Will Humans Go Extinct

Ever ask yourself the big question?

Do we, as a species, deserve to survive, to eventually spread out among the stars?

The question is often stimulated when one observes a horrible individual or a collective, terrible act, and is usually a quick thought and then tucked neatly aside.

Then again, maybe you have given it serious thought, compiling the varying arguments for and against humanity, giving each serious weight.  Meaning that you’re aware there are serious pros and cons to both sides of the issues. Quick research into the question results in several pages of topics with most claiming our species doomed. When one looks at the history of the human species, there’s a lot to cringe, as we are guilty of everything from simple ignorance to genocide.

There’s not a lot in our history that is able to defend the continuing existence of our species, but as I write that, I realize that might not be a factual statement. It is, after all, easy to dwell on the horrible and many hateful events we can call out, some of them not only horribly wrong, but many outright embarrassing if we had to explain our actions. At least horribly wrong and embarrassing to humans.

There’s a fact in coming to an answer that can’t be denied. That even in the dim midst of awareness one must come to terms with. That with all our atrocities inherent in our history, all the wars, the hate and destruction, we, the human race is still here, thriving.

Modern humans have been around for just over three hundred thousand years and the truth is, until recently, the number of humans living was rather small. In our long trek to modern human, we’ve been pretty damn lucky. After all, just a short million years ago, humans, almost went extinct.

And we all know, the only reason we are here today, is because an asteroid smashed into the Gulf of Mexico and killed off all the dinosaurs, allowing mammals to flourish.

Yes, it’s been a long hard road for us humans winding through Ice ages, volcanic eruptions, famines, disease, and droughts before we all decided to settle down and start inventing stuff, that was only about 6,000 years ago.

6,000 years isn’t anywhere near the billion years that it’ll take for our sun to balloon in size and eat everything in our solar system, leastways our Earth for sure, but I’m hopeful that by that time, we’ve left Earth far behind.

Thing is, if you look back a billion years, the earth looked nothing like you and I are experiencing today. Life had not even taken to land and wouldn’t for another 600 million years. So, in terms of evolution, if there are humans around when the sun goes ballistic, we are not going to recognize them as humans.

If humanity does manage to survive, what we consider a ‘Human being’ today isn’t going to be around forever.

In fact, it’s my opinion, we’re not going to be around much longer, at least humans as we’re used to understanding them. I’m not talking about an asteroid slamming into us, or a nuclear war that devastates life on the planet, I’m not even talking about an alien race that exterminates all of us because they want our water.

I am talking evolution, quick evolution, like merging with our technology, and many believe it’s the next evolutionary step before we move out among the stars.

While there are some who fight to their last breath to remain human, as they will never accept a human being, being different then what they are, they too will be eventually swept up in the current of evolutionary change.

To answer the question then, are humans going to survive into the future? Yes, but our descendants will probably be a bit different then us, with Artificial Intelligence, implants of their choosing to increase intelligence, to control their weight, to access information or god knows what.

Natural Human evolution has probably come to an end.