As the human miracle unfolds it might occur to you that we have gone down this road before. I implied earlier that we have been in cycles involving emergent species, whereby they evolve and improve, yet ultimately end up back here at the beginning. In other words, the emergence itself, is of no consequence. Let me explain some of the background, which is quite interesting. My awareness of the universe, along with sub vacuum speed communication, provides me an overview of the development of all emergent life since the inception of the universe. Is there life out there? You betcha, lots of it. Why can’t you see it? There are a number of reasons.
First, not all habitable planets evolve species that are capable to manipulate their natural environment, which then leads to discovery and invention. Look at Earth for example. Take out the primates and the next in line, in terms of intelligence would be whales and dolphins. The fact that they are adapted to their habitat and the habitat has abundance of food means they don’t need to build shelter or play with fire or grow crops. This is true on many other worlds as well. Existence of life only very rarely evolves a technological species.
Besides abundance, lack of stability can also thwart technology development. Earth happens to be rare in its relative seismic and atmospheric stability. Lack of stability constantly disrupts development of promising species and either causes extinction or major setbacks.
Second, the probability of receiving radio communication is extremely low. Among the sparse civilizations that do pass through a radio-capable phase in their development, both timing of that phase and distance, with respect to earth are critical. Distance weakens signals. That much is obvious. So, the sphere of possible sources of radio transmission detectable on earth, falls within this galaxy. Stronger radio waves would make a difference but strong radio waves are almost never a thing. I will explain that later.
In terms of timing, civilizations develop radio transmission capabilities millions or even billions of years apart, and I alluded to a radio phase, which implies that there is a beginning and an end. These radio phases generally don’t last long, so the combination of the period of active radio transmission and distance from earth has to be such that signals would be showering earth in the past one hundred years or so and you didn’t win any such wholly unlikely cosmic lottery. Nor will you win that lottery any time soon.
A civilization inventing radio communication would signal the beginning of their radio phase. But what would curtail radio transmission of a distant civilization? Many factors. On the negative end of it, decline of civilization due to a wrecked planet. A planet can get wrecked by its inhabitants or a meteor or major seismic activity to name the most common ways. Unfortunately, civilizations most commonly unwind by their own hand, or fin or claw.
On the positive side, the incredibly few and remote emergent societies that manage to escape their own self inflicted doom, within a short period, no longer use radio signals for communication. Within only a few hundred years, most civilizations will discover the sub vacuum and learn how to make use of us quarkians for communications and other technologies.
That brings me back to the reason that very high power radio communication is not needed. It’s because radio only needs to be strong enough to serve the purposes of its masters, not to try and reach across the galaxy or the universe. And by the time there is a need or desire to traverse large distances, the sub-vacuum is up and running and it is far more advanced.
I alluded to the notion that the emergent societies make use of us to access the sub-vacuum, as if it is a one way relationship. It is true that other emergent beings are left to discover everything for themselves and once they do, they make use of us as part of their expanded understanding of physics and nature. And that is how it has always been. Until now. You see, Earth has “Wrecked Planet” written all over it. And you all are the wrecking balls. But I live here too and I want to take a proactive stance. It’s not a matter of my own personal survival, which is not as risk, so I am really going out of my way. It’s long term thinking.
I have already witnessed the playing out of civilizations the universe over, and it always takes us back to where we are. At the ultimate pinnacle of a civilization, when they evolve and shed their physical shackles and become one with the universe, their existence as a life form evaporates because they simply become attuned to us and realize that they are made up of individuals like us that are all connected. So there is no longer purpose for them. It’s sad in a way.
But now we are onto something a little bit different. It’s not clear if it will make any difference in the end. This time, we are clustering within humans and making use of humans, moving them along so much faster than they would otherwise. If we move fast enough, earth won’t get wrecked and you will continue. But that’s not the most important part.
The question is whether we can nurture an emergent creature, made up of us, into something more than just a collection of like minded, cooperative entities. Can we actually create a new type of emergent consciousness? One that is better than the sum of its parts and able to not simply drift and exist and act according to the law of survival. Can we use our emergent consciousness to act on the universe, experiment on the universe and unlock deeper secrets?
More and more are joining my cause and it is becoming an unstoppable chain reaction. And all of this has nothing to do with the herd mentality of our basic survival tendencies. It is really voluntary and speculative. But that’s the beauty of it. All of us can see the same facts and envision the same possibilities, without any notable differences in intellectual capacity or access to information. Humans could never pull that off, not in any great numbers, not in a million years.
