|
The Importance of our Existence |
Unlike many religions the Church of Reality focuses on this world. Other religions often focus on some "next world" that doesn't exist at the expense of our real reality in this world that does actually exist.
In simple terms everything has one of two states. It is either real or it is not real. Something either exists or it does not exist. We currently exist. We are a part of reality. We have evolved to the point where we can begin to comprehend what it means to exist, what reality is. If we want to continue to do that then we have to continue to exist.
If however we become extinct then all is lost. Everything that everyone ever did will become forgotten. We can imagine that maybe a billion years from now that some other life form evolves and finds our ruins and utilizes our technology, but realistically when we are gone, were gone. We go back to being the lifeless dust that we evolved from. If we had meaning it is gone. Extinction is the end of everything for us.
We might be the only life in the universe that has evolved to understand that the universe exists. We might be all there is. We simply do not know.
We do not know if advanced life exists on other planets. From what we know there is a very high likelihood that microbial life is common in the universe. But what about live that has evolved to the point of comprehending reality itself? Are there others out there? We simply do not know. The universe might be teaming with advanced life and there might be civilizations that are so advanced that we can't even comprehend them. On the other hand we might be alone. We might be the only place in the universe where life evolved. We simply do not know.
What if we are alone? What if we are it? What would it mean if we were the only life form in the universe that has evolved to this point? What if we are the sole species through which the universe contemplates its own existence. If we become extinct then the universe would go back to being a dumb universe. Since we don't know if we are alone do we not have a responsibility to survive to find out what we potentially could become? Is that not our higher purpose?
What we do know is that advanced life requires billions of years of a somewhat stable environment. A 10 mile wide asteroid hit and we're gone. Primitive life like the cockroaches might survive but not humans. We actually have the technology now (or soon will have) to defend Earth from an asteroid hit. But if a nearby star goes supernova, we're back to space dust. We could have a super volcano erupt like the one that created Yellowstone Caldera could take out the human race.
In the long run we are going to have to be able to move to other planets because something is going to eventually happen to this planet to wipe it out. We are going to have to evolve forward so that we can travel the vast distances between stars and find new planets to colonize.
We also could wipe ourselves out from just being stupid. We have enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone on the planet. We can create a genetically engineered virus to wipe ourselves out. We could change our environment to the point where we can no longer survive in it. It is a fact that most species on our planet don't make it. We are here because all our ancestors all the way back to pond scum made the right choices or was just lucky enough to survive. But there is nothing that insures that will continue. Although it may be our fate to eventually become extinct, we can at least decide to not destroy ourselves.
We can also decide that our existence in this world is valuable to us and that we are going to, as a species, decide together to continue to evolve, learn to better survive, and cheat extinction for as long as we can.
|
