Ahhh… Saturday morning.
We have blue skies for a change, and the standing water in the backyard seems to have finally been absorbed by the hard clay just beneath the lightly tethered grass. (It’s beyond me how anything can grow in clay….)
One would hardly expect to ponder the possible end of the human race on such a morning, eh? Or any other morning, for that matter… yet that’s evidently what folks are doing:
The famed British astrophysicist and best-selling author has turned to Yahoo Answers, a new feature in which anyone can pose a question for fellow Internet users to try to answer. By Friday afternoon, nearly 17,000 Yahoo Inc. users had responded to Hawking.
Hawking’s question: “In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?”
According to CNN, a typical Yahoo Question garners 6 or 7 answers, but by the time I hit “Submit” this morning, the number had grown to just under 20,000. Dr. Hawking’s question has evidently hit a nerve…
Here’s what I said:
Sustaining the human race will require true globalization — a much different proposition from the surface-scratching technological version we’ve experienced thus far.
Humans are creatures of habit. We’re in chaos (imho) partly due to massive resistance to change… and we’re very early in the process. Technology has been the catalyst for this, but to date the cultural exposure has been superficial; we’re only globalized as “us” vs. “them”.
Without intimate knowledge of one another, we see, but do not understand — and thus do not value. Without major attitude shifts, the future will find us more xenophobic and nationalistic… or (worst case) reduced to scattered pockets of survivors, eking out existance and scrabbling over what’s left. I don’t think the worst case scenario is imminent, though.
Massive population shifts to intermingle and expose, an accompanying infusion of capital to develop the “third world” continents and countries, a renouncement and focused exorcism of intolerance, and ultimately, a more homogenous global society… all of these are going to be necessary to sustain humanity on this planet.
So… how do you think we’ll save the world?