In a piece that appeared in last month’s New York Times online philosophy blog—plainly titled “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?”—Todd May explores the existential question of whether the inherent and singular value human beings possess as an intelligent species, through our scientific and intellectual and creative pursuits, is worth the immense anguish our practices inflict on the nonhuman animals with which we share this planet:
“To make that case, let me start with a claim that I think will be at once depressing and, upon reflection, uncontroversial. Human beings are destroying large parts of the inhabitable earth and causing unimaginable suffering to many of the animals that inhabit it. This is happening through at least three means. First, human contribution to climate change is devastating ecosystems, as the recent article on Yellowstone Park in The Times exemplifies. Second, increasing human population is encroaching on ecosystems that would otherwise be intact. Third, factory farming fosters the creation of millions upon millions of animals for whom it offers nothing but suffering and misery before slaughtering them in often barbaric ways. There is no reason to think that those practices are going to diminish any time soon. Quite the opposite. . . .
. . . But there is more to the story. Human beings bring things to the planet that other animals cannot. For example, we bring an advanced level of reason that can experience wonder at the world in a way that is foreign to most if not all other animals. We create art of various kinds: literature, music and painting among them. We engage in sciences that seek to understand the universe and our place in it. . . .
. . . We appreciate and often participate in such practices because we believe they are good to be involved in, because we find them to be worthwhile. It is the goodness of the practices and the experiences that draw us. Therefore, it would be a loss to the world if those practices and experiences ceased to exist.”
Todd May, “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?,” The Stone, New York Times, December 17, 2018
On the abstraction of extinction, I take something of a prostrative view: It seems to me the natural world has a way of deciding for itself who ought to be here and when it’s time for them to go; at some point, after all, it concluded the dinosaurs had overstayed their welcome, and with the brute efficiency of an asteroid strike, put them on a path to annihilation. There’s something perversely liberating—and by extension even comforting—about the question of our own existence being out of our control.
But… that’s not what’s happening here at the dawn of the Anthropocene, is it? It’s the very practices we engage in—our project of civilization itself—that has brought on the existential crises we now confront. Since this blog often examines its subjects narratively, this citation seems apt:
“In many dramatic tragedies, the suffering of the protagonist is brought about through his or her own actions. It is Oedipus’s killing of his father that starts the train of events that leads to his tragic realization; and it is Lear’s highhandedness toward his daughter Cordelia that leads to his demise. It may also turn out that it is through our own actions that we human beings bring about our extinction, or at least something near it, contributing through our practices to our own tragic end.”
ibid.
Climate change—at least this epochal instance of it—is the (admittedly unintended) consequence of our own Industrial Age–conditioned behaviors, rather than that of some naturally occurring planetary phenomenon. Far from a cyclical geological inevitability, like, say, an ice age, we’re doing this to ourselves, outside the governing purview—or otherwise unimpeded design—of nature.
Or are we?
STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE
In his nonfiction book Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth, astrophysicist Adam Frank demonstrates the mathematical likelihood that many of the ten billion trillion exoplanets in the universe had to have been “inhabited by technology-deploying, civilization-building species” at some point—minimally a hundred by even the most conservative, “pessimistic” estimates, and arguably as many as “a trillion exo-civilizations across cosmic history.” (You’ll have to read the book for his full reasoning, but it’s relatively short and doesn’t require a PhD to follow.)
Author and astrophysicist Adam Frank – © J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester
What’s more, Frank contends, anthropogenic climate change would be the inevitable byproduct of any energy-intensive, technologically advanced civilization, and that we are likely far from the first intelligent lifeforms in the vast celestial continuum to have impacted our planetary climate, and by extension threatened, however inadvertently, its very habitability—a consideration which prompts an unsettling cosmic question:
“How do we know there is such a thing as a long-term version of our kind of civilization? Most discussions of the sustainability crisis focus on strategies for developing new forms of energy or the projected benefits of different socioeconomic policies. But because we’re stuck looking at what’s happening to us as a singular phenomenon—a one-time story—we don’t think to step back and ask this kind of broader question. To even pose it seems defeatist. But it must be addressed if we are to make the most informed, intelligent bets on the future.
Let’s be clear about what our question implies. Maybe the universe just doesn’t do long-term, sustainable versions of civilizations like ours. Maybe it’s not something that’s ever worked out, even across all the planets orbiting all the stars throughout all of space and time. Maybe every technological civilization like ours has been just a flash in the pan, lighting up the cosmos with its brilliance for a few centuries, or even a few millennia, before fading back to darkness. . . .
