I have faith in humankind. Despite the perils that beset us, we will be here ten thousand years from now. And longer. The survival of the species is not the issue here. The path we take over the next few hundred years is.
The path of civilisation is not linear. The past hundred years has seen an unprecedented acceleration in development and growth. It has seen the benefits accrue to all, not evenly, but enough to hold the fabric of society together. As we advance even further, we cannot guarantee that this will be the case. But advance we will. Such is human ingenuity. What we are less adept at, is sharing the fruits of our labour.
Today we find a planet struggling with a fever. We find a species struggling with itself. Nations are divided internally and against one another. Our ingenuity seems almost to exacerbate rather than to mitigate. Our greatest minds and our greatest powers choose to divide instead of unite. Meanwhile the planet burns, floods and parches.
The world will not end nor will we be extinct. We haven’t the power to end this planet or ourselves. But we can make the next thousand years hell. The mission before us is to minimise this period of retrenchment and to mitigate its worst effects. The carrying capacity of the planet might fall to 2 billion, we need to maintain it at 8 billion. A period of strife might last a millennium; we need to shrink it to a century. This is the mission.
To do this, we must envisage all possible outcomes post the period of retrenchment. Humanity will need this information for continuity. Also, for continuity, humanity will need a record of all that has gone before, a history as true as is possible given the subjective nature of collective memory. It will need a record of human ingenuity, so that it can rebuild, and a record of human folly, so it can learn. Information is the life blood of society and social organisation and thus information must be preserved.
A core of humanity and morality needs to be preserved. It must survive the instinct to give in to fear. We need to preserve our empathy. Altruism is wonderful but often too ambitious a goal. Understanding ourselves and that, unique as we maybe, we are also each of us, the same.