Future of Earth

[Henk]

What is the future of Earth? And what is the future of man? I consider the first question as primary. The future of man depends on the future of Earth.

[Henk]

Some very good news today:

'Ecuador's Voters Protect Rights of Nature, Reject Proposal to Rewrite Constitution'

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17112025/ecuador-rights-of-nature-vote/

[Todd]

What is the future of Earth?

The sun will entirely destroy the earth in about eight billion years, though it will destroy all life on earth long before that.  Prior to that, the earth will continue to evolve, with plate tectonics changing the global landscape, wiping out entire species by the tens of thousands (or more), with new ones coming into existence, and so on.

And what is the future of man?

Humanity will likely go extinct in the next several million years, and perhaps less.  Catastrophic projections of human extinction in conceivable time periods (eg, <1000 years) are very highly unlikely.  There is always a small chance of some type of mass extinction event (eg, asteroid impact, heretofore unknown/undetected potential flood basalt event) in shorter relative time periods, and full-scale nuclear war is a low probability possibility.  Small human enclaves would likely survive full-scale nuclear war, but what we know as modern human society would not. 

Depending on one's taste for and belief in transhumanism/post-humanism, humanity in some form could persist basically forever.  This is a very low probability outcome.  I peg it as having a 0.00% chance of happening.

[AnotherSpin]

The human mind is strangely wired. It's constantly pulled in two directions at once.

One direction is the future: What will happen tomorrow, in a year, or in a million years?

The other is the past: What really happened in that pivotal historical moment, why did the key players act the way they did and not otherwise, who was to blame, and who gets the glory of the victor? And of course -- whether the Big Bang was actually loud.

The one thing the mind simply cannot occupy itself with is what exists right now, in the only truly real, infinite moment of eternity. Mind just can't stay here. That's how it's built. The moment it tries, it slips away, either into the myth of a past that gets distorted with every retelling, or into the fairy tale of an imagined future.

[relm1]

I'd give humanity another 100 years.  Maybe a thousand if we're lucky.  Earth has about four or five billion years left till the expanding sun consumes it.  There will probably be no life of any kind in about a billion years. 

[Henk]

I'd give humanity another 100 years.  Maybe a thousand if we're lucky.  Earth has about four or five billion years left till the expanding sun consumes it.  There will probably be no life of any kind in about a billion years. 

Bacteria and other small life-forms will persist, maybe some mammals too in particular habitats.

[Henk]

The human mind is strangely wired. It's constantly pulled in two directions at once.

One direction is the future: What will happen tomorrow, in a year, or in a million years?

The other is the past: What really happened in that pivotal historical moment, why did the key players act the way they did and not otherwise, who was to blame, and who gets the glory of the victor? And of course -- whether the Big Bang was actually loud.

The one thing the mind simply cannot occupy itself with is what exists right now, in the only truly real, infinite moment of eternity. Mind just can't stay here. That's how it's built. The moment it tries, it slips away, either into the myth of a past that gets distorted with every retelling, or into the fairy tale of an imagined future.

Animals are superior, in this and other respects. But humans kill and torture them and wipe out so many species.

But we (or maybe better 'I') must not forget 'some' humans (maybe 0,5% of humanity) take action to turn the tide with the help of science too.

Humans are so rigid, so focused on self-preservation (life-style, opinions, religion) that social change (deliberation and cooperation, mutual understanding and adoption of beneficial insight and views) is an impossibility. There's only cultural evolution in the form of struggle. A struggle I would say that plays out in the present and which doesn't care for the future, although it has futural outcomes.

Maybe it's somewhat similar to animals now I come to think of it.

History and past struggles haven't gone though in the case of humans. This makes things extra complicated. It stands in the way of social change.

Sometimes after a lot of turmoil there is agreement between the more reasonable members of the parties, but the mechanisms of in-group and out-group stays.

It's somewhat equivalent with war, but incomparable though to considering the amount of deaths, destruction and landgrab, although the argument can be made it's part of cultural evolution too.

[Mandryka]

What is the future of Earth? A

Global climate collapse

And what is the future of man? 

We're done. Good luck to whatever evolves from cockroaches or those little transparent shrimps that live in hydrothermal sulphur vents deep in the ocean in several billion years time.

[Todd]

Global climate collapse

The earth survived the Permian Extinction just fine.  The earth will survive climatological vicissitudes.

Good luck to whatever evolves from cockroaches or those little transparent shrimps that live in hydrothermal sulphur vents deep in the ocean in several billion years time.

