If we can make it untill the sun burns out we win in my book. By that time we probably won’t need a sun anymore to survive.
Some of us do believe we are special. There never is a destiny, it’s just a mirage, a rainbow in the sky, you can never actually get there it’s always out in front of you. It’s about the path you follow to get there that counts. If you set out on a path no more special then that of slime-mold then that will be extactly where you will end up. Insignificant we are but great we can be.
If you could somehow remove yourself from the fact you’re alive to even ponder this, imagine trying to convince the most grounded, rational thinkers you know that given the laws of physics and nature as we know them (in a universe where life never came into being) – that life is possible.
If life itself, from slime-mold to humans isn’t cosmologically amazing, then what is? A star? A black hole? The universe itself? Or the size of it? Do you measure importance of scale by the very large, or very small?
Myself? Besides the fact that there exists anything at all, I’d put life right at the top of that list.
“Introducing new and novel things this planet has never known” is pretty much what life is all about.
And while I agree with the sentiment, the idea that anything like humanity will be around when the sun goes out is beyond ridiculous. We have longer to go until then than life has existed on earth! Organisms that made slime mold look sophisticated and advanced evolved into something that flies rockets around in outer space in that kind of time frame. I’m pretty sure nothing anybody here would call “human” will be around when the sun becomes a red giant.
Again, of that I have no doubt, but for lack of a better word to call our very, very distant descendants, I’ll call them humans for the purpose of this debate.
We can’t know billions of years from now what sentient life originating from earth would be like, if still around, but I’d bank that we’ll be far flung across across the local galaxy by then. It’s this possibility… Just this possibility… That should affect our perspective in this universe.
Nope. If it’s created by a natural being’s activity, it’s natural. Natural’s a pretty big category. Unless you’d say that an anthill isn’t natural? It’s not like they exist without ants actively making them, do they?
I disagree. If it’s created by a life form, it’s an artificial construct. That is, your anthill is an artificial dwelling made out of natural resources by being(s) with some ability to create something that could not have been made by a windstorm or a meteoric impact.
Same with humans, but we take it to a whole 'nuther level; one that transcends the rest of the animal kingdom because of our self awareness and understanding of most physical laws. I think it’ll be a while before an ant builds a computer or a nuke.
Is wind driven by instinct? Doest it self-propagate? Have DNA, chromosomes, cells? Does wind strive for survival, fight for resources? Is it a local reversal of entropy? Can it solve problems? Can it reason? Can it think? Does wind devise and manipulate the inanimate for its own sake? Et cetera.
Surely I don’t have to explain the differences between the physical elements and chemical reactions that make up a living organism, or how all of it is much greater than the sum of its parts?
I get your point, but where are we going with it? I think the “so what?” here is the fact there’s anything here to even ask that question. As far as we know, in the entire cosmos, we are the only things that can do this.
It doesn’t have to “mean” anything. Yet we still feel a compulsion to live life beyond (or never having) offspring. We feel a responsibility to be stewards of this earth. To reach out toward the stars.
This attitude of hedonistic living or the outlook that life and the cosmos is mundane is to shun our own existence. If our ways will fuck up the lives of our progeny, we should do better than that. Why? Because we can.
If dead is truly dead, why not just off yourself now?
I’m not disagreeing with that. I already posted that I think so, too.
Nature made me in such a way that doing so is scary. Besides, that’s not at all what I meant when I said that. You were trying to draw a distinction between two types of deaths, where I don’t see any distinction.