"Human beings have lived on Earth for about 100,000 years, a very short time in relation to the age of the universe (15 billion years) or even to the life of our planet (4.6 billion years). Humans started domesticating animals and growing crops about 10, 000 years ago. If we compacted the history of Earth into a movie lasting 1 year, running 146 years per second, life would not appear until March, multicellular organisms not until December 15, Homo sapiens (our species) not until 11 minutes to midnight on December 25, and civilization not until 1 minute to midnight on December 31. Yet, in a very short time, since the Industrial Revolution began 250 years ago, humans, a mere 0.000002% of Earth's life, have become capable of seriously altering the entire biosphere."
This really places our insignificance in perspective, doesn't it?
"It is possible that intelligence in the wrong kind of species was foreordained to be a fatal combination for the biosphere. Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually extinguishes itself."
Along the history of time, human beings are the only creatures capable of sophisticated reasoning and coordination. Are they simply a blip along the timeline, an anomaly?
An idea worth examining, especially in this age of hedonism.
This really places our insignificance in perspective, doesn't it?
"It is possible that intelligence in the wrong kind of species was foreordained to be a fatal combination for the biosphere. Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually extinguishes itself."
Along the history of time, human beings are the only creatures capable of sophisticated reasoning and coordination. Are they simply a blip along the timeline, an anomaly?
An idea worth examining, especially in this age of hedonism.
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