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Does this all add up to a good future? Will this work? Are we going to be ok?
The truth is that we don’t know.
But we do know that if we don’t do it, it won’t happen.
At the end of the day, we are a bunch of chimps with brains three times too big, trying our best to make it through the day, to the next generation, and eventually to the stars.
The odds were always stacked against us — we are the species that shouldn’t be. Millions and billions of years and there never was a species like humans. No other species makes up for their soft skin and lack of claws like humans do. No other species makes art, culture and science like we do.
Following the Toba volcanic catastrophe, humanity was reduced to as few as 3000-10000 individuals. And yet, somehow, we made it through. Humanity has made it through predation, epidemics, natural catastrophes, and ice ages. Today we ourselves are our greatest threat.
The survival of that strange chimp was never guaranteed, and neither is it today. The century ahead of us is a challenge that strange chimps like us were never designed to face. And so, once more, we need to do the impossible, what no other species has done before:
We need to work together. As a tribe, a civilization, a species, for those strange chimps that came before us, and for those hopefully still to come.
We can build a good future, but we cannot do it alone. Humanity is the social animal — we do great things, and even greater things together.
If we don’t do it, it won’t happen. So let’s do it.
- Connor Leahy, October 2024