Now before we get started on current day issues I just want to point out something’s that we need to put on the table as long term issues and by long term I mean long term.
Personally, I no longer see our society lasting for another thousand years. We are too selfish and have weapons that we are all too willing to use for virtually no reason and with no care for the future. Many no longer care for their children and simply use them as pawns in their own games with the children’s trust and naivety being used against them. How does a society that kills and mistreats its children have a future? It makes me despair.
However, let’s work under the assumption it does.
The universe is 14 billion years old and roughly 4.6 billion years ago, give or take a few weeks, our solar system was formed under a very complicated mechanical and chemical process which pulled interstellar dust into a huge ball which compressed it until it ignited under the pressure to forge the basic elements we need for life to exist. This process is explained in a lot more detail here and is still continuing. The moon continues to be ejected from the Earth after its impact, rogue asteroids are encountering us and the orbits of the planets are in the process of changing. We are in the middle of the lifetime of an evolving solar system.
Anyway, the planets we know were created from our exploding star and about 4 billion years ago simple life evolved. Nobody is certain if it evolved on earth or was carried from somewhere else. For more details on life on earth get the excellent BBC series Life on Earth. You can buy it here.
So after 3.9 billion years and after a significant reign by the dinosaurs of 160 million years our ancestors appeared. Estimates are we separated from the chimpanzees 7 million years ago but our earliest recognisable descendants were 500 thousand years ago. An insignificant portion of the life of our planet and our sun yet our society only has really done anything over the last 5 thousand years. The timeline can be found here.
To put it in perspective (let me know if my math is wrong) if you were to have a toilet roll 1 kilometre long which represented the timescale for life on our planet. Only the last 10cm would reflect the time from our earliest descendants with the last 0.1, that’s 0 point 1, 1 millimetre for the last 5 thousand years. Dinosaurs take up a 34 metre area and you know where we would be if we didn’t have an asteroid to thank. If we moved back to view the whole roll at once we wouldn’t even be able to see the 10cm never mind the 0.1cm. Even the dinosaur section would be barely visible.
On the other hand an omnipotent deity made us all up in a week or so.
It’s taken a long long time and a lot of luck for us to get where we are but we still have a long way to go. We are stuck on this planet with no workable way off at the moment. It is inevitable that its resources will run out and we can handle that, assuming we survive ourselves. A big assumption and one I have my doubts over. It is likely that our species will die out long before the sun inevitably expands and takes the Earth back. Of course that is in about 4 billion years and well after our species will be dead or gone.
As we know during the history of our planet there have been many other species that had the title dominant species on Earth. Perhaps we are just the current holders a bit like world records for running or jumping. Eventually someone, or something rather, will take over that title when we falter. Now life is seeded here unless we destroy the planet itself other creatures will quickly evolve to take over regardless of what we do. Perhaps something that actually will evolve to what we aspire to.
One thing is certain. In the scheme of things we are insignificant. Just a very small footnote in history at the moment and one that will not be missed.
The future of our species is in our hands and with a bit of luck and a lot of work from us we can make it the utopia we desire but we need to be clear. It will take work. From all of us and that work is not happening at the moment.