If you want to be “accurate” middle age and now would be the same line (because the last millennia is about 0.33…% of homo sapien’s history) and bright future would be pretty fucking long because there’s at least a billion years ahead of us for life on Earth, probably more…
That’s just humans though, plenty of life will go on living and they will probably be better off without a global apex predator in their way. That will be the true bright future for life on Earth. Maybe we’ll eventually manage to better ourselves and solve the climate problems we’re facing too, time will tell.
One thing though, some sections of the planet will become uninhabitable for humans, not all though. People have been living in the scorching heat of the desert for thousands of years, if the average summer temperature closer to the poles increases to 27 instead of 22, people will manage to survive there, worst case they’ll adopt a nomadic lifestyle again.
Keeping in mind that a single axis for progress is reductive: also, don’t forget that there have been and will be backslides. For example, European colonialism set back a lot of progressive / alternative cultures, genociding them or converting them to something that better-served the interests of empire (e.g., race rules).
We may look back at these days - you know, where not all diseases kill you, and in fact were super easily handled, barely an inconvenience!:-P - and wish to have such things as "antibiotics" again, before bacteria all became immune to them.
Or maybe the world will rally together, and start funding research into alternatives quickly enough for it to matter? Just like climate change too...
It's a good thing that people aren't anti-science now, bc that surely would be a problem if we want to reach that bright shiny happy future we keep hoping for. :-|
It is very naive to think that the collective endgoal of humanity is to have super health when right now the only goal is which super power will dominate over the others, killing everyone who stands on their way
Not just right now - it was probably always that way. At one point those nations needed STEM e.g. engineers to win those (cultural) wars, while now we are gearing up to use robots and AI instead.
Even so, I think the loss of antibiotics is more of a short sighted side effect. It could need a century of development to overcome, but it is more profitable to sell pain relief right now so... it's a problem for a future generation to have to deal with, so long as I get mine now, seems to be the way of thinking.
If the endgoal of humanity is for everyone to live happily and healthy why don’t they start right now by decommercializing the health sector? Why health research and provision are commercial?
Our existing antibiotics would be perfectly fine, if they were used responsibly instead of mass breeding resistant bacteria to mass breed animals under terrible conditions because capitalism.
In the same wake climate change would be much easier to deal with if the economic system wasnt designed around infinite growth of production and consumption.
Enough is enough. It’s time to make this year the year of Linux. /s
I mean, I mostly enjoy my FOSS (there are some issues). At least I don’t have to pay thousands of dollars or pirate it (and hiding it) only to find out that it’s Linux incompatible.
Did you know that “to google something” is the proprietary version of “to search something”? See!!! Proprietary software has integrated into conversational phrases! It’s time to stop!
I envy you because I don’t know how to use Inkscape properly (it looks very complicated). I don’t really need/use it, so yeah.
Historians of the medieval era hate the term “dark ages”, even in relation to Europe. The whole notion that the Roman Empire went poof one day and then everything sucked for 1000 years is just cartoonishly wrong.
I once heard in some history tv show that it’s called “dark ages” not because of the bad living conditions, but because we know so few things about it, compared to other history periods.
They didn’t skip it, the enlightenment was a continuation of what they came up with. I’m pretty sure they didn’t deny the earth is round and the sun is the center of our galaxy.
Now you’ve got me curious, what do you think they didn’t continue? The art wasn’t the same, is that it? We should be very thankful they saved a lot of knowledge that could have been lost.
What the hell are you talking about? I’m talking about enlightenment, you know, the explosion of philosophy in the 17th century?such as the explosion of liberalism, ideas of socialism, The theories of government, American and french revolution, ect.
Hmmm, the minions probably did think the earth was flat since that’s what the church told them. Definitely, most of the thinkers of that time knew it wasn’t and were told to keep it hush hush or there would be harsh punishment. It’s not a one size fits all kind of thing, and just like everything else, it’s complicated.
That is a myth that has been debunked a long time ago. In fact, the Earth being round was discovered in antiquity and Eratosthenes measured the Earth’s circumference almost accurately in about 240 BC.
Realistically speaking, any of the major changes that happen near the end of a star’s life will make their planets uninhabitable on a time scale that seems pretty long from a human perspective. Imagine the last 100 years of climate change, but it just keeps getting worse at the same pace for a million years. By the time a star swells into a giant or explodes in a supernova, there won’t be anyone around to notice.
I read in this book that there’s a restaurant just before that happens where you can bounce back and forth between the death of the universe and the hours before it. So that sounds cool.
It’s another spin on the aforementioned restaurant. It’s from a hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. In said restaurant (Milliways) the cows have been bred to wanting to be eaten and expressing said wish directly to the customers.
Shh!" said Ford. “It’s conical. So what you do is, you see, you fill it with fine white sand, alright? Or sugar. Fine white sand, and/or sugar. Anything. Doesn’t matter. Sugar’s fine. And when it’s full, you pull the plug out… are you listening?” “I’m listening.” "You pull the plug out, and it all just twirls away, twirls away you see, out of the plughole. “Clever.” “That’s not the clever bit. This is the clever bit, I remember now that this is the clever bit. The clever bit is that you then thread the film in the projector… backwards!” “Backwards?” “Yes. Threading it backwards is definitely the clever bit. So then, you just sit and watch it, and everything just appears to spiral upwards out of the plughole and fill the bath. See?” “And that’s how the Universe began is it?” said Arthur. “No,” said Ford, "but it’s a marvelous way to relax.
Add comment