So, does anyone make it past the challenge we now face?”
Adam Frank, Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), 169–70
This reasoning helps in part to explain the Fermi paradox—that given the statistical likelihood of extraterrestrial life, why is there yet no conclusive evidence for it? Frank suggests the new life and new civilizations we seek out there surely existed—at some point—but possibly reached a technological threshold that put them on a collision course with extinction, by way of nuclear holocaust or environmental collapse or take-your-pick.
“The purpose here is not to consider them as the source of science fiction stories, but to recognize that we are probably not the first experiment in civilization building the universe has run.
Throughout all of history, our mythologies have told us who we are, what we are, and where we stand in relation to the cosmos. But those stories ignored the possibility that we are one of many. Our stories did not—because they could not—include the possibility that our civilization was a planetary phenomenon that was not unique.”
ibid., 166
The implication is that the human race itself is likely a reboot—yet another attempt at a cosmic R&D venture conducted before, minimally hundreds and possibly trillions of times in the space-time laboratory. If that’s the case—if we are part of an evolutionary trial, or even an unfathomably grand narrative arc, that the universe is trying to see through to successful completion—the question it logically provokes, then, is this: To what outcome? What is it that awaits on the far side of the looming existential challenge we may or may not surmount?
REVERENCE FOR LIFE
If we subscribe to Frank’s reasoning—and I do—than we accept responsibility for anthropogenic climate change while also acknowledging it was an evolutionary inevitability in the first place. This offers us, given the untoward circumstances, the best of both worlds: It alleviates the guilt we feel for causing it, but not the obligation we have to address it. What remains, then, is a sense of urgency—an impulse demanding action. Because the specific question of whether the human race will sufficiently mollify the climate crisis is in fact an extension of the broader question of whether we’re on an inexorable trajectory towards extinction, or whether our project of civilization will persevere… and ultimately fulfill its arcane cosmic intent.
Now, talk of “arcane cosmic intent” moves us out of the disciplined reality of astrophysics and into the presuppositional ethereality of metaphysics, of theology even, but it’s a necessary digression if I am to take an explicit philosophical position on whether human extinction would be a tragedy. To the extent that I even have a religious belief system, I am a metaphysical naturalist, which is to say I believe Mother Nature is a conscious entity, and that She operates with a purpose, unknown—and very possibly unknowable—though it may be.
To be clear: In no way do I mean to conjure images of some anthropomorphic deity à la Gaia or Terra Mater or even Aisha Tyler in the Santa Clause movies. My intention isn’t to reductively assign human characteristics to natural phenomena, merely to recognize that humanity itself is an expression of nature—and a rather remarkable one when you get right down to it:
“If we are conscious, as our species seems to have become, then nature is conscious. Nature became conscious in us, perhaps in order to observe itself. It may be holding us out and turning us around like a crab does its eyeball. Whatever the reason, that thing out there, with the black holes and the nebulae and whatnot, is conscious. One cannot look in the mirror and rationally deny this. It experiences love and desire, or thinks it does. The idea is enough to render the Judeo-Christian cosmos sort of quaint.”
John Jeremiah Sullivan, “La•Hwi•Ne•Ski: Career of an Eccentric Naturalist,” Pulphead: Essays, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 213
Conscious beings act with purpose, even if that purpose is as basic as continued existence. Life wills to live, as Albert Schweitzer so eloquently asserted, and to go on living. “Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality,” he explained, “namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting and enhancing life, and to destroy, to harm or to hinder life is evil.” Thusly, many of the practices humans have consciously employed—and continue to employ, per May’s observation in the Times essay—in the purposeful development of our project of civilization could rightly be called evil, insofar as Schweitzer defines it, and as such the planet, along with the other life it hosts, would arguably be better off without us.
In the context of the climate breakdown, with the issue of our own extinction now elevated from hypothetical to practicable, Adam Frank’s question—Does anyone make it past the challenge we now face?—is really a matter of deciding if, moving forward, we wish to be agents of evil or agents of good. If the former, then, yes—like Oedipus and King Lear, we are the tragic heroes of a story the ends in a failed resolution. If, however, the latter, then our ongoing project of civilization—humankind’s collective purpose—must be reorganized under a new regulatory directive: to first and foremost preserve a habitable planet, hospitable to life, so Mother Nature may fulfill Her august, long-gestating purpose… whatever it may be. Responsible ecological stewardship is the ethical burden of our advanced level of reason—of our special gift of consciousness itself.
