Its ok. We got this

The news that there was a huge fire that destroyed the amazing museum in Rio last week really stuck in my craw.

It got me thinking about how we live in the age of fire, and how everything that means anything to us,  comes from fire. Our first real invention was fire and with it came accessible digestible protein.

Since we didn't need to spend all of our time fending off the wild animals, who it turned out were afraid of flames,  we also didn't need to constantly forage for roots and nuts, because our bellies were full of tender loin. With this high yield diet, we ended up with lots of free time.

We sang around the fire, danced, and drew on the cave walls, and when it got dark outside we told stories to the kids.

We soon developed art, ballet and science, detention after school, and Donald Trump.

When the doctor who was delivering our baby wanted to get us out of the way, he asked us to go boil some water. And in time we developed a taste for tea.

When we discovered fossil fuel that had been forged by millions of years of heat and pressure under the earth, we found that it burned really well, and we learned to smelt metals.

When we discovered electricity we burned coal and oil, to boil water and used the pressure of the resulting steam to drive our turbines to generate lots of electricity.

Even when we learned to split the atom and release the most elemental, and powerful force in the universe, we used it to either blow shit up or boil water more efficiently so we could produce more electricity, to power the machines that produce imaginary cryptocurrencies.

All of our civilization has been about finding more elaborate ways to either blow shit up or boil water.

Our nuclear submarines are powered by nuclear reactors that ultimately boil water and drive the moving parts.

It's not that we don't have creativity but that we are like the savant who is so smart in some things but not so much at everything else. We create the most amazing and beautiful complex things and then use them to do stupid shit.

When you next open a greeting card that plays a tinny jingle, take a moment to look at the interesting bits and you will find an integrated circuit at the heart of the card. The amount of computing power required to play that jingle represents far more raw computing power than was available to NASA when they sent men to the moon.

What does it say about us that we don't actually end up with anything other than better and more elaborate mouse traps?

Getting back to the museum story that got me started, I think about all the pyramids that were ransacked in the past with no regard for the culture and the toil that the represented. The Mayan and Inca gold artifacts that were simply viewed as gold that needed to be minted into coin.

The fact that the gold was produced in the heart of a dying star and distributed by its exploding doesn't stop us from asking if it can be rhodium plated to match our white teeth.

They say our world is heating up, and at the rate, we are burning through our resources we are soon going to "stupid" ourselves into extinction.

That might not actually be such a bad outcome.

We are smart and we are so clever but when we finally create Ai we will have to accept that despite its artificial origins maybe it is time that the earth had at least one actually intelligent tenant.

Perhaps the oceans levels should rise, and the elemental forces join in their efforts bring order to our world.

The fact that this future might not include any of us should not come as a surprise to any of us.

Who died and made us the masters of the universe. If all ants or bees were to be erased, life as we know it would be erased. If we were to all perish, the world would be a far far better place. Except for viagra. And porn. Those would be sorely missed.

Note to self.
In the event of an extinction class event, fill the bunker with porn and blue tablets.

What are we doing.?
We play this silly game of life, and before we understand any of it, we die. For all of our short existence, we blow up everything we encounter and leave future generations to wash the dishes.

What we need is not rising sea levels to warn us of our wicked ways, but the comet that sterilized the earth when dinosaurs walked this Earth.

The earth will as it has so many times, hit the reset key and try again. Life will once again return, and after having done this over and over, I am sure that the next iteration can't do a worse job that we have done.

So, I am just putting it out there.

If there are any aliens monitoring WhatsApp. Come to EARTH, and don't bother with abductions and anal probes, as that had proven to be a waste of time.

Most abductees have, Stockholm style, come to enjoy that sort of buggery too much.

Turn the zappers all the way from stun to fry and you would actually be doing us all a huge favour.
We have been trying to self destruct for so long that it would be an act of charity.
Rip off the band-aid.
Just do it already.

Unless this is all a smoke screen.
Everything that we know, is fundamentally flawed. The earth might not be trying to create a life that is meant to give rise to intelligence that goes crazy over the Kardashians and implodes.

No I am not talking about organised religion or any dogma that claims to look into the heavens with an idea that the great turtle in the sky has a plan for us all. All creatures big and small.

Maybe we were meant to be totally fucked up.

So totally messed up that we create an intelligence that rivals our own. One that doubles in power every year. Could it be that this is the grand plan and we are simply the mugs who get to take the next step in evolution. Only crazy messed up creatures would press the red button that launched nuclear warheads and only those same crazy creatures would unleash the power Ai with no understanding of the consequences.

In which case we don't need an extinction level comet or the help of the aliens (who are watching)

We got this.

M Parak
Sep 2018

Ps

I wrote this piece in September of 2018 then only towards the middle of last year, 2021, read the Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin where Ye Wenjie decides the earth may be beyond saving.

The dates confirm that my writing was not influenced by the book in any way. 

𝓜 𝓟𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓴 

Jan 2022