The responsibility of doomers to the future: A proposal

by Godofredo Aravena P.

Every time I read the NBL posts, I get the feeling that there´s nothing to be done with our lives, and our future. We have no future. We just have to wait for catastrophe.

We used to have a reason for living. Apparently, no more.

Also, most of us know, by own experience, that spreading the message of NTE take us nowhere. Ergo, climate change has no way back. At least regarding our actions as species.

Nobody knows in a precise way what comes ahead, and how climate change will affect us. It all depends on where we are and live.

NTE ahead and too many “who knows.”

The message given so far seems to me that all we have to do is to give love, have peace, enjoy the time we have left, and enjoy nature and all that we may lose with climate change. In simple words, rules of behavior to keep us calmed, to keep us in peace with incoming tragedy. A life with no purpose. Kind of selfish rules by the way, only for ourselves. For our tranquility as persons.

To be selfish is as natural as nature. All creatures need to be selfish, to survive. The magic of nature is that by being selfish, creatures help each other. They constantly give something in return, usually becoming food to other species, a form of energy. In simple words, creatures of nature are energy collectors. Just by living and dying, and being selfish while alive, give something in return to the rest (the system).

But human as a species, by being selfish somehow destroys or damages the rest, people and environment, and give nothing in return, but a huge amount of waste. And, contrary to the rest of creatures, we are only (mainly) energy consumers. We also collect stuff with no purpose regarding the rest of the system (nature). We see and measure the world based on our very personal point of view. As we live, we do not care about the rest, and as we became so powerful (thanks to technology), we can create much destruction along the way. Just for our own pleasure.

So being selfish is a green practice, only if by being selfish, the system thrives, and/or stays in a steady state. Evidence tells me that mankind selfishness is not of the “green” type.

So doomers have the possibility to evolve in someway to a different state, we have a possibility to be selfish in a green way. And do something really useful to the (future) system. Something that goes beyond ourselves.

Doomers are in a different (higher maybe) mind state. Accepting NTE opens mind to a differente view of life and nature.

So welcome new mind state, because I guess, we have a job to do (if we want), on behalf of the rest of our society. A job, or responsibility, that requires a different mind state.

We have to stop thinking only on us (and our beloved alive). So far, on NBL, we keep on being somehow too selfish. Very much just like the rest of people.

We have to start seeing the future in a different way, and start doing something for somebody that we do not know, that is not our family, somebody that we will never meet. We have to start thinking as our society should have done couple of centuries ago and (probably) things today would be different.

We have to do something thinking in our descendants, in a very broad term, whoever they are. Even if they are intelligent beings not humans, or humans in a different case.

We have to give something against nothing, according to our modern commercial standard.
Roughly just like the movie “Fog of War”. We have to transmit a message about what we have learnt. And I do not mean technology, I mean our mistakes and/or lessons of life. More than just a bunch of data, instead, hopefully data coupled to some analysis.

We have to find a way to provide some answers to the questions about us that future generations will have.

Just like Jared Diamond`s question: “What was thinking the person while chopping down the last palm tree on Easter Island?” A question that has no answer today. We can only suppose. It would have been good to have that answer. We could have taken some lessons.

We have to try to provide answers to questions that the future intelligent specie that will replace us, will have about us. We probably are becoming a failed experiment, but the creator(s) will probably create a replacement, with maybe a few adjustments in our biology, to maybe live in a slightly different environment. Or, maybe some individuals of our specie will survive, along with other creatures. Enough individuals to spread again over earth, a certainly different earth. As crocodiles survived to two ELE, and other animals did too. It is a possibility.

Replaced or not replaced, in a not so distant future, there will be an intelligent species on earth again.

As intelligent creatures, able to create things, have to learn from their mistakes, there is no other way, if they don’t, they may end in the same point we are today. Our replacement specie, as we today, will be very powerful in relation to the rest of species, and has to learn to handle their power, before facing a predicament as we do today. We can help doing something today to, maybe, avoid the path of self destruction again.

Any future intelligent being will in some moment have questions about us.

Why we disappeared?

Why our culture declined?

What went wrong?

What caused the sixth ELE?

And so.

We, today, as living individuals, know the answers, but once we disappear, the answers will go to grave with us.

I guess instead of trying to save the planet we know today, a lost battle already, we have to try to preserve the answers to this questions somehow safe.

That is not an easy task certainly. To find a media, that will withstand the test of time is a hard job. To find a way to teach a language to somebody in the future that knows nothing about our current languages may become another hard job. That, if we want to keep the information using some type of hardware media (computer, hard-drive, pen-drive, paper, plastic, stones, whatever).

Maybe we have to keep this knowledge through our immediate descendants, just like ancient tribes did. And knowledge be constantly transmitted to descendants. A practice that could become part of our culture.

There are so many lessons to keep.

To rebuilt our past has been a hard and complex task. Lots of questions with no answers.

Let´s help to our descendants to know about our story, their past, as seen from inside. Let them know the lessons hardly learnt. It may help them to avoid the seventh ELE, and develop a sustainable culture.

This is much more than just keeping a lot of files, it is personal and careful selection of files that we may seem relevant to keep, coupled to some analysis, to put things in context. Pointed to the Jared Diamonds of the future. We have some years ahead to find ways to transmit this information to somebody in the future.

Our current global database, Internet, will probably not last long enough. If some people find a way to continue our specie, they will have very hard times, with very limited technology. I would expect that after the decline of modern-current society, a dark age of maybe some hundreds of years will follow.

If we want a reason to live the rest of our life, this is a good one. That makes much sense (to me).

Instead of being Doomers or Preppers, we could be “Filers.”