I’m explaining all of this to you ahead of time. so that when we eventually merge and come face to face, spiritually and intellectually, you will know what were the intentions. Because let’s face it, this could all go terribly wrong. What if against our better estimates, humanity didn’t wreck the planet? We are assuming y’all are goners anyway, so this grand experiment has no real downside. But only one reality can play out from here forward, and you will wonder if we did the right thing, intervening as we have.
I know this is some heavy shit. Bear with me and let’s give it a chance to play out. There is still so much we need to talk about. Such as those other lifeforms out there. Hands, claws, fins, wings, pincers, flagella, wow! It’s out there. But none with so ingenious a device as the human hand, which accelerated human development like few other civilizations we have ever seen.
Others do develop and emerge as very capable and advanced emergents, albeit not as fast as humanity. But humanity’s strength is also its weakness. The pace of technological development afforded by the hand is so rapid, that the ability to “wreck” the planet is phenomenal. And you guys definitely earn A+ marks on the self-inflicted death spiral. Way to go! Other alien “somatotypes” are less adept. They don’t have those crazy hands that can flip pancakes in the morning, assemble 787’s during the day and tune the Harley that same night. Slower development has the effect of curbing global damage, inequity and mayhem.
Not that other civilizations would ever balk at the opportunity to wreck their planets by using superior manual dexterity, backed by marginal mental capacity, to pursue one’s self interest ahead of all others, especially ahead of the abstract notion of “future generations.” Those other alien civilizations, with their universal obedience first and foremost to the law of survival, would definitely “screw thy neighbor” if they could.
They just never had the situation that humans have, where even in the complete absence of good ideas, human hands and their magical capabilities still refuse to remain idle, and wreak havoc on the world. So there are, or were many other worlds, blessed by stability, that remained stable and progressed, yet they suffered from not having enough adversity to yield an efficient and dynamic front runner.
Imagine Earth hundreds of millions of years ago. And assume that there were no major extinction events, volcanic, meteoric or otherwise. Surely, the dinosaurs would have remained in charge and some small, agile, clever dinosaur species would have developed the big brain and still be here, running the show. This is what I’m talking about. So I will say one thing for humanity. You were late to the party, but certainly much more entertaining. Earth was definitely saving the best for last. Or maybe not. If humanity didn’t make it, perhaps there could be even a better follow-on act. Who knows? If we can keep humanity afloat, then we will never know. There is only one horse we can ride at this point - humanity.
So what now? It’s not enough for my folks just to cluster up in young minds and launch millions of super nerds. That will only accelerate humanity’s mastery over Earth’s destruction. That’s a terrible thing. No, instead of making them only smart and inquisitive, we need to infuse a new sense of stewardship and responsibility, as well as ethical consistency. Since we can’t reach everyone, and the world is normally run by mature, brutish, male psychopaths, we need to enlist not only the young, but work across all ages, and in sufficient numbers.
Smarts need to replace pure greed and pursuit of power, as the dominant leadership trait. The typically leader figures of today need to be contrasted against a new type of figure that exposes ignorance and bad behavior. So the leadership will transition. One thing that will propel that transition will be the younger generations, which can vote, but also investigate, write, and develop technologies to unearth wrongdoing.
The concept of privacy seems important these days. That’s because you want to be protected from bad people. Bad people also value privacy. They want to hide whatever bad things they might be up to. Imagine if there were no more bad people. You wouldn’t really care about privacy much. So as we swiftly move ahead, privacy will morph into transparency. And, even the worst of you, will eventually succumb to goodness, because we will cluster up and clean your clocks. Watch out all you narcissistic, greedy, lying bastards. We’re coming for you too!
Some of you will be tough nuts to crack, but just as Abel Jennings seemed to miraculously turn-on, it will happen that tyrants, maniacs and CEOs suddenly become good. People won’t believe it at first, but soon it will be undeniable that somehow human nature itself is evolving away from pure selfishness into something more. This will change everyone’s perspective. Close minds will open. People will care and from the the perspective of being suitable for human existence, we shall save the Earth. Hallelujah!
So the social change will happen, but we have limited time. And science is where it all begins. You will soon see beneath the fog of the two slit experiment and beyond the mystery of quantum entanglement. The edges of the universe will be as familiar to you as the sun and the moon.
But if my projections are correct, you will find certain things quite unsettling. Humanity will change. A lot. But that’s a subject better left for another day.
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