“For thousands of years”
It always struck me as odd when people say the phrase “for thousands of years”, especially when it’s used to imply that something is fundamental and timeless. This phrase is a reminder of how small we humans tend to think — even the expression we use to mean “a long, long time” is so short. I suppose a mayfly would say “for almost a year” with the same conviction, adjusted for their lifespan.
This is not the end
During one of our chats, a friend of mine said: “Man’s attempts to understand the true nature of reality is like an ant trying to comprehend the complexities of human society.” It is futile because we are so woefully unsophisticated and under-equipped — the best apparatuses we have are our senses and our minds — that any observation and deduction will be as far from the truth as a single-celled organism’s take on the stock market.
I concur that we are simple little things living on a simple little chunk of moist rock. Our tools are flawed, and our minds primitive. However, I don’t see this as a reason to surrender and stop our deeper pursuits. To the contrary, I see it as a sign that we can understand and achieve so much more.
Remember that we’re not just humans; We’re an unbroken lineage from the first life form to each and every one of us today. This is not the end of the line. Consider how we got here:
First life: ~4.2 billion years ago
First animal: ~610 million years ago (+3,600,000,000 years)
First mammal: ~220 million years ago (+390,000,000 years)
First human: ~0.8 million years ago (+219,000,000 years)
First known civilization: ~6,000 years ago (+800,000 years)
First human in space: ~60 years ago (+6,000 years)
Given time, descendants of single-celled organisms invented human society and the stock market. Why stop now?
Baby talk
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
…for now.
We stand at the gate to a future of unimaginable feats. Whatever comes after us, Homo Sapiens or otherwise, will achieve things and ponder questions we cannot hope to fathom.
Everything up until now, everything we’ve learned and believed in the past “thousands of years”, will be nothing but baby talk on a civilization scale.
Our mission is to ensure we get there. We must build a future not looking down at what has been, but looking up at what can be.
