I haven't written in this space for a while. Last I wrote, I was pondering the detrimental effects parents have on children, and positing that we would all be better off if parenting were left to professionals. I wish I still had the luxury of such philosophical pursuits. My thoughts these days deal almost exclusively with the realm of the existential.
If you've read my stuff you know that I hold no hope for humanity. We will be, at best, a footnote in the history of this planet; a species that had great potential, yet was unable to evolve past its tribal, aggressive, and myopic nature, resulting in its inevitable demise.
Maybe that demise will originate in an armed conflict. Or maybe we will will finally succeed in making our planet's environment inhospitable to ourselves. Or maybe, as illustrated by current events, we will continue to encroach upon other species enough to make it commonplace for their diseases to spread to us; diseases that we are ill-equipped to handle physically and lack the temperament to mitigate sociologically.
The current pandemic will not result in humanity's demise. Maybe the next pandemic will. But regardless of what brings about the extinction of the ironically named Homo Sapiens (Latin for "wise man." Really?), it will be brought upon by ourselves. We will be the first species on Earth to have made ourselves extinct, through our own actions. It's just a matter of when.
Meanwhile, the tardigrades, laugh.
