Having just watched a short summary of extinction events occurring over the past 500 years I was inspired to observe:
An interesting summary… It tends to support what I have increasingly thought… that the answer to the question: “What is the purpose of life?” is simply “To beget life”
The meaning of life…
(For H, sapiens this is a different question than ‘What is the meaning of life?’ — even though –given our limited lifespan– simplistically speaking the ‘purpose’ of our own lives is, in fact, ‘to beget life’… IF things were going according to an optimal spiritual-evolutionary ‘plan’ each generation would produce a new and better generation — on the basis that they should be being properly educated, informed and provided with exemplars that led to the enlightened evolution of humanity! So it could be suggested that the ‘meaning of life’ is related to fulfilling our spiritual evolution ….but evidence for this actually happening currently seems somewhat scant!)
But then… it strikes me that since almost 500 million years ago cataclysimic events/or at least ‘major global evolutionary change’ events have tended to occur roughly every 50 to 80 million years …This not only includes the listed ‘extinction events’ but also the three ‘dinosaur eras’ which each lasted for similar periods!
H. sapiens…our inevitable role?
It has now been 66 million years since the last dinosuars became extinct… so, arguably, we are due for the next extinction event or ‘major global change’ event (and many scientists suggest we are in the 6th extinction event already)… and of course there is always a precursor/catalyst/cause for such an event… Sometimes it has been a super-volcano, sometimes an immense asteroid, sometimes it has been massive global-geo-morphological upheaval,…and sometimes an ‘overgrowth’ of a particular organism that upsets the critical balance of the environment and makes the globe ‘inhospitable’ for 95+% of current lifeforms… clearing the way for the next ‘era’ to allow an alternative diversity of new life to emerge…
…So perhaps — given all we are learning about ‘the self proclaimed’ most intelligent species’ impact on the planet… and given that ‘we’ have only been around half-a-milion years (a mere fraction of global historical time) …we are really just ‘today’s version’ or massive algal bloom!…and hence we ARE meant to be the next ‘catalyst’ and cause of mass extinction…. Perhaps it is OUR role to bring about the next ‘die off’…for it is an inevitablity that has always been our predetermined fate according to the ‘great cycle of terrestrial life’?
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