I don’t know what a Pak Protector is.
But I’m serious: I feel no allegiance to the human race as a species. I don’t see any compelling non-religious reason why anyone should care if it disappears from the face of the planet. I understand that genetically we are wired to propagate, but we are intelligent enough to overcome that if we choose.
Having a kid suddenly makes one very, very interested in the future of the species for the next ~100 years at least.
It’s not rational, but humans aren’t Vulcans.
Yeah, I mentioned that upthread. But wanting to protect and provide for your own progeny is different than caring about the survival of the species as a species.
Except insofar as your progeny’s wellbeing is tied to the species’s wellbeing.
And I certainly understand that. I just think that, as a whole, the human species has been a massive failure. We should let the dinosaurs give it another shot.
Nah man, it’s the cockroaches’ turn. They’ve been waiting forever. And they’re tired of being everyone’s whipping boy.
As a misanthrope since my teenage years, I can answer that. Fair warning, it's going to sound corny.
Human beings are the Universe (striving to) understand itself. We’re a complex arrangement of atoms and molecules that have obtained sentience. Simply put, humans appreciate beauty - art, philosophy, math, physics. And although I think nature is intrinsically valuable beyond its utility to the human species, nature doesn’t care. Human beings have that potential.
Unfortunately we are also susceptible to greed and hate, but that bad doesn’t in itself obviate the good.
</Soapbox.>
Carl Sagan: “We are the universe’s way of knowing itself.”
That’s where I am. In order for my progeny to succeed, we as a species has to succeed.
We all need to pally for the submarine.
Also, for those that don’t know, a Pak Protector is from the classic series Ring World. If you get a chance, it’s worth reading.
It’s up there with series written by Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov
Timex
4281
Intelligence allows a creature to adapt to it’s environment dynamically, without resorting to random chance in genetic mutations over generations.
If the environment changes, most life has no real way of adapting to it, beyond trying to relocate themselves to an environment more hospitable.
Humans are able to do things like make tools, on the fly, to survive in different environment. We can survive virtually anywhere as a result of this ability. That’s why we are one of few species that exists everywhere on Earth… And in space.
Oh yeah. I’ve read Ringworld, just long long ago. And the sequels all sucked.
That explains your apathy. You’ve obviously lost your mind!
Seriously though, a lack of empathy is not a sound or stable place to b. If you really feel disconnected from the people around you, it might not be a bad idea to reach out.
Matt_W
4284
This ability did not save our own species from a recent bottleneck which squeezed our total population down to a few thousand individuals. Nor did it save any of the other members of our genus. There are many plant and animal genuses that are at least as or more widespread and numerous than we are (though this is hard to judge, since we ourselves have an enormous impact on the distribution of species. There are probably more brown rats than humans, for instance, and they exist in every habitat on the earth except the poles, but that’s largely because of us.) There are many trillions of springtails, and they occupy every land surface on the earth, including the poles. And our adaptation to special environments like space or the bottom of the ocean or the poles is highly contingent. We don’t have, like, breeding populations living in any of those places, or anyone on any permanent basis.
If there’s a catastrophe capable of killing off all of the rats, for example, it’s hard to imagine that humans, even with our intelligence, would be able to weather it somehow.
Not to harp on the but, when large civilizations and empire collapse, the tendency is for society to revert to hyperlocal tribalism and there is a loss of collective knowledge and technology. (Think the dark ages but more so in this case.) I’m setting a challenge for you and your neighbors to put a man on the moon using only local resources. You have ten years to accomplish this. Oh, and you can only barter for the goods needed for your space program.
Obviously you need post-industrial civilization to get to space, but that’s just an extreme example of humans’ ingenuity.
If the ecology cascades such that there are no fish left in the sea and edible food cannot be planted and grown, then sure, humanity will probably go extinct. Otherwise, I think people find a way, even if the population declines from 7 billion to a mere 50 million or so.
When is this supposed to have happened? Is it based on DNA evidence or something else? Just curious.
Timex
4287
My neighborhood isn’t going to be the group of humans left over after some great ecological catastrophe.
It’d be some group of survivors pot in place by the government.
KevinC
4288
Are you imagining a Horatio-like future of billions of Jared Kushner clones? That’s what your statement brought to my mind.
Matt_W
4289
One bottleneck about 70 kya that whittled us down to a couple of thousand individuals. Another when we colonized the Americas. There’s evidence that the founder population of humans who crossed the Bering Strait 12-14 kya consisted of a few dozen individuals. And yes, genetic evidence, though there is also archaeological evidence, e.g. when looking at features in skull fossils over a wide geographic range.
I might venture to suppose that the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculture significantly increased our species’s resilience. Maybe not though.
