I am in my late
eighties. I have lived for almost a
century, and at this time of life, I tend to look back rather than
forward. The thing that stands out the
most to me is the stupidity of a human race that considers itself intelligent.
About six
thousand years ago, the great apes and humans had a common ancestor. We
are basically advanced apes.
We have
evolved a brain capable of functional intelligence. A majority of humans are capable
of training to perform a task and functioning in a loose society. We have not invented flight, mass
transit, and electronic technology; a tiny, small percentage of us have the advanced
intelligence of thought experiments, and have dragged the rest of us, kicking
and screaming, into the future we now live in.
Our future
should look exciting; but we are the only animals, except for chimpanzees, our
closest cousin in the animal kingdom, that regularly conduct wars and genocide against
their own kind. That propensity will be
our own destruction.
Our greatest
fear should not be AI or asteroids. The inevitability
of a theology with a nuclear weapon will be more likely to bring about the
sixth extinction.
It wasn’t
enough in Jonestown for true believers to drink the Kool-Aid; they had to bring
along all the others with them.
Religion is
a frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, mere reasoning.
Thoughts of
an old man in the wee hours of the morning
the Ol’Buzzard
Just like war -- "Organized religion, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!"
ReplyDeleteOur species, Homo sapiens, emerged from Homo erectus around 300,000 years ago before migrating out of Africa. Scientists currently believe that human evolution started several million years before that, so that common ape-like ancestor is not 6,000 years old.
ReplyDeleteThe common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees was six million years ago, not six thousand. The common ancestor with other apes was even further back.
ReplyDeleteAll other ape species are dozens to hundreds of times more violent than humans, measured by the proportion of individuals that die by violence. Many ant species engage in war and genocide.