Humankind Was an Accident

Humankind's existence was an accident. Consider this.

Our planet formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago from the collision of two celestial bodies. Because we are at the exact right distance from the sun, not too far and not too close, we have water in liquid form. Add that to the fact that we have the greenhouse gas effect, a magnetic core, and oxygen, we get life. What are the odds of a planet forming under these conditions? Well, when you think that there are billions of worlds in the universe, it really is a question of probability. Maybe it's unlikely that a planet like Earth would form, but it did take about 9 billion years from the big bang for it to happen, and we haven't yet found a planet like ours — which so far makes us the lucky ones. We hit the planetary jackpot.

So, we got lucky enough that planet Earth formed. Life started, with single-celled organisms, a mere half-billion years after the Earth was born. Add another 1.5 billion years, and sexual reproduction begins, and after that, multicellular life. That is winning the jackpot several times over. But put into perspective, we are talking about billions of years when we didn't see self-driving cars on planet Earth, or airplanes cruising in the sky.

Eventually, a diverse ecosystem started on planet Earth with life expanding to several branches. Our branch came from the apes. Apes evolved into great apes and hominines. Hominines further divided into hominins and other species, leading to homo sapiens, or humans. The earliest known human is dated at 2.8 million years old. That means it took 2.8 million years from the first human to Jimi Hendrix.

During all those years, our understanding of the cosmos was nonexistent. It wasn't until the 1920s that we discovered that the universe extends beyond the Milky Way, and the Big Bang Theory was proposed, although astronomy dates back to the dawn of recorded history. And since we are talking about chance, luck, and winning the lottery, how lucky are we to be alive in a time where we understand these things, and that we have peace, and we can prosper, despite our issues? Or maybe we are not that lucky, and we are in the Matrix, and it keeps rebooting between the year 1980 and 2080.

Between the big bang and today, a lot happened. Our Earth experienced five mass extinction events. We know the dinosaurs existed and now they don't. Because of chance, humankind started. And we learned to communicate. Our brains developed to complex organisms that can resolve equally complex problems. And we do resolve complex problems, not only because we can use our brains, but also because we can build tools, and communicate, and work together. We socialize. We engineer new stuff. We use materials and transform them to create something else. We iterate and make things better, then we call the new things version 2, or 3.11.

We created societies and ranking systems. Why is someone more important than the other? Do you realize how fucking insignificantly small we are in the vast cosmos? We started families and friendships. We elected leaders. We built houses. We created languages, and oh, so many of them. With the invention of writing, we began documenting events for future generations, marking the start of recorded history. Then, collective knowledge started to grow where, just like software is part of cyberspace, knowledge is part of the collective conscience. People know and pass it forward. Once information has been disseminated, it cannot be erased.

We started to explore and go places, but within this rock called Earth. And no one knew that outside of our rock, there is a whole universe — one with parts humankind will never, EVER reach. We created religions, and Gods, and say they are responsible for it all — except there are thousands of different religions and Gods, so which one is the right one? People go to war for religion. But when you look at the Earth from Saturn, how can you think that you are defending your God by killing others? We are merely a pale blue dot in the vast expanse of the universe, as Carl Sagan brilliantly said.

We created cars, ships, airplanes, and rockets, which help shorten distances. There is no place on Earth you can't be in 24 hours. Yet, leaving our planet is extremely hard and very few have — and they all came back.

But how long will we last? Will we experience the sixth mass extinction event? The cosmos does not give a fuck if you haven't finished your book or crossed your bucket list items. One day our Sun will die. One day our galaxy will clash with Andromeda. And everything and everyone that we know on planet Earth will no longer exist. Think about this: our planet will not exist anymore one day. It is true that we may be driving ourselves into the next mass extinction event ahead of what the cosmos has prepared for us. We are destroying our planet and threatening each other with weapons. So maybe humankind will put an end to itself, and not some comet.

"Maybe we are the seed of chaos."

If we are to survive, we need to look beyond planet Earth. But is there time? There is nowhere to go that we know of. If we leave, where do we go to? Mars doesn't make the cut — it is in the same galaxy, same Sun, and we know both are doomed in a few billion years. That means we need to find a new place quickly, and we need new technology too, because it would take about two trillion years to cross the galaxy using the fastest vehicle ever built to date, Voyager 1, which travels at 35,000 miles per hour.

And when we do, then we need to find additional other places. We cannot afford to have a single point of failure. We are either going to live in a ship forever, feeding ourselves from resources onboard, or we'll have to find new rocks to prosper on. And then the next rock, and then the next. It is not enough to be in one or two places when it takes multiple generations to go from one place to the next.

What is the point of living a life then? My conclusion thus far is that we are so lucky to have a small amount of time on this Earth, so why not make the most of it? Experience everything you can. Be a good person to others and raise good kids. Give your kids a good shot because life is not fair. On a family, happiness must always progress from generation to generation. My daughter should be happier than I was or have better conditions than I did. There is no point in making her lead a hard life.

Maybe the purpose of life is to survive. And if that is the case, we will have to realize that all the luck we've been given must be honored. We must find ways to survive.

This is the essence of this story.