The Next 1000 Years or So

Two months before I was born Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. As I've recently recounted these Apollo missions lately with programs like "When we left Earth" and other History Channel episodes devoted to the brave deeds of these men I can only wonder what lay ahead.

I think that we will discover the ways around bone mass loss in space. The ingenuity of the human spirit has no limits. We will, if we survive long enough, stare at the face of God. We get glimpses periodically. The coding of the Human Genome was one such glimpse. We can indeed see the language of the original force. Quantum physics gives us an, at present, unreconcilable vision of the difficulty involved in unravelling the basic forces and pieces of matter. The basic particles are so mysterious that wondering how we sprung out of the primitive, non-consciousness world, is secondary to understanding what these immeasurable theoretical tinker toys acually are. But all we have is time.

And time has shown us unimaginable feats of creativity and engineering. One hundred years ago, we stood no chance of communicating long distances without great voyages. We were very excited to see an "engine" that propels a four wheeled vehicle around much larger distances. Seventy years later, we were walking on the moon. We had actually found the avenue to look back on our own planet. What is next??

If I live out my life completely, without major sudden death, I envision myself watching a man walk on the red planet. This feat would be so awe-inspiring and sublime that I don't know that I can accurately describe the type of emotion I might have. Hold no doubt about this reality. We will travel in a spaceship, unless we find ourselves able to be beamed there, to Mars and beyond. In a cliche way, it is our destiny.

And as we find our way to Mars we will find that much of our society and technological innovations have racheted up exponentially. It's certainly difficult to predict that of which you cannot imagine. As we discover and attempt to control nature, we will certainly run into many obstacles. But if we perservere perhaps we come closer to Kaku's Type 1 civilization. Perhaps we get on the map.

The one problem I see is aggresion and undying desire for control. If Type 1 civilizations exist, I wonder if and how they have moved past this. Either this society would be controlled by a supreme power or the society has lost it's selfish sense of aggression. It is possible that in the next 1000 years that we learn vast amounts about aggression, desire for control, and other apparent built in genes that control these mechanisms. And a question might be asked: Is it the best pursuit of our species to continue to carry these selfish, uncompromising genes. Absolutly there would be severe opposition and debate. But as a society becomes more advanced, more enlightened, perhaps there are unwanted characteristics that may be bred out. And perhaps that reults in a split. A manually forced evolutionary split from Homo Sapien. It could happen, or I should say that in 1000 years we may be able to do just that.

Despite the condition of society in 1000 years, whatever species is left (assuming it is increasingly more intelligent) we will be forced with the epiphany that space is our home. We will caryy the seed of humanity throughout the galaxy because it is the essence of our inner condition: to survive. And as an advanced civilization we will realize that our planet will not make the long haul and the best bet is to spread ourselves throughout habitable space.

The problems will be great. They will seem unsurmountable as many seem today. But they will be conquered. Perhaps the Large Hadron Collider unveils the mysteries or at least A mystery of the nature of matter. Perhaps NASA peels the onion layers of dark matter and energy. Could we provide solutions in the event of natural disaster?? Can we control the climate?? Can we become immortal or even reverse aging?? Can we breed out deviancy and build a scaffold of love and compassion and unity throughout our planet?? Can we smash out evil and replace it with cooperation or is evil a neccessary, well, evil??

There are many questions surrounding the future. We know how the past has played out. And although we tend to repeatedly replay this skipping record of control and conquer, I'd like to think that a better future society is possible. This overly optimistic view may be naive and it may even contain many ethical questions that remain to be thought out. But I do know that if it CAN be done, it WILL be done. This is why we will go to Mars and beyond. This is why we will clone people someday (if it hasn't been done already). This is why we will change ourselves into another species. This is how we develop new energy sources. We will do these things. Hopefully we don't destroy ourselves in the process.