verifiedboomer t1_j537jgg wrote on January 20, 2023 at 2:02 AM

When I was young, I thought I would see these things happen in my lifetime.

Now that I am 60, I am pretty sure I won't.

It bothers me less and less, though. Everyone has to come to grips with the fact that they experience the universe during a short window of time. I also am more aware of humanity's historical context. There have been over 10000 years of human civilization and culture around the world, and I have seen only 60 years of it; there is so much I have already missed and will never know, so why worry about the future stuff that I won't know about either?

That historical context also strongly suggests that our technological civilization is more fragile than we realize, and I'm OK with that. If this bothers you, then I suggest reading "Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart, which chronicles human civilization on Earth after a pandemic wipes out most humans. I first read this almost 50 years ago, and the lessons are as relevant today as they were then.

gofishx t1_j53brv2 wrote on January 20, 2023 at 2:33 AM

And 10,000 years is just for what we call civilizations, which is a tiny fraction of the time humans have actually existed. Apparently, there was a cave that was continuously inhabited by humans for 78,000 years! That's a scary amount of time to think about. History and pre history have nothing on our ancient history. And to think, all that time was observed in little chunks by so many people.