We now live in the twilight of the human race. Human beings (homo sapiens) have peaked as a species and are now on the way out. Soon we will be joining the dinosaurs in the pre-historic section of the museum.
We get into machines and routinely race around at 3 to 5 times the speed our bodies were designed for. We get into other machines and fly, a feat for which we are not physically equipped. This high level of technology should carry with it a large body count as the poorly equipped and the unadaptable are weeded out of the collective gene-pool, thus making the remaining whole better equipped to deal with the world we have created. Is this the case? No, it is not. We have used our high level of technology to create not only faster modes of transportation and the like, but also safer ones. Now, the unfit are allowed to persist and even procreate through the proliferation of helmet laws and seat-belt legislation thus muddying the gene-pool. I submit that humanity has thus ceased growing and has begun to revert to previous lower levels of intelligence.
It will not be long before the curtain closes on the human act and we go to intermission. Current expenditures of resources and the increasing pollution levels will soon leave us with a world no longer capable of sustaining human life. A fact somehow missed by the law making bodies of the United States especially. The Dinosaurs had a run lasting millions of years, we've been going for several thousand. A meteor ushered their demise, we are bringing about our own.
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I think a good lesson can be learned from watching what happens to a population of any creatures in nature that grows too large.
1) As their population increases, they generally bring horrible environmental damage. This is often localized to the area where these animals live... Snow Geese in the article are an good example of this problem, and scientists are trying to reduce their population to avoid catastrophe to their tundra environment. Humans are well on their way. As our population increases, we will bring ever increasing environmental damage as our need for resources increases expotentially with our growth. Our enslavement to materialism, particularly in wealthy countries, only speeds up the process.
2)When the levels have finally reached the point at which they no longer have enough reasources, two things will generally happen. Mass starvation and widespread pandemics of disease. The population will crash dramatically.
Were such an event to happen with humans, it rival the black plague in its effect on culture and society.
It would be very irresponsible to say this will happen or to predict how and when this would occur. But to stick our hand in the sand like an Ostrich and act as if this could never happen is a complete abandonment of our role as stewards.
Huh? You argue contradictory things in your post. (Perhaps my sarcasm meter is malfunctioning...) If we have used technology to make the world safe even for those who should have been weeded out by natural selection, then how are we in any danger? Perhaps we are in danger, but is the entire species at risk, or will some survive the coming catastrophe you predict and start over? Perhaps this is just natural selection writ large, in which case you shouldn't fear for the species since it is the natural, impersonal, inevitable process by which we progress. And even if we are all killed off through our own stupidity, why worry? Something better will evolve to fill our niche.
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