So, yes, I think human extinction would be a tragedy, because I believe we are an experiment that Mother Nature wants to see succeed—the reason for which being the Great Mystery to which all our arts and sciences and philosophies aspire to understand. But—and here’s the bad news/good news part—if our particular project of civilization should fail, I also have no doubt She’ll try again, as She almost certainly has before. Unlike us, She has all the time and space in the universe to get Her job done right.
I’ve thought about this “stuff” often, though not in such terms.
For instance, when we see on the nightly news that a man died in a house fire, it causes us a momentary feeling of—pity, sorrow, gee-that’s-a-shame-ness—if even that. And yet when 3000 people die in the Twin Towers attack, we feel a deep and inconsolable sense of horror, dread—”big emotion.” Why? The answer is multifaceted, ranging from proximity to feelings of vulnerability to fear of the boogeyman. But the fact remains: we react minimally to one horrible death, but increasingly more intensely to many simultaneous horrible deaths.
Enter extinction or apocalypse. At core, I think we imagine going through the end, or we ourselves being stuck to subsist in the aftermath, hopeless and terrified and starving.
But the reality is that each of us, on an individual level, face an extinction event: death. We can hasten it perhaps with bad decisions, or delay it with good ones. But we can’t avoid it. It’s coming, like it or not.
So why don’t the majority of people just fall prey to lassitude? (“I’m just going to die in the end anyway, so why bother trying to have a good life?”)
I would say hope, even in the face of inevitability: another curious facet of humankind.
To your initial point, Erik, I second everything you’ve said, and would also suggest that any single death, no matter how tragic or horrific, can be rationally explained, understood, or contextualized: a murder; a car accident; a rattlesnake bite; hell, even a lightning strike — we accept that those things sometimes unfortunately occur.
On the other hand, the stomach-twisting horror we feel at a high-casualty event (the Twin Towers, the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, even the ongoing polar vortex) isn’t as easily written off as “just one of those things,” because it reminds us how vulnerable we all are — what an eggshell-thin barrier between us and death (even extinction) our civilization provides; how susceptible to catastrophic systemic failure our institutions really are. You know? Life may be ephemeral, we intellectually acknowledge, but our way of life — that’s permanent. Isn’t it?
But as the notion of global annihilation took on greater feasibility in a century marked by two world wars, nuclear proliferation, and environmental degradation, our apocalyptic fictions started exploring what life might be like in a post-civilization reality, as if to prepare us for the possibility — and to assure us life would go on in some form. (One might even argue, given the intractable complexities of twenty-first-century existence, postapocalyptic fantasies are no longer dystopian warnings of a world gone to hell but rather utopian visions of a yearned-for “hard reset,” but that’s a subject for another post…)
Apocalypse or no, however, we do indeed all face our own inevitable “extinction event.” The great playwright Tom Stoppard once wrote: “We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling with the knowledge that for all the compasses in the world, there’s only one direction, and time is its only measure.” So — as you yourself asked — why doesn’t the thought of death paralyze us with fear (other than when we’re directly confronted with it, as we were on 9/11 or during Hurricane Maria)? Why is it we’re able to compartmentalize the finite nature of our mortal trajectory to capitalize on the time we are allotted between birth and death?
I think hope is exactly the right answer. As environmental scientist Jonathan Foley said, “Hope is not the same as blind optimism, or some naive belief that everything-will-turn-out-okay if we just sit still. It’s an active frame of mind, an active frame of heart. It asks us to act, not just receive. To work, to sweat, to love, to risk it all. It challenges us to build a better world, against the real possibility of failure, not merely to expect that others, or invisible hands, will do the work for us. In other words, hope is really a verb, while optimism is a noun. Don’t confuse the two.”
Sentient beings, as I’ve asserted above, act with purpose, and it’s a sense of hope that compels us to do so, despite the ultimate inevitabilities of mortality. Death reminds us that life is valuable because it’s a finite experience — that we have limited opportunities to fulfill our function(s). Recognition of that isn’t at all fatalistic; it’s arguably the grandest possible expression of hopefulness! I’m reminded of one of my other favorite literary citations on the subject, this one from Star Trek Generations:
Thanks for lending such depth and thought to the discussion, Erik — for “getting” what this crazy blog’s all about!
