At any instant along the temporal line the "now" of a theory that has
divergents choosing all possible paths finds the extant survivors the right fit
for the extant environment in hindsight, and the lost lines the dross. Mining
the tailings of that dross may find some useful bits. As the environment is
inevitably dynamic the challenge to survive is continually renewed and today's
winner may not rest on his laurels or he will find himself a footnote amongst
the dinosaurs. Claiming victory is as moot as building a castle of straw, as
immortal time eventually moots all.
Or, as Shelly said
it:
Ozymanidias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who
said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them,
on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And
wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those
passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The
hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these
words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works,
ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of
that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch
far away.
- Percy Brysshe Shelley, 1818.
Humans have won a brief spot
for now at the top of Earth's food chain having claimed it for some 10,000 years
and we're now full of ourselves with our physics and science, math and art. We
imagine we can see the first moments of the Big Bang, and theorize about its
first femtoseconds. In the fullness of time our history is a fraction of one
tick on the clock, not even one full Earth heartbeat. It happened in a
temporary thermal anomaly called the Holocene epoch that is not the Earth's
normal condition and is soon to end, the end of which our culture cannot hope to
survive. Let us not claim victory until we have lived as long as the reign of
the dinosaurs (135 million years), or at least have achieved a stable
multi-planetary persistent presence that could survive the type of event that
killed the dinosaurs and allowed us to exist at all.
Funny thing: the same
evolution happened 100,000 years ago. And 200,000, and 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and
800,000 years ago, for 5,000-25,000 years each time. It's a regular pattern
thing having to do with the Earth's orbit and inclination, the periodicity of
the output of our sun for as long as our ancestors could even generally be
considered "Man". We don't know anything about those lost cultures except that
no matter what they achieved glaciers swept the evidence of their achievements
into the sea. They were pulverized, oxidized and eaten by the fishes as, if we
don't transcend our limitations, all evidence of us will be. 100,000 years is a
long time to destroy the evidence of what we were.
It would be nice if this
one time we figured a way to avoid that. It seems to me that Nature, Evolution,
God, Climate or whatever other symbol you prefer for this seems to be seeking a
life form that can achieve that. Maybe there I'm projecting an objective goal
onto what I want to be on a dispassionate and uncaring universe - I'm cognisant
of that. I think we can do it. I'm not sure we will. If we don't, I believe
?Gaia? will try again, or the uncaring wheel of orbital dynamics will bring the
potential around again if you prefer. I'm not sure of eventual success of an
intelligent terrestrial species that can surmount climate and ELE events if we
don't make it this time because I think we're pretty special. I may be biased
in this regard. I'd like us to win.
/in short: If we can find a way to
survive and / or prevent a glacial era, an ELE-level asteroid or comet impact,
and a nearby supernova then God / Gaia / Science / evolution loves us.
Otherwise no, we were just an alpha test and we failed - we were not worthy. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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