It feels like the end of days
It keeps feeling like the end of days
I think about the meaning of life
What if it has no meaning?
No purpose, no greater goal
Enrico Fermi was a physicist who worked on the first atomic bomb
In 1950 he asked the most obvious of questions
“Where is everybody?”
If there are billions of stars, some much older than ours
Where are all the ancient spacefaring civilizations?
Why are we alone?
Astronomer David Brin postulated a solution to the Fermi Paradox in 1983
The deadly probes hypothesis – more commonly known as the dark forest theorem
That the universe is a dark forest full of dangers and dangerous hunters
To make oneself know in the forest by crying out
Is to make oneself vulnerable to those dangers
Game theory suggests
in this situation
it is best to shoot first and ask questions later
And to not cry out
As bleak as this theorem is
There is something worse
That all civilizations follow a similar path
That they mine their ecosystems for industrialization
For the fuel of technological growth
That they create weapons of mass destruction
to protect themselves from those they disagree with
That they value their short-term economic goals
Over the environment they live in
And therefore, they destroy themselves
That life just doesn’t get to create the stuff of science fiction
The road to industrialization
Is the road to self-destruction
That life never really survives the industrial revolution
As author, Bill Bryson says
“Life, in short, just wants to be. But, …it does not want to be much”
Except we had to have agriculture
We had to have industry
We had to have a Cybertruck on Mars
There is a strong argument that plants domesticated us
Not the other way round
Bending us to their will
Shaping our society to their needs
Put a monkey on a treadmill and they will jump off
But not us
We keep going
Chasing a fantasy
Chasing a science fiction
Late-stage capitalism
Late-stage plutocracy
Late-stage oligarchy
Late-stage humanity
If we have the capability and knowledge to colonize Mars
We have the capability and knowledge to save Earth
And as much as it grieves me to say it
My visions of spacefaring into the future
Are destined to remain fictions of science
We are going nowhere
The problems too great
The benefits too few
Too many hard steps
To the step to colonize Mars
or anywhere else
Too many steps to a Cybertruck on Mars
Let’s face it
It’s too many steps to a working Cybertruck on Earth
Space won’t save us anytime soon
And the universe is telling us something
It is telling us to stop.
Image unashamedly stolen from the Tesla website and used under fair use for criticism, comment, or news reporting.
Word Outlet 