What an interesting post. I agree with May that the other animals of the planet would do much better without us. And honestly our amazing brains haven’t produced much that they care about. Only we care about our discoveries, creations, and technology.
Like you, Sean, I too believe in a sentient planet that ultimately swings toward balance. The current fall in fertility rates is one small tweak perhaps. I think biological vulnerability and an unstoppable plague could be nature’s way of making a rather severe correction. I suspect that our destruction of the planet’s resources and climate, as well as our technology, will contribute to this balancing act. Human civilization will collapse, but not disappear, and begin again at the bottom rung.
Do I think human and alien technological civilizations, in general, are doomed? Not quite. I think we are capable of living on this planet without wrecking it… if we choose to. Humankind simply chooses not to. Sentient beings on other worlds could be far wiser than we. Our assumption is always that we are sit on the top rung of the evolutionary ladder, but that’s our egocentrism talking. Other civilizations might be far more advanced and staying clear of us. They’ll stop by after we’ve fallen, and we’ll carve pictures of their ships in the rock walls of our caves.
What a lovely reflection, Diana! I truly appreciate how much care you put into reading these (sometimes admittedly dense) posts and, commensurably, how much thought you give your response. (And that goes for our pal Erik, too!)
Egocentrism lies at the heart of so much human folly, doesn’t it? As Adam Frank suggests, our myths and religions teach not humility but supremacy: that we were specially created in God’s image to have dominion over all we survey. Hell, it was emission-producing Industrial Age technologies and practices that gave us sovereignty over the elements themselves:
Obviously, a worldview based on human dominance over the natural world isn’t sustainable, and if we are to rise to the challenge Frank identifies in Light of the Stars, we’re going to have to find the humility to ask some Big Questions about the universe and our place in it.
I’ll tell you how I practice humility: I foster kittens for the local animal shelter. Orphaned kittens, if you don’t know, are incredibly susceptible to a host of life-threatening perils, from intestinal parasites to respiratory infections to panleukopenia. They’re so very, very fragile, but their will to live is inspiring. And my job as a foster is to get them through that vulnerable stage of their young life so that they can be happy, socialized members of a loving family. Most of the kittens we’ve fostered have gone on to exactly that, I’m happy to report, but some have been lost before their time, too. Now, there’s an argument to be made that, whether it lives or dies, it’s “just a kitten.” It’s life certainly isn’t as valuable as that of a person, right?
Except that’s not the way I view it. It’s an act of arrogance to compare one life to another and make a determination as to which one is “more important.” Rather, I recognize — per Albert Schweitzer’s philosophical outlook — that a given kitten’s life is as important and valuable and meaningful to her as mine is to me. She wills to live — and to go on living — with the same ardor as I do. And just as I would want another sentient being to respect my will to live, I respect hers, so I do everything in my power give her a shot at the longest, healthiest, happiest life possible. She isn’t “just a kitten” to me; she’s a fellow sentient life-form that has just as much right to her life as I have to mine — no more and no less. She and I aren’t on a hierarchal ladder, occupying different rungs — with my life and my needs taking priority over hers — but rather we find ourselves together in the same boat (the same ark?). And my advanced capacity for reason as a human being endows me with the moral responsibility to protect her from danger whenever it’s in my power to do so — to value her life exactly as I do my own.
That’s how I stay humble — one kitten at a time — and that’s the kind of 21st century I’m lobbying for: one built on social cooperation and mutual respect — one that honors and observes Reverence for Life. We get that right, and we might just very well still be here when one of those advanced interstellar civilizations pops by for a visit! I do have (reasonable) hope we’re gonna get our priorities straight in the coming decades — that the organizing principle of our society will become one of kindness, compassion, and Reverence for Life. And storytellers will play a role — a big one — in inspiring good choices that get us to that place; we’re going to be the ones who (quite literally) write the story — the first draft, anyway — of a new, more hopeful future.
Thanks, Diana, for such consistently thoughtful engagement — and for being my kinda people: artistic and sensitive.
I love your perspective, Sean, and your fostering of kittens and the compassion and respect behind your actions. My feelings exactly. I think when we grow in reverence for the the amazing planetary home we are a part of, good things happen within us and around us.<3 By the way, my parents tried fostering kittens and kept them all. ALL of them. Crazy cat people. 🙂
Thanks, Diana, for your kind and wise words.
