Between the now unstoppable climate crisis, never ending power struggle of nations, and our technological immaturity (that I've outlined in the post "Is humanity a self-terminating system?'), it is hard to argue for a non-zero chance of survival of human civilization, along with 50-95% of the rest of the species on planet Earth.
So perhaps, it's worth to take a look back, and do a little retrospective, see how did it all end up the way it did, perform an autopsy on another body that fell victim to the Fermi Paradox.
Our earliest traceable human-like ancestors is said to be Ardipithicines Ardipithecus, who appeared around 5 million years ago, or around 99,9% into Earth's existence. In a group of 15 difference human-like species, perhaps most notable ones were Homo Habilis, who appeared 2 Million years ago, they were the first ones to start making tools, then Homo Heidelbergensis, who appeared 700 thousands years ago, and were making various structures, like shelters, and then us, Homo Sapiens, who appeared around 200 thousand years ago, and the rest is history. However, the real anthropological mystery, that still remains to this day, is: what made us the way we are? What made our brains function the way they do, which in turn made us dominant species of the Earth? Unfortunately, the jury is still out on this one, and best we can do is speculate. The most promising guess, at least to me, seems to be - movement. Mammal intelligence and brain complexity is quite heavily correlated to the combination their migratory complexity and patterns and the complexity of movement and coordination, in other words, the wider the areas and rougher the terrains a species has to navigate to survive, with the more awkward limb system (such as the bi-pedal stance), the more developed brain it requires. This holds generally true to all land-based mammals, with some exceptions, of course. It's also further reinforced by studies done in ethology, also known as "interviewing animals in their own language", where it was found that, animals held in zoos, laboratories and other tight spaces, evolve, over some generations, to have smaller prefrontal cortexes than those found in the wild. So if movement is the answer, perhaps it's no accident that humans are the fastest land mammals - just not in a sprint. It is true that we're able to outpace and chase down any other land animal out there, over a long enough distance. Just like with everything in evolution, this mutation, mistake, gave us more complex brains than we knew what to do with it, which in turn gave us capabilities to repurpose it for something else, like advanced communication, building tools, building projectiles, building structures, building complex language, ability to comprehend abstractions, and a way to build a knowledge base that's passed down through writing and not the usual evolutionary way - through DNA. Interestingly, bipedal stance combined with flexible waist also gave us ability to throw things - which we're also the only mammals that seem to be capable of, in any significant manner for that matter.
So here we are, testing the old age adage "Slow and steady wins the race". Due to this evolutionary mistake that made us fast, bipedal and able to migrate through vast amounts of land, we've gained ability to build a society, and to build it incredibly quickly, but perhaps, we're going too fast? Evolution is a very slow process, and by successfully outpacing it we might've just dug ourselves into a bigger hole - we didn't get enough time to shed our set of basic primal instincts, it didn't give us time enough to throw away our hedonic treadmills, it didn't give us enough time to value reason over basic reward-based incentives, to value nature over profit, to value morals over shareholders, to value the future generations over our present selves, it didn't give us enough time for us to grow up and prevent us from self destructing. I do not blame those in the past, that built our society as we know it, neither do I blame those that didn't rise up to change it, or changed it in a way that didn't help at all, for they are after all just like me, and all of us, flawed and scared monkeys in shoes, that just grew up too quickly. The truth of the matter, the odds were never in our favour.
Looking at the bigger picture, it is entirely feasible that the greatest risk to life, the Great Filter of all civilizations, is emergence and evolution of life itself, and the only winning move, is not to play.
Perhaps, it isn't right, to call this a post-mortem for Earth, after all, in the words of George Carlin, "The planet is fine. The people are f*cked.", of course, along with many other species. Perhaps it's more fitting to call it a preamble to the finale of our very own show, the Holocene extinction, orchestrated by evolution itself, coming soon to a theatre near You.
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