast amount of us working together.
Which comes to your other point, which I have to agree with, it’s as though we are fragmenting more and more, especially if you look at the news today. But on the whole, I think society wouldn’t exist, the UN, Global Climate treaties, wouldn’t exist if there weren’t some consensus on how humanity should live, that BBC doco War of the World about why we’ve had all these wars in the twentieth century was really interesting, it’s still very much an East vs West thing. Empires trying to triumph over eachother. But even between these two worlds the big stuff we seem to eventually agree on. If only the fundamentalists didn’t get so much press.
Will a future include more footballers? You make me think of that film Idiocracy where the smart people died out by planning their pregnancies, where dumb people just kept getting knocked up and knocking up their neighbours, and their neighbour’s sisters and so on. It could happen I guess!
It’s funny I mentioned footballers. The reason was – at work that day I was doing the lighting for the Hawthorn Annual General Meeting. And I got to realising that football isn’t really about the footballers at all. I mean it is to some extent. But it’s kinda bundled up in the extreme animal mentality – not just on the football ground – but in everything that goes on behind the scenes. And what goes on behind the scenes pretty much outweighs the footballers at a ration of about 99 to 1. So when I say footballers I kind’ve mean that entire enterprise. It’s an enterprise that champions military action, nationalism, economic growth over sustainablity, and above all is ultimately a display of dominance.
all very true. i’d add to that the ‘mob mentality’, maybe you already worded it better, the ‘fear of difference’ etc. it’s scary that football is such a big thing in Melbourne which is also considered our most cultural city. But if we had genuine communities people wouldn’t feel the need to ‘belong’ to something so arbitrary.
have you seen Moon, lu?
i have indeed Matt. awesome awesome awesome. have you seen Dollhouse? it’s recent episodes has some very similar themes.
I watched it last night. It brought up heaps of stuff for me. Did you read up on the Helium 3 stuff? It’s actually an element that is around on earth, but is in high abundance on the Moon. Essentially it enables the creative of nuclear fusion power, which unlike nuclear fission does not create ANY radioactive waste. That’s really something don’t you think? Because really a huge problem for us is pollution. We call it all these different things now ala ‘climate change’ – we might as well call it human change. It’s us that are doing things. But yeah, I mean, we have billions of cars. But people are really afraid, or at least in Australia, to go to nuclear powered world. In the scenario of nuclear power thats safe and has no waste, well that solves a lot doesn’t it? But really freaky and IRONIC that it should be up there in abundance on the Moon. If you consider a species population, well, we would really need to be up there on the moon checking that shit out to know that. If we’re doing that then obviously our tech is at a point where we’re having an impact on the planet. So weird to me to think that the moon is up there as like a future energy resource for an intelligent species entering adulthood. Who knows what the Universe is on about… But it seems to me a little like breast milk. Or the ovulation cycles, or the orbiting of the planets. That this white ball is like our accomplice in the whole thing. Tempting our desires to move outward, pulling us there, and thereby bearing the fruits for further evolution. Really trippy imo.
On another level, Moon really made me feel happy to be alive on the earth. And space just seemed cold, dark and lonely.
oh i want this conversation to never ever end!
i did not know aout the Helium 3 angle that really is interesting, it’s sort of so ‘contrived’ it seems unbelievable. I thought Fusion remained an unobtainable dream, it certainly would solve all our problems if Helium 3 became abundant.
But really, we’re just fucking up the planet in so many ways, climate change is just one tiny aspect of it. Our governments wont enforce the cangs required because rather than protect our way of life they will force change to preserve a small portion of our way of life. Not only is it expensive but people won’t vote for it. We want to lazily maintain our way of life until it is no longer sustainable. Realistically that is what will happen.
There was an incredible Docu-drama on SBS think it still has another episode next week about the world in 2075, the effects of global warming, Vast numbers of people have died, Europe resembles African or Australia’s drier climates. Africa resembles hell. The arctic is disappearing and people’s way of life has changed because it had to.
hmmm not as enlightening as your post!
sweet. i will have to look out for that doco!
i always think humans are pretty crap at predicting the future. even if it’s bad, or good. we’re good at imagining things. but that doesn’t mean it’s a reality. reality is what IS> ie, the iPhone is a reality. But flying cars, meh… maybe it will never happen. 2012? Jesus comin back? Cmon.
There’s a great clip of George Carlin online about ’saving the planet’… you should chek it. Kinda puts it into perspective for me.
In a weird way I feel like what I was saying about the Moon/Ovulation weird milky thing… The universe is chaos, but at the same time holds this bizzare equilibrium. That’s not to say we couldn’t be wiped out tomoro… But that I have a lot more faith in the planet earth than most people do. As Carlin says, we have the ‘conceit’ to think that we’re a threat to the planet?
hehe
it’s pretty cool
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw
Maybe Tassie will be become a tropical paradise? haha
yeah i’m either moving to tassie or the south island of NZ in my old age.