Yes, your parents would be affectionately referred to by those in the fostering métier as “foster fails”! Haha! The hardest part of fostering kittens is bringing them back to the shelter when they reach adoption weight, not because you’ll never see them again or ever know what becomes of them — though that, too — but primarily because when they were under your care, they were safe; now you’re letting them go, with all the promise and the risk that entails.
But that’s true of each of us: At some point we all have to “leave the nest” and take our chances out there. And my job as a foster is to give those kittens the best possible shot at a happy life — to the admittedly limited extent that it’s in my power to do so — by getting them through that precarious period of their infancy. I give them the care and nourishment they need to survive to adoption weight, and the love and affection they require to be properly socialized. Foster kittens are always the first to get adopted — most of mine got taken to their “forever homes” on the same day they were returned to the shelter — because they are sociable; that makes all the difference to a prospective adopter.
The last batch I had were six or seven weeks old (which is on the older end for foster kittens) when we brought them home, and they were by a country mile the most skittish litter we ever took in: They would recoil/flinch whenever you extended a gentle hand in their direction. They had spent the entirety of their brief lives in a crate — getting food, yes, but not getting any love or attention (because city shelters simply don’t have the resources for that).
Within thirty-six hours of coming home with us, however, they had transformed into the cuddliest kittens we ever looked after, nestling into our laps, napping with our adult Chihuahua, and crawling all over us like the tarantulas in Raiders of the Lost Ark! One more week in that shelter and their “socialization window” would’ve slammed shut. We got ’em just in the nick of time, though, and all of them went home with loving families (some even with dogs, because our kitties were tagged “dog friendly” — bonus! — having been fostered with one). And as hard as it is to give them back (made somewhat easier by the fact that my wife and I are both allergic to cats!), you find the strength to do it because you know there are other kittens out there who need that same hands-on attention if they’re going to get off to a good start in life: My job is to give them that, and then find the emotional fortitude when the times comes to set them free to have a happy life — without me.
Anyway, at some point I’ll write a full blog post about this subject, but it’s been fun chatting about it a bit here. Fostering has been one of the most fulfilling (ongoing) experiences of my adulthood. It’s enriched my life immeasurably.
What if modern physics is right, and the speed of light is in fact a true limit? What if humanity will never discover Faster Than Light travel because FTL IS impossible?
Note that not only does this not require a leap of faith, it is actually the only state of affairs that requires no leap, no unexplained or unknown phenomena. Just the opposite
If this is true it would explain much of the Fermi Paradox
If this is true, then aside from some minor exploration we’d better get used to this planet. We’re going to be here a long time
Yes, there are workarounds (cryo-sleep, near FTL time dilation, generation ships), but these all require major investments for minor returns hundreds or even thousands of years away. Yes, some planets here in our own system can be terraformed, maybe (Mars, Venus, perhaps Io or Titan) but again, major investments for a return hundreds of years away, though arguably a bigger return. Travel to other planets is not comparable to oceanic travel a few hundred years ago. The difference in resource scale is too great. Even building a long-term space station is not trivial (though it may our best option)
Our current worldview is based on unlimited new lands, unlimited resources including clean air and water. This could be justified, perhaps, as long as there were new frontiers (and you had no moral qualms concerning indigenous societies). But now that there IS no new frontier (human action is severely affecting Antarctica, the Arctic, and even the ocean bottom), our worldview has to change
Anyone over the age of 15 understands how difficult changing your worldview is. It usually takes intellectual honesty, great courage, and a major crisis. We have one of the three at hand. Do we have the other two?
Hey, Dave! Thanks for stopping by!
To my (admittedly limited) understanding, faster-than-light velocity is impossible to achieve, and that the best hope we have for interstellar travel — to worlds and civilizations beyond our own solar system — is through “wormholes” (themselves a theoretical concept), but, even allowing for that possibility, the space-travel technology required to access them is likely many hundreds of years away, if not substantially more. And that goes directly to Adam Frank’s question: Will our civilization even persist that long?
Just last week, though, two days after I posted “Well, There’s Bad News and Good News,” Frank himself published a piece on Medium that I think you’ll find worthwhile (it’s a six-minute read), especially in light of your comment. Essentially, he argues that the project of colonizing other planets within our solar system — a more realistic and attainable goal than interstellar ambitions à la Star Trek — may hold the key to successfully transitioning into the Anthropocene:
To address your closing comment — Do we have the honesty and courage to steer ourselves away from apocalypse? — that’s really the question of our time, isn’t it? Without downplaying the enormity of the challenges we face, I am optimistic that we are rapidly developing the honesty and courage required to meet them. (Thanks in part to the passionate engagement of Gens Y and Z.) Many other environmental activists — far more experienced and knowledgeable than I could claim to be — sense what I’m sensing: that a majority of Americans are demanding both honesty and courage from our elected officials on this very issue. Just yesterday on Twitter, NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus said it best: “When I say we seem to be on the verge of a social tipping point on climate action, what I mean is this: What seems unfeasible, impossible, or even unimaginable now, might become inevitable in a surprisingly short amount of time. Nonlinear change.”
