El Cruncho wrote:
It's about the species. We're here to advance the freaking species. Easy peasy. whoop.
We're all f**ked.
Yes.
We were born fucked, every one of us doomed to suffer and die through no fault of our own.
Some people looked at this and invented gods to both explain and comfort. "There's a better life after this one, with punishment for those who did you wrong in this life, and forgiveness for your transgressions." That last part is a little tricky, as shouldn't the bastards who deserve punishment for their deeds here be denied forgiveness? But whatever, the idea is that the suffering and death here is (a) justified for original sin, (b) for a good cause, (c) just an illusion, (d) good for you, (e) very temporary compared to eternity, (f) any or all of the above.
Some other people looked at the human condition and thought, "Damn, this really sucks. We need to DO something about human misery! We're pretty fucking powerless against all this, we'd better get to THINKING about ways to get a handle on all this and make things better. Maybe we can't do much within our short lifetimes, but if we begin to build a wall of human knowledge, and start putting our small bricks in it, maybe SOMEDAY people won't have to suffer as much, and maybe not even die. Wouldn't that be swell?
And thus science was born. Immediately science and religion were locked in eternal struggle, as religion basically says "give up" and science basically says "let's fight." A few visionaries then, as now, recognized there's no inherent conflict between religion and science, as science can never answer the question of right and wrong, why we're here, etc. and religion is a very bad way of discovering nature and the universe.
Here's what I think, and how I've (mostly) lived my life. The only two things that REALLY matter, the core concerns of humanity are to (a) reduce suffering of all life while (b) preserving the ecosystems and life on Earth while spreading Earth based life to other planets. If what you do doesn't fit into that mission statement, or at least support those who ARE working to accomplish that mission, then you're not doing your part for humanity.
You can decide for yourself where you fit in that. I spent most of my life building little bricks to fit into the wall of human knowledge. My bricks are very small, but they're the best bricks I could make so that someone doesn't have to later tear down my portion of the wall to dig out bad bricks below that I put in. I also wasted a lot of my life and a lot of the intelligence I was born with on pointless sex, playing music, and mindless entertainment (which includes sports, computer games, and a lot of other shit we do to relax).
The one regret I will take to my dying day is that I did not use the gifts I was born with to greater effect. The prime areas to help humanity (in my view) are genetic engineering, medicine, aerospace, computer science, microbiology, pharmacology, biotech, particle physics, astrophysics, etc. I've worked in several of those areas but I did not dedicate my life to it as much as I should have.
As for the very necessary task of stopping killing each other (which is not only inhumane but wastes huge amounts of resources), I leave that to the religious folk. So far they suck at it.
Terry D.
Help Desk