What destiny awaits mankind? This is a question that often occupies my mind and I can see no purpose to avoiding it.

Destiny and spirituality seem to be linked for most people. If one contemplates fate, one is often drawn to further consideration of the nature of God, or the problematic existence of any deity or deities. I have commented upon this before and I restate here that I fall firmly in to the camp of “I Do Not Know.” I have no intention of abandoning that position here tonight so please understand that what follows is nothing more than rambling.

Honest atheists understand they cannot disprove the existence of God. With that in mind I have to wonder if we have not all been somewhat misguided regarding the plan of some theoretical supernatural being. For instance, why would a creature capable of creating all of what we know to be reality care one whit about the morality or lack thereof of any given act? What motivates Him? I know that the devout response is to admonish, “Who are you to question God?” but that tends to offend my critical nature. I do believe that this incongruity often precipitates questioning of the existence of a deity- once the question is asked it becomes increasingly clear to those so predisposed that God seems to be standing by whilst all sorts of chicanery is propagated in His name or against those who believe in Him. Once that becomes firmly entrenched in the mind it is a quick step to rejecting the existence of any God on strictly empirical grounds and coming to believe that whatever destiny awaits a man it will be one of his own making and not the result of some divine plan.

This is always where I begin to have questions.

I do not believe that God, if He exists, takes a personal interest in me; however, if God does exist, perhaps He takes an interest in mankind as a whole. In this case God has no interest in men. God’s interest is in Man, the complex totality of humanity. In that case the destiny of Man would be tied to the future progression of the species, rather than to the subjective successes or failures of its individual parts. This is essentially what I was referring to in an earlier post when I mused on the existence of a “racial soul”.

Let me be perfectly clear on this point: I do not expect anything I might say here to be taken terribly seriously. I am no theologian.

That said I do not come to such speculation lightly, instead it is the result of three-and-one-half millennia of observing the human condition. Mankind has shown a drive to expand, to improve and to manipulate that is so innate that it moves me to speculate it is by design. Of course there are examples of human cultures that do not appear to be driven in the manner I describe; however, said cultures appear to have no part to play in any grand scheme of overall human development. Just like myself, they are an evolutionary dead-end.

The judgment that some extant cultures are essentially “dead” may seem harsh, particularly if one is deeply ensconced in the “equal validity / equal value” meme that defines part of the multicultural values craze currently infecting the west, but one must understand that reality usually is harsh. Ask any existing members of the homo erectus branch of hominids what they think of homo sapiens sapiens… but of course, you cannot: homo erectus was an evolutionary back water once the new hominids arrived in town. Cultures locked in stasis face the same fate. They may totter on for decades, even centuries, but eventually they become extinct.

My take on all of this is simple: cultural evolution, just like species evolution, is not about fairness and equality. Instead it is about progress towards a goal, a destiny. It is quite likely that when humanity makes the next great evolutionary step, be it as a species or as a culture, only a portion of humanity will actually be involved. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how it could be any other way. When that happens, the remainder will be as homo erectus: obsolete and left behind.

Of course there is a corollary position to be argued, that being that cultural evolution does not always have to produce something better. Evolution of species is rife with examples of plants or animals developing in to specific niches in the environment, becoming tightly bound to the conditions that drive their evolution. When sudden change comes the highly evolved species are suddenly too specialized to adapt. The niche disappears, and with it the species. Specialization equates to rigidity, which in turn seems to limit adaptability, or as author Robert Heinlein so aptly put it: “Specialization is for insects.” The same is true of cultures. New cultures can arise which at first appear to be an improvement, but eventually prove to be unsustainable for being either too rigid, or flawed in conception, or both. Old cultures that have endured for centuries, even millennia, can also be shouldered aside by changes to which they cannot or will not adapt.

What has all of this to do with destiny? Humanity seems to have some greater goal in its collective future. What that goal ultimately is cannot be known; however, some of the upcoming steps can be seen vaguely. One thing is certain: to remain tied to this globe is a dead end for the race of Man. This is not a matter of resources, or environmental degradation or any of the assorted causes of the day embraced by one activist group or another, rather it is a question of probabilities. Any number of calamities might befall the Earth, all having absolutely nothing to do with the presence of human beings. I will name just three here:

Impact of celestial debris
Solar Irregularity
Supernova

We know that large asteroids have impacted this planet in the past, the most popularly known instance being the speculation that an asteroid strike was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. While many see this threat as the province of fiction any person whose worldview is rooted in reality knows that the possibility is quite real. Solar irregularity would be things such as flares, or sudden changes in the sun’s output- I include this only because I have seen it mentioned from time to time both in fiction and in science journals, most of which would put this threat far below that of an impact event, at least over the next few million years. Supernovae are a problem in that the energy output by a nearby (in celestial terms) exploding star could very easily sterilize this solar system.

All of these scenarios are predicated upon very low probability events; however, if you project out past the foreseeable future and in to the very far future the chances go up measurably. Proceed far enough and you come as close to certainty as the assorted theories of probability will allow. Hence the determination that to remain tied solely to planet Earth is to accept a racial death sentence.

The ultimate destiny of Man may be shrouded in mystery, but I am certain that God, if He exists, expects Man to reach for the stars.

Posted on August 4th, 2003 by Zsallia
Filed under: Philosophy, The Future