Lately I've been thinking very philosophical thoughts that have kept me up for hours before. Note that I'm reaching for no particular goal with what I'm about to write.
Humans have come a long way in 200,000 years. On a universal scale, we're infants; we've learned to think, brown townyze, speak, use tools. We've put men into the stars, and we still have so much to learn. We've amassed unthinkable amounts of information since we learned to write and record, and we've only just begun. This generation was born so early on in human history, just think about the billions of years we have ahead of us. Will we still be Homo sapiens sapiens? What will we be? Evolution is an ever-spinning wheel, and I'm certain we haven't quite reached our peak. It's unclear that we ever will.
The Space Race of the 1950s was the beginning of a new chapter of the short history of our world; when we extend our understanding of this universe beyond the closest stars to our planet, and how they look from the surface. Give us a few thousand years more, and we'll have scratched deeper into the surface. The survival of our species depends on our understanding of the universe; in a while we'll have used the earth up and we'll leave her dried, looted husk in search of other worlds. And in time, we'll have used that one up as well.
It's incredible to think that, despite all that we've learned, we've still only borne inches into the tip of a freakin' huge iceberg. As the people of earlier centuries thought they were geniuses, so too do we; and far in the future we'll look back on right now, and think "How barbaric, how dumb those people were." It's so arrogant to think that we're an advanced civilization right now, or that we have a grasp on the world we live in. It's sad to know that some of us think so.
All of this philosophical guff has stemmed from the thought of our entrance into the 21st century. A thousand and twelve years ago, people were partying like it was 999. The eleventh century seemed so new to them. Since then, we've been through countless wars, gunpowder, new ways to improve that one little detail of the latest tool. We discovered America and turned it into a superpower. We exploited the world so that it would give us what we need, and we learned how to use what we need. In that thousand years, we came a long way; let's see how far we can come before 3000 A.D. We're gonna party like it's 2999. And no, we likely won't be alive to see the day we make the next gigantic leap into the future, but it's never a bad thing to dream.
That's it. My mind is spent.
I'm tired, and if this didn't make any sense to you, it's 11:36 PM here.
Discuss the amazing species into which humanity has evolved.
