The Great Paradox of Our Time

Anatomically modern "big brain" humans first arrived on the planet via the very slow forces of evolution only about 150,000 years ago. That's pretty recent, the very first humans emerged in Africa about 2 million years ago. Perhaps the more interesting thing is that humans had anatomically modern big brains 150,000 years ago, but advanced technology emerged only about 100 years ago.

Wow. It took 149,900 years to get from "big brain has arrived!" to advanced technology 100 years ago.

One could also argue that advanced technology arrived with the industrial revolution about 200 years ago. That would still be amazingly recent, but if we correlate widespread advanced technology to the beginning of the 6th mass extinction (which is thought to have begun about 100 years ago), then The Great Paradox of Our Time arrived about 100 years ago.

So then "the great paradox" is while the greatest advance humans have made (in their 2 million years) is the miracle of technology, the very same thing has at the same time damaged the earth to the point of causing "the great collapse" in biological diversity.

Are we not convinced that advanced technology is the direct cause of rapid, and increasingly more rapid, collapse of biological diversity? Humm, well this is a blog post, not a book. But I will say: really? It's pretty obvious isn't it? And leave it at that.

To the extent we don't believe this correlation is true, or don't want to believe it's true, I will suggest a collective delusion is at play. And it's not hard to understand why we don't want it to be true, right? After all, advanced technology is a kind of miracle.

Hence the Great Paradox: the greatest miracle is wreaking the greatest destruction. It's kind of hard to wrap our heads around...but we must if we wish our species to survive. Not to mention the millions of other absolutely amazing species that make life on earth a very rare phenomena, the only one we're aware of in the known universe.

If nothing else we are charged with the responsibility of being the shepherds of that miracle.

Let's also mention in passing the utter ridiculousness of the fantasy of "interplanetary civilization" being the only escape from species ending biological collapse (talking to you Elon:)

The logical inconsistency in that point of view is massive. Here it is in a nutshell: we're going to leave a planet with somewhat reduced capacity for the spontaneous (and miraculous) generation of biology, and go to a planet (or planets) with NO capacity for biological generation?

Um...yeah.

Let's illustrate the ridiculousness of this POV a bit further. The specific conditions that allow for the emergence of life to occur (anywhere) probably number in the hundreds, or even thousands (we are undoubtedly far from knowing all of them). And they all have to occur simultaneously (which would explain the extreme rarity of life in the known universe).

Let's also think about what we don't know about these specific conditions, for just one example, specific gravity. We didn't know until quite recently that life on Earth was only made possible by the specific gravity of Earth. NASA did a study of twins only a few years ago where one spent time in space while the other remained "grounded", and then catalogued the impact on the health of the one in space compared to the grounded twin.

It's been known since we started shooting stuff into space that biological durability is negatively impacted, but this study may have marked the effective "end" of the space program (which occurred at approximately the same time).

But the satellite industry (SpaceX, hello again Elon:) is booming... $Billions are being generated. Perhaps "interplanetary civilization" is nothing more than clever marketing to imbue a nascent industry with the magic of mythology? "We are the Gods who are the masters of everything" (entire universe included)?

Or, if Mr. Musk genuinely believes in this fantasy, it won't be the first time in history we see that even genius is capable of stupidity.

Let's say instead that basically every human believes (even if they really don't want to) that if we are to survive we have to find some way to resolve the great paradox of our time, and discontinue the massive damage to the precious biology occurring on the only planet we know of that is capable of the spontaneous generation of biology, and the ability to sustain biology.

And that won't be easy, we may not be able to do it. The (suicidal?) drive to genetically modify humans will be massive.

Instead of the belief that even more technology will be the fix for the ongoing massive technological damage to biology, how about a bicycle riding plant-based planet. And a population that learns enough about THE CAUSE OF HEALTH to continue riding bicycles into old age.

Touché. Good luck to us all.