The Destiny of Man

The Earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.
- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, The 'Father of Human Space Flight'

Us humans have always thought ourselves special in the grand scheme of things – assuming the sun revolves around the Earth, we are at the center of the universe, the Creator for some reason takes a special interest in us, thinking the planet is young just because our race is, etc. I suppose that is an inescapable side effect of consciousness.

Few people realize how inconsequential we are in the history of our planet, let alone our galaxy, and especially in the context of our universe. To plagiarize a terrific analogy from Bill Bryson in his excellent book, “A Short History of Nearly Everything,” if the history of our planet (which is really just a teenager itself in cosmic time) was mapped on a timeline that stretched between a persons outstretched arms, moving left to right, primordial life first appears just before the left elbow. Simple plant life shows up somewhere near the right-hand wrist, the Paleolithic era of the dinosaurs begins somewhere in the right-hand palm, and the entire existence of humans (of which recorded history is only about 1/25th) could be scraped off the tip of the right hand’s outmost nail in a single swipe of a nail file.

Depending upon where you come down in the science-theology spectrum, there are really only a handful of possible endgames for our stint here: we are all killed/saved in some sort of Divine Judgment Day; we go the way of the dinosaurs due to a cataclysmic extinction event involving large objects crashing into our planet, again; our planet becomes uninhabitable due to a radical shift in climate, manmade or otherwise, turning the Earth into a barren ice ball like Mars or a sweltering, caustic sauna like Venus; we all get toasted when the sun flares out, becoming a red giant and swallowing the Earth before dying out in six billion years (we’re only 1/3 of the way there); we melt ourselves with nuclear weapons, or some more creative method of self-inflicted extinction; or we conquer the current limitations of our science and figure out a way to sustain humanity in some other part of the universe.

If you share my instinct for the self-preservation of the homo sapien race (and I think everybody does when you put it in the perspective of the fact that at some point, everything around you, everything you spend your life doing or making or building, what job you held or school you went to, the school itself, all of human achievement and creation, all human history, it will all eventually be vaporized when the aforementioned solar flame out occurs, if not sooner), you probably share my dismay over our range of options.

Indeed, if the true meaning of life is to serve a Higher Power or to simply perpetuate life (again, depending upon where you come down), as a civilization we should be fairly concerned with making sure the Judgment Day and/or conquering science scenarios happen while negating or minimizing the chances of the others. (This sounds outlandish, but this idea is being taken very seriously by some leading academics, scientists, and thinkers such as Stephen Hawking, Ray Kurzweil, and Cambridge University professor Martin Rees in the form of Singularity studies.)

So what can we do? In the case of the religious scenario, we can literally do little more than pray. However, since no single religion is practiced by a majority of the world’s citizens and virtually every religion teaches us that non-believers are doomed, the majority of the populace should be working on a backup plan.

In the extinction event scenario, well, again, we can do little more than pray. In the near term, at best we may have some advance warning so we can always do all the things we promise ourselves we will do if we find out a giant asteroid is on a collision course with Earth.

Actually, unless the religious scenario happens (and over which we have no control), we have three options – we get wiped out by some act of nature, we get wiped out by a collective act of human stupidity, or we work together to prevent and/or survive the first and figure out a way to preempt the former.

With this perspective, there are really only two pursuits worthy of humanity’s attention – science and politics. The science is clearly to enable us to figure out a way of continuing human life elsewhere (perhaps virtually, as a merger between life and technology?) once our planet becomes inhabitable and/or figuring out ways of avoiding cataclysmic natural extinction events. Politics may seem trivial in the context of trying to save humanity from extinction, but it is critical for our national and international governing bodies to prevent humanity from destroying itself before science has the opportunity to save it.

A brief survey of national priorities and the current state of international affairs suggests that perhaps our priorities are misplaced. International affairs remain dedicated to conflict, which historically is nothing new, the existence of military technologies capable of destroying humanity most definitely is new.

Meanwhile, the single greatest engine of scientific innovation, the United States, faces a future where this distinction may itself face extinction. Our public school systems lag those of the rest of the industrial world, especially in math and science, our post-secondary institutions, while still the best in the world, are increasingly filled with foreign students, especially in post-graduate programs. American students are majoring in high-paying, yet ultimately meaningless (relatively, given the context) majors such as law, while China, India, and Japan continue to churn out thousands of scientists and engineers for every one we graduate.

Since doomsday does not appear to be just around the corner, this may all sound quite silly and probably more than a bit kooky. However, with the stakes involved, is this something we can afford to dismiss?