by Beery1 » Thu 06 Jun 2013, 10:34:25
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('agramante', 'I')n the end, Beery, you have a real point: if we're not around, what do we care about what else is?
Was that my point? I thought that was Lore's point. Anyway, it's an important point. I think it's important that we survive long term, because as far as we know, we are the only creatures in the universe that can understand that universe and create and build a society that is capable of surviving long-term (by which I mean thousands, millions or even billions of years). I also think it's important that if we don't survive, we at least leave the only life sustaining planet (that we know of) habitable for other species, so that they might evolve into creatures that can understand and create and build like we do.
To consign the only planet we know of that can support life to oblivion just so that we can each travel 30 miles a week at 30mph to spend 40 hours a week pushing papers around seems to me to be a particularly stupid thing to do.
What we're doing with our time on this planet often reminds me of Shelley's poem 'Ozymandias':
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. 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.'
We've created a culture whose foundation is bound to fail (probably within our own lifetimes), and we're acting like what we're building on that foundation is destined to be a permanent monument to our greatness.