“Mom, do you believe in astrology?”
“Well the three Magi used a star to find Jesus, so I think it works.”
You might think my mom is really dumb, or maybe you believe she makes perfect sense. I would have agreed with her when I was in high school. As the youngest child of three, my parents sheltered me under their faith. I had read the Bible twice by sixth grade and believed every word with all my heart. More important than my physical world was an unseen spiritual realm. It wasn’t greed or prejudice that was destroying America. It was abortions, gays, and Muslims. It was the demonic forces ruling our sinful world.
“Up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perception awaits us. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic, religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.” – Carl Sagan
Pale Blue Dot is the most distant photograph ever taken of the Earth, a tiny speck caught in a beam of scattered sunlight. At the request of astronomer Carl Sagan (1934−1996), it was captured by NASA’s Voyager 1 from 4 billion miles away. Sagan reflected on this image in a lecture at Cornell University:
“Look at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
“Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom; in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be.” (Psalm 39:6)
How do we comfort the migrant who fears for her safety, or the father who can’t feed his family? How do we stop the moral decline of a world led by greed and dishonesty, or the intellectual regress of a post-truth society? The distrust and the despair are widespread. Across the globe, we see a species that is anxious, addicted, and depressed. We see divisions of class and culture that seem irreparable, and imbalances of wealth and education that threaten the stability of nations poor and prosperous. And with our economic growth fueled by a dying planet, the status quo is surely unsustainable. If our societal troubles don’t spell the end of civilization, then a collapsed ecosystem certainly will.
“The natural environment we treat with such unnecessary ignorance and recklessness was our cradle and nursery, and remains our one and only home. To its special conditions we are intimately adapted in every one of the bodily fibers and biochemical transactions that gives us life.” – E. O. Wilson
Scientists can be can be optimists, but they must be realists. The human species is removing the very foundations of its existence. We have become a cancer, a system without regulation, ruining the systems from which it evolved. Like a late stage malignancy, we will grow until the body is dead. I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, but fixing a human life seems useless when the entire human system is broken. Greater than my desire to see a person survive is my desire to see our species survive.
Carl Zimmer, science writer: “A lot of people ask, ‘Do you think humans are parasites?’ It’s an interesting idea and one worth thinking about. If the biosphere is our host, we do use it up for our own benefit. We do manipulate it. We alter the flows and fluxes of elements like carbon and nitrogen for ourselves, at the expense of the biosphere as a whole. If you look at how coral reefs or tropical forests are faring these days, you’ll notice that our host is not doing well right now. Humans are not very good parasites. Successful parasites do a good job of balancing—using up their hosts and keeping them alive. In our case, we have only one host, so we have to be particularly careful.”
“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.” – Animal Farm, by George Orwell
At 1.5°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, an estimated 6% of insect species, 8% of plants and 4% of vertebrates would lose more than half of their habitat. These figures would be at least twice that at 2°C. Source: the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2018.
“The Earth has a skin, and this skin has diseases. One of these diseases is called, for example, ‘humanity.’” – Friedrich Nietzsche (philosopher, 1844−1900), Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“Our global civilization is clearly on the edge of failure in the most important task it faces, preserving the lives and well-being of its citizens and the future habitability of the planet.” – Carl Sagan
“This time it’s not a tiger at the cave mouth. You can’t see the danger at your door. But if you look, you can see it at the door of your civilization.” – Paul Gilding
While the future remains uncertain, there is one certainty. Any unsustainable process will come to an end, and the habits of man are no exception. Our world is falling apart, and our system is breaking down. And here we are, a society driven by self-interest but devoid of significance—a generation without purpose, lost in a mess created by our forefathers but without a hope of cleaning it up. Before us lies the seemingly impossible task of saving humanity from self-destruction. So unfortunately, the fix won’t be as simple as reducing emissions¹ or making the rich pay more taxes. The solution will take more than a public policy or a piece of technology. It will take the shift of a global mindset, the transformation of a culture broken by apathy and despair. It will take an idea unlike any other.
“Extinction is the rule.
Survival is the exception.”
– Carl Sagan
Sooner or later, our existence will be threatened. And amid our panic, we might wonder, Did we come this far just to destroy ourselves? Or is there a reason to cherish the life we deem so precious? Despite the chaos, we might have to pause and ponder the nature of our reality, and reconsider all that we hold true, from the hopeful claims of religion to our scientific assumptions. Because in fact, it seems that we can’t save ourselves until we find ourselves worth saving. If we hope to continue our existence, then we must have a reason to care about it. And if we claim to be an intelligent species, then it’s time we start thinking like one.
Next: The Whole First | CONTENTS | ABOUT
Images in this blog are not my property. If you would like any image credited or removed, or if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please leave a reply below or contact me at iftruthexists@gmail.com.
if truth exists 