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in peace and in balance with our planet's biosphere that created and supports us. What then would be our future? What comes next? To answer this question we must first comprehend who and what we are, as exactly as we can. The instinct of all life on Earth is to live and grow forever. Why? Because everyone instinctively yearns to go on living to escape death, and because the Earth is part of what most cosmologists call the "Big Bang" which is a metaphor of the observable fact that everything in the Universe is flying apart as though there was once long ago a huge explosion, a very BIG bang that is throwing everything out in all directions. But I call it a pulse, like your heart beat, that will at some far time in the future reverse itself and IMplode to a tiny point of extreme concentration of nuclear power and then again EXplode in another outward pulse. So, it is our own Universe's outward pulse that draws us, pushes us, inspires us to grow and expand our knowledge and power, seemingly forever. Then, almost as an ingrained contradiction, an opposite side of this reality is that, as our Universe expands, the billions of stars are cooling down from the original hot center of their Big Bang. Our own Sun is slowly cooling and shrinking, and our own planet Earth is also slowly cooling and shrinking, which means that someday in the far future it will shrink into a cold, hard rock? So, where does that leave us living creatures and our instinctive desire to grow forever? Nowhere, obviously. So, what are we going to do about it? You know, we're exploring outer space to find another living planet so we can go there and survive. But all the planets in our expanding Universe are part of the same process of cooling and shrinking. So even if we located another volcanic living planet enough like Earth to support us, it too would already be in the process of cooling and shrinking. So, it appears we are stuck here on Earth for as much of forever as we can comprehend. Perhaps then, we should focus our attention on making our life on Earth as joyful and long-lasting as possible. So, how long and happy can we live on this slowly cooling and shrinking planet? So do we have many thousands of years to work at it? There are some very difficult questions: How many people can this slowly cooling and shrinking planet support? Today our population is 7 billion and growing, and already the biosphere and its weather systems are dropping away from the often gentle, life-supporting rains, breezes and moderate sunshine, to far more torrential rainstorms, floods and tornados, followed by years of drought, which are now killing hundreds of people around the World in Africa, Asia, Australia and South, Central and North America, including our own USA which we led ourselves to believe invulnerable to the disasters that periodically afflict the rest of the World. Then there was the recent ebola plague in Africa that killed thousands. Worst of all, ever since plastic was invented in_____,the ocean water has been breaking it down into a plastic slurry that cannot support life and cannot evaporate to form clouds, and there are literally millions of tons of plastic trash in the ocean, so that plastic waste is causing extinctions and drought, for example the 4 year drought in California. So, what can we do to save ourselves? 1. Clean up the ocean and safely recycle 100% of all our trash, sewage and junk, no more dumping in the ocean or the lakes and rivers. That will put all the unemployed people back to work. 2. Peacefully reduce our human population with family planning education that gives each woman the legally guaranteed right to decide if and when to conceive and birth her children. Very few women really want 5,6,7,8,9,10 children. More want none at all, but the vast majority want no more than 1, 2 or 3. Thus, with a smaller human population, there would be plenty of resources for everyone, no more starvation on our planet returned to its natural order. So then what? How long can a human being live, 150 years, longer, then if that long, why not forever? Suppose our planet can safely support somewhere between 3 and 4 billion people, and medical science develops a complex vitamin pill that rejuvenates us so we never get old and die. But our slowly cooling and shrinking planet can safely support no more than 3-4 billion people and if no one died there would be no place for children and women would have to stop conceiving and birthing children. What?! No way!!! Even if we humans solved that dilemma, what would we do when, after several thousand years, our aging planet had cooled and shrunk so much it could no longer support life? Then we would really want another living planet to escape to somewhere in outer space! But there are none because our entire Cosmic pulsar is in its expanding and cooling phase, likely to go on for many billions of our Earth years. So, how can we humans survive? The answer is we cannot. No matter what our medical and space scientists may do, absolutely nothing physical can live forever. But there is another possibility. When our space ships landed on Mars they sent back pictures that showed dry river beds, and other tests indicated that a large amount of water is frozen below the surface; which indicates Mars was once a living planet, but as the Sun slowly cooled it got too cold to support life, or it may have been the comet that tore the huge gash on the surface, so big it's visable from space. Our own planet Earth is still warm enough to support life. But what about Venus? Today it is broiling hot with swirling storms - but as the Sun cools, Venus will also cool, perhaps enough to begin supporting life. Each planet in its turn starts out hot, then warm, then cool, and then frozen as the Sun's heat slowly diminishes. So, when Earth begins to get too cold to support us, maybe we could tranfer life to Venus at a time when it's not too hot, not too cold, but just right! Meanwhile, What about the "afterlife"? I'm a near-death experiencer, so I know something is there, but I personally don't "know" exactly what, but I feel it, and emotion is an important part of perception; and the fact is, many other humans have been temporarily "dead" for a few minutes to half an hour, then revived when their hearts again started beating and pumping blood to their brains. Many say there is a whole universe of spiritual life waiting for us humans when we die, and we all have a connection to the afterlife in the words: "unselfish love", perhaps the one truly non-physical definition in any language. That's wonderful and I am patient because I hope to discover whatever it is when I myself pass away. I feel at peace with that, and perhaps most human beings can also. Meanwhile, let's try to live peacefully with each other and in balance with biosphere Earth for as long as possible while we study the future possibility of starting life on Venus. Read "The Sixth Extinction" by Elizabeth Kolbert ( Send comments to me at j7t14r@gmail.com ) |
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