A Million/Heck A Billion OR More Years From Now!

[Abraham]

Tectonic movement will force up or down our mountain ranges, coastlines, ocean reach etc.

Try not to get to get carried away with our self importance.

Nothing today will matter in 'relatively speaking' ...a few years.

Like a paltry million.

In a billion, for gedaboutdit!

Perpetual Garden cemeteries and their like will be gone. Our countries no longer... Perhaps us, known currently as humanity (unless they blast off to habitable places) will be gone. Will the universe be better off? Shrug...

So, stop worrying about our fate.

Ah yes, the insane left vs. the grown ups.

None of it will matter with time...

Getting wrapped up with this or that - please, after a few millennium and darn sure a few million years, our pathetic concerns will no longer be not only not relevant, it'll be as if they never existed and by that time it won't...

[rotor]

You are absolutely correct. The sun will also stop working eventually too. And if a giant asteroid hits we are all goners anyway. Same if Yellowstone volcano blows.
Also, we are dependent on fossil fuels until we can develop fusion as a source of energy. All the rest of these solar, wind, etc. forms are said to require more energy to make then will ever be produced in the life of the product. They are only viable with TAX CREDITS.
At my age I don't worry about it too much.

Forgot to say but California breaking off and going into the Pacific at any time in the near future would not bother me. My brothers know how to swim.

[Soccerdad1995]

Global warming will melt the ice caps and shift the population north, away from land that is then under water and onto land that is then thawed. Then global cooling will reverse that flow of people back to the south. Rinse, repeat 10 or 20 times. The trick will be to buy land just before it becomes habitable but while it is still covered by water / ice.

Then the sun will start to reach the end of it's life, and we will conclude that there is no way we can efficiently send manned spacecraft out to find a new planet to inhabit. Einstein's laws about nothing moving faster than the speed of light, and all that. So we will just send millions of probes in all directions loaded with our genetic material hoping that some will crash into planets that have the exact right conditions to support life. You know, like what happened on this planet many eons ago (maybe). Rinse, repeat. Over and over.

Our own lives are simply a short term project that we are managing. The first step is to figure out what we are trying to accomplish during this short project, then we can start to complete the actual work. Sadly, most people never even figure out what they are trying to get done before their time runs out.

[J.R.@A&M]

Then the sun will start to reach the end of it's life, and we will conclude that there is no way we can efficiently send manned spacecraft out to find a new planet to inhabit. Einstein's laws about nothing moving faster than the speed of light, and all that. So we will just send millions of probes in all directions loaded with our genetic material hoping that some will crash into planets that have the exact right conditions to support life.

And that planet will be controlled by apes. So keep practicing with semi-auto rifles, because that is the kind the gorilla's use.

[Soccerdad1995]

Then the sun will start to reach the end of it's life, and we will conclude that there is no way we can efficiently send manned spacecraft out to find a new planet to inhabit. Einstein's laws about nothing moving faster than the speed of light, and all that. So we will just send millions of probes in all directions loaded with our genetic material hoping that some will crash into planets that have the exact right conditions to support life.

And that planet will be controlled by apes. So keep practicing with semi-auto rifles, because that is the kind the gorilla's use.

The problem will be space constraints on the probe. Well that and the fact that the genetic soup we will be shipping won't evolve into anything capable of firing a gun for at least a million years or so.

[Abraham]

My point, stop worrying about such provincial world political garbage like it's of much importance.

In a very few years, everyone of us breathing won't be...

See where I'm going...?

Get your priorities straight.

O.K. so China will next be the new super power.

Later, it'll be Lithuania.

Centuries later it'll be Brazil.

It's like football/baseball/basketball/even ugh, soccer.

Eventually, everyone gets to play the biggest power on the block...

Hey, the Romans (before them the Etruscans) kicked butt for a long time, but not forever, and neither shall we...

What me worry me...?

[imkopaka]

Abraham, I see your point that everyone is getting too angry, but you're wrong in your assertion that we should take a back seat because "nothing really matters" in the long run. That's an attitude for people too young to understand the issues that will affect them or too old to care anymore. For those of us who are an active part of politics, the economy, and indeed the modern adult world, this is an immature and self-destructive attitude.

I believe Jesus will return soon and none of this will matter. Does that prevent me from striving to make the world better while it's here?

