A geologic expedition from the stars on Earth 4 Billion years from now examining the strata. This just before the then red sun devours the planet. These beings will find a barely paper thin black line.
This about halfway through Earth's layers. That line will be us.
First Contact.
Humanity, and all we were, and did. From when we walked out of the seas at our beginning to when we raised it's level at our end.
We'll be catalogued archived, and made a footnote. This in the history of extinct sentient species.
*"In the Wind" was mid-1960's black teen slang for "I'm leaving."
As in "blowin' in the wind"?
ReplyDeleteI've reconciled myself some time since to the fact that we are *not* going to the stars. I'm OK with it. We are mortal as individuals, why should we not be so as a species?
There's nothing so special about us. Our intelligence, such as it is, is an interesting adaptation by one species of social primate, and nothing more; it's not the universe-shattering force that we like to imagine it to be (thank you John Michael Greer for that apt turn of phrase). There's no good reason why talking monkeys with a propensity for absurd self-aggrandizement should techno-brachiate across the galaxy. In fact it's a terrible idea. We should feel a sense of telief that it would isn't going to happen.
Z
It was expressed as, "...I'm in the wind". Beatnik folks music of the day made little impression on '60 black teens. In general. It sure as shit affected me, but then I was a kid Queer in training so had a wider vision of things.
ReplyDeleteWe might send a few more probes beyond the Ort Cloud. However nothing more. We might even set up Antarctica sorts of communities on Mars, and some of the moons of the system.
ReplyDeleteMostly though we'll stay local,...no Star Trek. Not even if we could. It's just not us.
We only went to the moon as an act of war with assorted rivals. As soon as the fight was over we went back to pillaging the earth, and murdering each other.
The short idealistic dreams of the stars ended then...it's stone dead now. We're only going to Mars, and the moons for money.
Soon we'll be gone anyway.
Like the story sez. Some other species billions of years from now will find our sadly thin black line in the strata. They shake their heads or whatever sensing bunch they have sigh makes notes, and move on.