~ mites on a plum ~

“This country is going straight to hell” Chris Cooper’s character (Col. Frank Fitts, USMC) replied when asked: “What’s new in the world today dad?” in the feature film American Beauty. I’d have to agree, although I’d say not only this country but the whole Earth and all it’s inhabitants. And we’re going not to hell, but to a much more real destination, if it can be referred to as such. Nothingness, nonexistence, extinction. First let me say this once: I have boundless faith that the human race has the potential to evolve, adapt, and eventually metamorphose into a Type III civilization. Just becoming a Type I would do for now. Theoretical types of intelligent civilization usually must meet the following general parameters:

Type 0:
Essentially, our civilization. A Type 0 civilization has only just begun to tap planetary resources such as solar power, geothermal power and wind power. Most of its power generation is still based on non-renewable fossil fuel resources such as oil, coal and natural gases.

Type I:
These civilizations can effectively control the entire resources of their planet; they can predict weather patterns and earthquakes very accurately, and even control them using artificially induced greenhouse effects or space-based lasers. A Type I Civilization could conceivably halt an ice- age.

Type II:
Type II civilizations have extended their power to their entire solar system and learned to harness some or all of the excess energy of their suns. Having colonized or at least extensively explored all the planets within their solar system, they are a largely space-faring race and have already mounted expeditions to other stars using interstellar craft.

Type III:
At the cusp of their power, Type III civilizations may span entire galaxies having colonized all the stars by wave after wave of interstellar craft. They can harness the power of galaxies by utilizing the black holes that reside within their own galaxy, or even the supermassive black holes that are the engine driving most galaxies. Type III civilizations would have sufficient power to conduct truly universe-altering high-energy physics experiments and examine matter down to the Planck length. Such high energies could theoretically unravel matter down to the superstring and thus possibly access other dimensions.

Clearly this is only informed conjecture and we'll never know what Type II & III civilizations will be able to do until we either become or encounter one. Types 0 & I obviously include a lot less speculation. Unfortunately from my limited base knowledge of human history and trends, and the continuing evolution of current world affairs, it seems another destiny is imminent. A bleak future, distant relative to human life-spans but a blink on geological or astronomical timescales, in which the earth has been depleted. It’s millions of species lost to oblivion by unnatural selection, it’s vast resources plundered and squandered to nothing but poisonous polluted byproduct. The waters soiled and the flora asphyxiated, the fauna long since extinguished. Few if any relics left on the surface; a constellation of satellites in earth orbit, and a few miniscule hunks of metal that once served as robotic reconnaissance collecting dust on the rocky moons and planets of the inner solar system, as well as roaming the outer planets and beyond. These will be perhaps the only artifacts left behind by our race. Adorned with touching plaques and innocent attempts at communication to who knows what, these now amount to little more than ghosts whispering suspiria de profundis - sighs from the depths.

The mind of man - how far will it advance? Where will it’s daring impudence find limits? If human villainy and human life shall wax in due proportion, if the son shall always grow in wickedness past his father, the gods must add another world to this that all the sinners may have space enough. -Euripides (Sagan 282)

The culture of fear, greed, and wildly ignorant short-sightedness that now holds fast in the majority of the world’s powers foreshadows nothing other than the aforementioned doom. That is, short of some major change, an epiphany, a reformation of popular thought and consciousness that I’m not holding my breath for. Do we really have faith that the exponentially accelerating speed of technological advancement will save, not destroy us?

Many of the dangers we face indeed arise from science and technology - but, more fundamentally, because we have become powerful without becoming commensurately wise. The world-altering powers that technology has delivered into our hands now require a degree of consideration and foresight that has never before been asked of us . . . Many will have to become scientifically literate. We may have to change institutions and behavior. But our problems, whatever their origin, cannot be solved apart from science. (Sagan 316-317)

It’d be great if technology did rescue us, but a conscious effort on the part of humankind to do a better job of balancing amongst ourselves and with the earth, as other species have generally achieved, might be a good insurance policy, no? Sure, those other species have millions and millions of years of evolution on us, but we’re the most intelligent beings we know. And we only use 3-10% of our brains, we think. Can’t we do better? Imagine the cosmic shame and embarrassment sure to arrive eons from now in the form of little green men shaking their finger-like appendages at us in disapproval, pity, and sympathy.
Regardless of my overly dark prognostication for prognostication’s sake, the point is the apathetic attitude has got to go. Apathy towards the importance of more than the immediate future, in the most selfish cases no further than one’s own inevitable demise, is a psychosis, or hypnosis, that will have to be remedied to give life on earth any chance of long-term survival.

“All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have. -Albert Einstein” (2 Sagan)

How this radical a change can come about is beyond me and almost everyone else, but hopefully is not lost on some future visionary. Or perhaps it comes with a revelation, intelligent alien life at this point is the most likely, certainly more likely than a visionary long since martyred coming back to judge us all. Evidence is already substantial and is ever-accumulating for the proliferation of what we know as prerequisite ingredients for life in the universe, and the number of extrasolar planets is over one hundred and counting. Hopefully the discovery of intelligent alien life would be enough to awaken the masses that hold astonishingly blasé attitudes, in many cases contempt, toward science and the importance of exploration and discovery. To me exploration and discovery are to the betterment of humankind, as well as the general pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
- George Washington, address to Congress, January 8, 1790 (Sagan 380)

If the thought of that isn’t enough, there is one eventual revelation for the human race that will surely come - in the form of cometary or asteroidal impact. That event, unlike the discovery of intelligent life or the return of Christ and Judgment Day, is not a matter of if but when. That would surely remind everyone how fragile a place, on the scale of the tumultuous and violent solar system, Milky Way, and abyss beyond, the earth really is.

For the first time in my life, I saw the horizon as a curved line. It was accentuated by a thin seam of dark blue light - our atmosphere. Obviously, this was not the “ocean” of air I had been told it was so many times in my life. I was terrified by its fragile appearance.
- Ulf Merbold, German space shuttle astronaut (Sagan 173)

Hopefully we won’t be around for that, or we’ll have advanced, survived, and will be able to stop it. A great impact and ensuing extinction would make all this mute, an exercise in absurdity, which it pretty much is anyway. I only hope that something triggers an awakening, something that doesn’t kill us all. Then perhaps afterwards, as Carl Sagan so eloquently puts it, “. . . the most deeply engrained nationalisms begin to erode. They seem the squabbles of mites on a plum” (Sagan 175).

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. (Einstein 11)

Works Cited:

Einstein, Albert. Ideas and Opinions. New York: The Modern Library, 1994

Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996

Sagan, Carl. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994