Current estimates are that all life on earth is toast, or rather superheated liquified goo, in four billion or so years. 

The end is nigh.

[Florestan]

Whatever happened to the optimism of the Renaissance, Humanism and Enlightenment? Their champions proclaimed urbi et orbi that, by getting rid of God and (organized) religion, by exalting reason and science and by spreading secular education, a Golden Age of peace, prosperity and happiness will usher in, replacing war, poverty and misery and obliterating superstition and ignorance.

Fast forward a few hundred years of Renaissance, Humanist and Enlightenment action --- and what we see is a prevailing mood of bleak despondency and utter pessimism, especially among their supporters.

Probably a case of "be careful what you wish, for it might come true."

[Henk]

Whatever happened to the optimism of the Renaissance, Humanism and Enlightenment? Their champions proclaimed urbi et orbi that, by getting rid of God and (organized) religion, by exalting reason and science and by spreading secular education, a Golden Age of peace, prosperity and happiness will usher in, replacing war, poverty and misery and obliterating superstition and ignorance.

Fast forward a few hundred years of Renaissance, Humanist and Enlightenment action --- and what we see is a prevailing mood of bleak despondency and utter pessimism, especially among their supporters.

Probably a case of "be careful what you wish, for it might come true."

I'm sorry to refer to Nietzsche once more and against Christianity. You can ignore this reply.

'The Anti-Christ':
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/19322-h/19322-h.htm

Or from 'Ecce Homo':

'Thus, I am necessarily a man of Fate. For when Truth enters the lists against the falsehood of ages, shocks are bound to ensue, and a spell of earthquakes, followed by the transposition of hills and valleys, such as the world has never yet imagined even in its dreams. The concept "politics" then becomes elevated entirely to the sphere of spiritual warfare. All the mighty realms of the ancient order of society are blown into space—for they are all based on falsehood: there will be wars, the like of which have never been seen on earth before. Only from my time and after me will politics on a large scale exist on earth.

...

Have you understood me? I have not uttered a single word which I had not already said five years ago through my mouthpiece Zarathustra. The unmasking of Christian morality is an event which unequalled in history, it is a real catastrophe. The man who throws light upon it is a force majeure, a fatality; he breaks the history of man into two. Time is reckoned up before him and after him. The lightning flash of truth struck precisely that which theretofore had stood highest: he who understands what was destroyed by that flash should look to see whether he still holds anything in his hands. Everything which until then was called truth, has been revealed as the most detrimental, most spiteful, and most subterranean form of life; the holy pretext, which was the "improvement" of man, has been recognised as a ruse for draining life of its energy and of its blood. Morality conceived as Vampirism.... The man who[Pg 142] unmasks morality has also unmasked the worthlessness of the values in which men either believe or have believed; he no longer sees anything to be revered in the most venerable man—even in the types of men that have been pronounced holy; all he can see in them is the most fatal kind of abortions, fatal, because they fascinate. The concept "God" was invented as the opposite of the concept life—everything detrimental, poisonous, and slanderous, and all deadly hostility to life, wad bound together in one horrible unit in Him. The concepts "beyond" and "true world" were invented in order to depreciate the only world that exists—in order that no goal or aim, no sense or task, might be left to earthly reality. The concepts "soul," "spirit," and last of all the concept "immortal soul," were invented in order to throw contempt on the body, in order to make it sick and "holy," in order to cultivate an attitude of appalling levity towards all things in life which deserve to be treated seriously, i.e. the questions of nutrition and habitation, of intellectual diet, the treatment of the sick, cleanliness, and weather. Instead of health, we find the "salvation of the soul"—that is to say, a folie circulate fluctuating between convulsions and penitence and the hysteria of redemption. The concept "sin," together with the torture instrument appertaining to it, which is the concept "free will," was invented in order to confuse and muddle our instincts, and to render the mistrust of them man's second nature! In the concepts "disinterestedness" and "self-denial," the actual signs of decadence are to be found. The allurement of that[Pg 143] which is detrimental, the inability to discover one's own advantage and self-destruction, are made into absolute qualities, into the "duty," the "holiness," and the "divinity" of man. Finally—to keep the worst to the last—by the notion of the good man, all that is favoured which is weak, ill, botched, and sick-in-itself, which ought to be wiped out. The law of selection is thwarted, an ideal is made out of opposition to the proud, well-constituted man, to him who says yea to life, to him who is certain of the future, and who guarantees the future—this man is henceforth called the evil one. And all this was believed in as morality!—Ecrasez l'infâme!


Have you understood me? Dionysus versus Christ.'