All over the news lately has been the idea that our #1 mission in life, as individuals and as a species, is to find a way to get off this planet and colonize another before the Sun expands, or explodes, or goes berserk in some way that ends life as we know it.
How long do we have left?
Recent estimates predict that we have around 1.1 billion years to get this figured out. This sounds like a lot, but when you consider we still have to fake going to the moon, it feels like we’re going to need all the time we’ve got. The fakes are fun, and ease the tension for people living on Earth, but we all know that, when it comes down to it, you can out-fake the sun. When it goes down, we go down, no matter how sweet we are at CGI. We’ll need to do something real, or else everything we’ve ever done will have been a total waste of time. If we don’t get out of here, there will have been literally no point for Van Gogh, Mozart, Shakespeare, Melville, Picasso, Palladio, Daft Punk, Elvis, Michelangelo, and so on, to have even existed. Literally, they might was well not have even bothered.
In other words, the pressure is on.
Can we step up in a pressure situation?
We should give it a shot. We like it when sports people step it up to another level when the pressure gets cranked up. Many of us do, at least.
There are people who aren’t into it. Some people don’t think we’ve done anything really that special.
But I’m sure you’re on the side that likes a few things about ourselves. It only makes sense.
Or maybe you are one of those people that doesn’t like nice things. Or that doesn’t believe that there have ever been any things that have ever been any nicer than any other things, because you think that nice things are oppressive, because it’s not fair to the people that make bad things. And bad things are relevant and interesting, too. Do you somehow find this postmodern theory appealing? It seems like an absurd way to go through life. But to each their own! If you’re one of those people, we weren’t expecting any help from you, anyway.
The pressure is on!
The scary news is that the timeline has just been adjusted. In 2135 a giant asteroid named Bennu will smash into us, and that will be the end.
That’s 116 years away! That is Ten Million times sooner than we had previously calculated, which means all there is left to do is pray, and step up the progress.
Or join the postmodernists and say who gives a crap! Because apparently our lives have no value anyway. SO WHATEVER!
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