Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Extinction is forever. Extinction undoes the human enterprise. Extinction makes pointless the activities of all of our ancestors back those hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Because surely if they struggled for anything, it was for the continuance of our species. And yet the paleontological record is absolutely clear. Most species become extinct. There's nothing that guarantees it won't happen to us. In the ordinary course of events, it might happen to us. Just wait long enough. A million years is quite young for a species. But we are a peculiar species. We have invented the means of our own self-destruction. And it can be argued that we show only modest disinclination to use it.
Carl Sagan
Rocked Out @
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
