Carlin is 100% correct on the arrogance that man thinks he can destroy the earth. Like he said, the earth will be here long after we are gone. We can only destroy ourselves. Our time here isnt even a spec in the grand scheme of the earths longevity. We will be gone and the next species will take over as has always been the case.
Well, now, I'm impressed. I may even have made an incorrect assumption about what was being said. Yes, we are imagined gnats on someone else's wall.
The best thing we can hope for is that we are toy soldiers in someone else's war, to be rewarded so long as we honor rules we made up for ourselves that oh-so-luckily correspond to some grand design, which just so happens to ....generally line up with being a decent nice person. ("reform" version of some religions).
The thing that is most likely the truth is a blessing or curse depending on one's view of free will: it's all a big ****ing accident. A marvelous one, but an accident. Matter and energy over so much time we cannot imagine just so happened, in just the right set of circumstances, to create the existence of self-containing and self-continuing systems of matter and energy; life, in a word. And, billions of years later (they recently had to revise their opinion of when life on Earth started), here we strange systems of self-perpetuating matter that seem to have a non-physical existence tied to a physical body, able to reason, are.
Yet, our existence is a long sad tale of self-defeat. Death, murder, rape, horrors. Of tribalist misery. And no matter how much science and philosophy, or the like, has advanced us, we have equally advanced the means of self-destruction. We are belligerent. And, frankly, 12,000ish years of "civilization" is nowhere near enough time to evolve out of that which is now bad but in the past contributed to our success in getting to where we are.
Sports teams, politics, everything: us and them.
And the most likely sad extrapolation is that no science fiction warp drives are possible, there's no good way to create, expand, and stabilize the kind of wormhole predicted by quantum physics (like, sub-atomic particle size, existing for -10^20th of a second, but still connecting to randomly disparate points in spacetime). There wont' be any alien contact, unless it be the age-old remnants of a long-dead civilization. We are alone, we are fools, and we are angry.
Yes, we'll probably destroy ourselves.
Have a good night, eh? I like to go with this:
"I don't know what's gonna happen, man. I don't know what's gonna happen. <cheers>. But I'll tell you this, man, I'll tell you this: I'm gonna have my kicks before the whole ****house goes up in flames, allright. ALLRIGHT!" - Jim Morrison (one intro to Roadhouse Blues, live; "Absolutely Live")
