Was it all worth it?

Plenty of crazy things going on in the world. Bush this, Bush that, nutty Iranian presidents, suicide bombers, bulldozers, torture, civilization, progress, governments, corporations, international institutions, poor, rich, clocks, globalization, cubicles, laws, constitutions, war, smart weapons, military dictators who took over in a coup, KGB agent as president, UN sanctions, riots in Europe, cheap labor, 6.5 billion people and growing, energy issues, religion exploding, poisoning our own life support systems, sprawl, industrial cities falling apart, climate change, slavery, children making everything we throw away, propaganda, RFID chips, smaller and smaller technology, TIA, NSA, biological and chemical weapons, everyone having nuclear weapons(because you know that if only one group had it, human beings would be insane enough to use them...oh wait), a giant continent dying, colonialism, murdering indigenous people around the world for freedom and riches, killing different species for our standard of living, etc, etc.

Sure, I focused on some of the bad stuff. If you want to focus on the good stuff, go right ahead. Or take the two, and combine them.

Just as of March 23, 2006(whatever time is, if it's only centered around our position relative to our star), is all this crazy crap worth it? And where are we going with it? Everyone living in luxury? Robots doing everything, so that humans can dream of the stars? A global cubicle where we're all interchangable parts and lost our humanity?

They get uglier every year. Seen a Cadillac lately?

Redstone

I truly believe, whether we were created by a higher being or just arose from random chance, that it is up to us. For whatever reason, we have reason. We can apply it to improve, or to destroy.

We may at times do the opposite of our intentions, simply because we don't understand our universe as well as we think we do. Consider burning fossil fuels to move vehicles. When we started we had no concept of the effect of greenhouse gases.

We are children in a sandbox, with no parents to guide us. We build roads with our hands which we crush with our knees as we crawl.

Eventually, we may learn to sit on the boxes edge, build roads which last, seed plants which will convert the sand to soil and feed us.

Or, we may ignite bombs, turning the sand to glass, ending our game forever.

It's up to us.

it always happens the same way, and yet still, collectively speaking, we claim to have 'never seen it coming'. "No one could have imagined..." and blah blah blah, to which I say this:

Bull-puckey.

There have always been warning signs... and like the agent against which they warn, they're usually the same signs. History documents these signs. Gilgamesh, one of the oldest works known to 'modern' humanity, chronicles these events and others. The information has been available for thousands of years, and yet somehow it consistently fails to seep into the collective mind.

This particular facet of existence has been a thorn in my side for years. Will we, collectively speaking, ever mature beyond the level of an emotionally-disturbed third grader?

The world may never know.

Individually, we exist for such a small fraction of time, limited as we are to five or so barely developed senses, on a single rock in a possibly-infinite universe, with barely the capacity to remember the errors of the previous generation, let alone learn from them, that the best any of us can do is tell our favorite story about it. We can't even remember most of what we do in a lifetime, let alone divine how it affects everthing after it.

and retain a 'memory' of their existence, which is part of who we are.

Just sayin'... :-)

Is that a spiritual claim or a scientific one? That sounds like just another story.

Frank Tipler's The Physics of Immortality is one of the best I've read.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385467990/002-6238572-2617659?v=glance&n=283155


Here are some links and discussions on the matter:

http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=2943

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1093712003

And some with a more spiritual bent...

http://www.primalspirit.com/pr1_1sheldrake_nature_as_alive.htm

http://www.vantagequest.org/trees/livingsystems1.htm


So you could argue either way. Sure, at this point the quantifiable proof is limited by our ability to interact on the molecular level, but the evidence is strong, IMO.

:hangover:

Really, I expected better. I really did.