by Christyl Rivers

Created on: July 27, 2011

Extinction is just the beginning. Except on fossilized fridge magnets, have you seen many trilobites lately?

Everything that is born, evolves struggles, sometimes thrives, and then eventually dies. The same is true of the human species, as it is true of everything from blood cells, to super novas. Be you Buddhist, or not, all things are impermanent.

The dinosaurs plodded about on the earth for over 160 million years.  Humanity, by comparison, is quite young. In our current manifestation, as Homo sapiens sapiens, we have only been around less than 200,000 years.  Earlier primate species, some very closely related to us, such as chimpanzees are presently nearly extinct.  Estimates vary as to whether there are fewer than 200,000 or 100,000 chimps left on earth. We are by far, the more prominent primate species, and we may destroy ourselves through our technology, but some remnant almost always survives most catastrophes, and either adapts, or it too later becomes extinct.

Evolution, and existence, by extrapolation, is driven by environment.

The dinosaurs became extinct when a meteor hit earth 65 million years ago, and a massive die off resulted, not from the meteor impact, but from the ash cloud darkening the skies that followed the event. 

Our current species, Homo, has not been around very long, but in the short time we have ruled the earth we have been spectacularly prolific.  Some would hesitate to say successful, given our present state of climate change, pollution, starvation and war that still persists in the world, but biologically at least, we are quite adept at survival so far.

In the twentieth century the idea of our technological adolescence became popular as a metaphor for our unique ability at creating tools that both create and destroy.  The wheel changed life on earth, as did the calendar and agriculture, but more intensely immediate inventions such as the nuclear bomb, and CO2 contaminants in the atmosphere cause many scientists to question whether we understand what we are doing on the macro scale, as we each independently contest for the most marbles on the micro scale.

While it is taking some time, the wisest among us have discovered that one big blue marble, planet earth, is worth far more in its life giving diversity, fragility, and air, soil, and water, than a gazillion little marbles, be they of pure gold, platinum, or diamond.

We are quite young, and able to learn from our mistakes, albeit just one major mis step could wipe out many of us with a global nuclear war and conflagration, or more likely, a world wide pandemic that sweeps the planet via air travel, and loose borders.

After all, TSA may always have you remove your shoes to board a plane, but there is far more danger to life on earth in what someone is coughing up, or sneezing out, near the bottleneck of the X ray machine where we all line up to diligently have our shampoo bottles inspected at airport security.

There is still tremendous hope over all for our species, nevertheless.  In less than ten thousand years we have eradicated most slavery, established rule of law in many nations, freed women and children from most savage forms of exploitation, and we even have begun to see other living organisms as having place, value, beauty and worth in the overall bio-diversity requirements for life to continue a while longer as we know it.

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