If we are in fact at a “social tipping point,” keep pushing the envelope with me and let’s tip it over! Now more than ever, the future needs those who believe in it…
I love reading your posts, because you have so many interesting things to say, and I’m never sure which one to respond to. But what really resonated here with me was, don’t laugh, Mr. Smith’s “Humans are a virus” speech in The Matrix. I don’t think that’s far off the truth some days.
Thanks, mydangblog! Some might argue my posts have too many things to say — that in trying as I do to identify patterns or make connections between disparate ideas, I wind up with these essays that are either too dense or too lengthy to be very accessible! There might be truth to that. I certainly feel some of my posts are more successful than others. But to that end, I’ve always viewed the blog as an intellectual incubator: an experimental “safe space” to articulate what’s on my mind in a given month, see if I can’t make sense or meaning of it, and test out whether or not it “sticks” — i.e., if it lends itself to further conceptual development. Certainly some of my more refined criticisms of superhero culture/eighties nostalgia grew out of prototypal posts which were mostly exploratory lamentations on Hollywood’s reboot fever; in trying to sort through my professional issues with a franchise-driven business model, I developed a richer awareness about my own generation’s complicated feelings of cultural displacement in a digital world.
To your Matrix comment (speaking of digital worlds): I think the danger in taking a misanthropic view like “humanity is a virus” is twofold. First, it perpetuates the technosolutionist myth that human imperfection is a problem to be corrected (via Silicon Valley innovation like AI, nanotechnology, the Singularity, etc.) rather than a quality to be celebrated. Our randomness and unpredictability — in contrast with more steadfastly reliable elementals, like the changing of the seasons or phases of the moon — is, along with our consciousness, what makes humanity such a unique expression of nature. We are the way God made us, and we needn’t apologize or makes excuses for that.
That said, I think our project of civilization has fostered a lot of extractivist practices that need immediate reformation, but that’s well within our capability to address; sentience endows us with the capacity for self-improvement. (For more on this topic, I recommend media theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s Team Human podcast and/or book.)
Second, misanthropy justifies doomism, which is just as unproductive as denialism. You know? Well, we’re fucked anyway, and we did this to ourselves, so we deserve what we get. Rather, we should “recognize that creating climate change wasn’t done with malevolence. We are not a plague on the planet. Instead, we are the planet. We are, at least, what the planet is doing right now. But that is no guarantee that we’ll still be what the planet is doing one thousand or ten thousand years from now” (Frank, Light of the Stars, 225).
What Frank is suggesting — I think — is that inherent in this cosmic experiment of civilization building is a potentially fatal design flaw: that the intensive energies required to build a technology-deploying civilization ultimately destabilize the very biosphere on which that civilization depends for its (continued) existence and, by extension, opportunity to thrive. Meaning, Mother Nature keeps butting up against the same problem every time she runs this trial: Civilization (potentially) reaches a “development threshold” because the same forces that seed its prosperity also ultimately doom it to extinction over the long run.
So, understanding that — because we’ve taken an astrobiological perspective and no longer view our civilization as a one-off event in the history of the cosmos — the question then becomes: How do we make the smartest choices possible to see our way through this challenge? Because what’s at stake is more than the human race, but very possibly an unfathomable cosmic experiment still waiting — still trying desperately — to succeed. The decisions we make over the next decade may very well determine if we’re smart and resilient enough to overcome the evolutionary “design flaw” Frank has identified, as Mother Nature surely hopes we are. (And human ingenuity and unpredictability will play a large role in that, so let’s not cede control to the algorithms just yet!) That’s a little scary, sure, but I also find it very exciting for the possibilities it opens…
But it starts with recognizing we are not a virus that’s afflicted this planet any more than we are Biblically ordained landlords here to exert dominion over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. We are “an expression of our home world’s creativity,” as Frank says, a view I find as humbling as it is empowering; recognizing that is, I believe, the first step toward perhaps realizing our species’ full creative potential.