We cannot rest - not while we have strength to stand. If there is anything important to you, stand for it. Do not take a backseat and let someone else drive your life. If the founding fathers had done that, where would we be today? If Americans had done that in 2016 we would have Hillary in office now! The only place laissez-faire has ever worked is in capitalist economies (and some would argue it doesn't work there). It has absolutely NO PLACE in the politics of a free society, or indeed ANY society.

Yes, we will all die. Just like Samson, George Washington, and Martin Luther King Jr. died. The difference is that those without the ambition to change their circumstances and chart their own course will die in obscurity, while these men died in greatness.

You can keep your lazy attitude. I, on the other hand, am not content to let rights be stolen simply because I will not have them in the grave. Nihilism is unbecoming of real men.

[Abraham]

imkopaka,

Your opinion is just as valid...as mine.

If mine doesn't appeal to you...

[imkopaka]

Validity is different from usefulness, relevance, and greatness. Your opinion may be perfectly valid, but is useful to no one but yourself, not relevant in a forum partially dedicated to the furtherance of a political goal, and will never yield greatness in any form. It is therefore far from being above criticism.

[mr surveyor]

I'm just waiting for the Rapture .... if I'm still breathing then ....

jd

[s3779m]

We "get wrapped up" because we are still held accountable for our actions. Want a better life?, you have to earn it. Want to bum around and act like nothing matters, go ahead, just don't ask anyone else for assistance.

[Abraham]

Ah, ok...I don't care if we have different views.

One thing's for sure, time WILL pass, like it or not and all of your worries and woes won't amount to a thing.

[BBYC]

One thing's for sure, time WILL pass, like it or not and all of your worries and woes won't amount to a thing.

Like your posts?

[Abraham]

BBYC,

Of course.

And yours.

Quite advanced civilizations are often discovered by Archeologists such as the Olmec's. Initially, buried deep and covered over in the jungles of South America as if they never existed, but they did...

If you take the time to look up their art and technology you begin to realize our daily concerns are pretty much the same as theirs over the eons.

Etruscans, same thing and these folks lived, loved and warred only a few thousand years ago. Not a million or billion years ago. Face it, we have a very short cycle before we're recycled into star dust.

Our certainty, we the current breathing are unique is laughably arrogant.

"Conservatives" vs. the "Leftists" will in short order be past history. So past it'll be grown over and covered up by the vines and vegetation like it never happened. Whole civilizations are constantly being discovered and you can bet at the time they existed, they just knew they couldn't be surpassed. Until time moved on and they were surpassed. It's the inevitable state of being. Here now, gone tomorrow. Recognizing that terrifies some.

We as a species seem to never learn, we aren't the most important beings, things, objects, in the universe.

Some grow angry when reminded.

But then Galileo and others had to pretend contemporary dogma was truth in order to keep their heads attached...

That's ok, your day as well as mine is coming and when it does it'll be as if it never was...

And, power will be shifted to the most powerful.

Remember your history. Many countries, relatively recently were the most powerful, but then faded with time.

Rome some time ago, us for the moment, probably China next and so it goes...

[Soccerdad1995]

Yes, humans are but one species living on one of 9 planets surrounding an average size star, which itself is one of a near infinite number of stars in the Universe (let's assume for the sake of discussion that there is only one universe). So you could say that anything humanity does in it's entire existence is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. And then when we take that further and look at all humans who ever have and ever will live, the actions or inactions of any one human become even less significant in the "big picture". So what? Should we conclude that nothing we will do will ever matter? Should we conclude, like the OP, that we shouldn't get passionate about making the world a better place and that fighting to make things better is not really all that important?

I would say no. I prefer to think of our short time on this planet as a project, just like any other time limited project that I might undertake. I have some desired outcomes from that project, and I am doing my best to make those outcomes a reality with the limited resources and other constraints that I am facing (including limited time). For me, one of those outcomes includes the advancement of the radical notion that humans are capable of self governance. No human should be a slave to another human, or to the collective humanity of "government". We are born free, and we are endowed by our creator with fundamental natural rights. No one should be a second class citizen. Governments work for the people, not the other way around. If I can somehow advance these notions in some small way during the project that I call my life, then I will have fulfilled one of my objectives. I also have other objectives, including raising children who will further move humanity in a positive direction long after I am gone. I'm sure none of this matters all that much in the grand scheme of the universe as a whole over billions of years. But it matters to me. And that's enough to motivate me to move forward.