Humans are inherently adaptive to their environment. Our bodies obviously change, but so do our minds. Our habits, our emotional responses, our beliefs of what is possible and what is necessary, all change depending on how we grew up and the world we see around us. It takes a lifetime to unlearn all the harmful lessons of a fucked up youth, and almost everyone has had a youth fucked up to be burdened with plenty of traumas to pass on to the next generation. And that’s on top of all the pain that the natural world can bring.
Humans are the dumbest possible species capable of doing science well enough to reach escape velocity from the physical limits of the ecological niche they evolved to occupy, but we’re also the only species, seemingly in the nearest billion light years. We’re the best shot this part of the universe has at bringing peace and joy to the natural world, including ourselves. And we are getting better at it, slowly and with many setbacks. There have been countless plagues and extinction events in the history of our world that have caused tremendous damage to the ecosystem, and we’re the first to try to mitigate itself.
If we manage to change fast enough to mitigate most of the crisis we are creating, we will build a better world than could have ever have been without us. A world where mammals live unburdened by parasites and parasites live unburdened by mammal immune systems. A world where people grow strong and healthy and loving and open and connected and sharply intelligent because our environments help us grow into our best selves. Food forests, friendships, peace and prosperity and labors of love.
We already know it is possible. We already know we could belong there. We all dream of such a world no matter how strangely contorted our sense of how to get there has become. We just have to keep building our social structures to get ahead of our technological power.
Humans are inherently adaptive to their environment. Our bodies obviously change, but so do our minds. Our habits, our emotional responses, our beliefs of what is possible and what is necessary, all change depending on how we grew up and the world we see around us. It takes a lifetime to unlearn all the harmful lessons of a fucked up youth, and almost everyone has had a youth fucked up to be burdened with plenty of traumas to pass on to the next generation. And that’s on top of all the pain that the natural world can bring.
Humans are the dumbest possible species capable of doing science well enough to reach escape velocity from the physical limits of the ecological niche they evolved to occupy, but we’re also the only species, seemingly in the nearest billion light years. We’re the best shot this part of the universe has at bringing peace and joy to the natural world, including ourselves. And we are getting better at it, slowly and with many setbacks. There have been countless plagues and extinction events in the history of our world that have caused tremendous damage to the ecosystem, and we’re the first to try to mitigate itself.
If we manage to change fast enough to mitigate most of the crisis we are creating, we will build a better world than could have ever have been without us. A world where mammals live unburdened by parasites and parasites live unburdened by mammal immune systems. A world where people grow strong and healthy and loving and open and connected and sharply intelligent because our environments help us grow into our best selves. Food forests, friendships, peace and prosperity and labors of love.
We already know it is possible. We already know we could belong there. We all dream of such a world no matter how strangely contorted our sense of how to get there has become. We just have to keep building our social structures to get ahead of our technological power.