I heard Sam Harris's thoughts for 2021. One of the things he said is how we need a space programme partly for the fun of it - a good reason - and partly to offer greater security for the future of humanity. So we can go to another planet and fuck that up, presumably.
Look. I know I'm a misanthropist, but, really, what's so great about humans?
We're clever, say the philosophers. So what? I mean, if one doesn't believe in a God who likes cleverness, what is special about cleverness? That we can invent things? That might be good for us - and, on rare occasions, for life forms other than us (though I can't think of an example that isn't merely to limit the extent of the harm we cause to other life-forms) - but beyond us, what good is it?
We can make moral decisions, they say. Yes, we can. So, imagine that we had spent the history of our species lifting baby elephants out of ravines and healing wounded lions and being kind to each other and telling the truth, would the world look anything like the world we now inhabit? I mean, if we fully and entirely acted on moral decisions, we wouldn't bloody be here. We're here because we killed things and competed with each other and made our brains big by dealing with the fact that other people lie and cheat and we had to expect it or be better at it.
Everything that is good about humans exists ONLY IN THE MIND OF HUMANS.
The Internet does nothing for anything beyond humans. Nor does science and politics and education and art. We are a legend in our own lifetime. We are existential egos with nothing going for us outside the realm of us. We don't deserve to exist any more than does Saturn or Orion or a black hole.
Look, I like humans, on the whole, and many individual humans a lot. But so what? So what in the grand scheme of things? Whether I like them or dislike them is irrelevant to what they deserve - and that stands for everyone of us. Now, this doesn't mean we should not treat each other well. But if we are to make grand claims for how wonderful we are then we darn well better be wonderful beyond the realm of our limited species. Ask the chickens what they think of us. Ask the rainforests. Oh, yes, they can't speak or are not conscious, so they don't matter. But the rainforests have done a great deal more to benefit this planet than we have. They deserve to survive if anything does. But only as far as this planet is concerned. And this planet isn't special. This solar system isn't special. We only think they are because we confer specialness on them by being here. What grandiosity. What hubris. What sickening hubris.
So said the Crone.
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