What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There’s no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare.
Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’ The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question”. ~Michael Crichton
TheCommonAtheist 
I seldom believe what everyone else thinks. Which is why I call my blog “ideas from Outside the Boxes.” But I can only speak for me. I am just one person.
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I think Jim is speaking in a more general sense of humanity overall. (We all like to think we’re unique. 😊)
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The whole point is every human being is unique, Nan, And Jim is right, in the general sense, that too many people prefer not to think on anything but a very social level, and the world is suffering for that.
But we all have the potential to be sentient, to be able to think deeply and critically. And some of us do. Everything is not hopeless!
While we might be committing racial suicide right now, it will not necessarily happen…
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See the photo at the bottom of the post. You may see a little extra through the slits, but so does everyone else.
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I hope you mean “species” suicide. Maybe, though, “racial suicide” is a good idea, so humanity can deep-six racism?
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Yeah I meant species suicide. It would be easier than racial suicide, n’est-ce pas?
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We’re in the process of specie suicide right now with the inverted population collapse.
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The “inverted population collapse” is tens of thousands of years away based on the present populatoon of over 8 billion humans, and if humans last that long the “problem” will correct itself. Climate change, pollution, possible nuclear war, those are my main concerns right now.
If only half the women in the world had just 2 children in their lifetimes, the population would remain viable. I really doubt half of the women of the world will be childless anytime soon.
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More like 10’s of years away, not thousands.
It has already begun in China and Japan as well as others and we are not far behind, although more stable. More people had less kids, in turn, those less kids are having fewer kids.
In the USA more women at 30 years old have no kids than women with kids. It actually happens very fast where we will likely hit 4 billion by the next generation. There are a lot of old people and not enough children to replace them.
The shows over. You can’t produce any more five year olds today. The decline is inevitable. Our only saving Grace will be a strong economy and sound immigration policy to allow Mexican families.
Also, we are on the verge of not supporting global trade. The USA is backing off its position of protecting the worlds waterways for commerce. We can survive fine without the rest of the world, but they can’t survive without us. Things are going to get very tricky in the next decade.
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These figures need to be seen, as well as where they are coming from. I do not belueve them, but I am willing to look at them.
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The forecasting g for this trend is uncharted territory. Last year the population flatlined. Not because of too many deaths, but not enough births. Multiple that trend out 2 generation and every baby boomer will be dead, with the current birth rate unable to sustain a steady population. In fact, if not for immigration the US would have began this decline years ago. And even developing countries are seeing this trend. The idea the “ideal” population can be maintained is unlikely. It either grows, or falls. With most women waiting or refusing today, in 30 years there will be half as many women having half as many kids. A rebound takes 30-40 years. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/learning/whats-going-on-in-this-graph-april-20-2022.html
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Whatever you are reading into the above stats, Jim, I am not seeing it. While less women may be having babires, the population is still growing. And being as this is julst about the USA, one certainly cannot extend these stats to the rest of the world. And they barely discuss the effects of Covid on population growth, nor the effect of gun violence.
Maybe I am blind, but I see no threats to world population, which has been growing since forever. The rates may change, but there are always more births than deaths. America is NOT a bellwether for the rest of the world, not even the White world.
Climate change is the world’s biggest problem this century, and far too many of our leaders refuse to believe it is real. The corporations of the world don’t care if it is real– they are still making their billions off fossil fuels and the industries that shoot off from it. These are the people who are killing the world, not the non-wealthy, and certainly not the women and mothers of this world!
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More people having more babies exponentially increases the population. The past 100 years has set a world record.
Now fewer people are having fewer children. That is also exponential. In the 30’s the USA had 123million people and a high birth rate. The baby boom is dying off faster than replacement and we now have a low birth rate. It isn’t rocket science as this is typical of every country as it modernizes and moves into cities. Less personal space = less babies born. There actually are enough babies conceived for replacement here, but 620,000 are terminated through abortion.
In 20 years there will be half as many women having half as many babies. 2.1 per woman is replacement. 50% of those women are now childless.
This is the animal kingdom. Nobody has to “do”anything about it as we see in any population of specie it is self regulating based on territory and food. But decline will likely be more painful than growing.
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Yes, we are in the animal kingdom. But the old rules no longer apply. Women do not go into heat once a year, every year. This is a survival trait, developed when there were open spaces. There are still open spaces, but there is also overcrowding. Many areas of Earth are still experiencing exploding birthrates, based on many factors.
But look at any animal polpulation, Jim. They explode, and then they fall back. It is a cycle. And we are interrupting that cycle for them. We are stealing their natural territories. We are hunting some to extibction, or just destroying the only habitats where they can survive.
Barring self-destruction, humans too will have periods of decline. In prior times nature has taken care of that, the Black Plague, thyphoid fever, and right now Covid! Overcrowding demands natural corrections. A lower birth rate is another form of correction. But it will not be permanent.
It is normal to catastrophize when we see something new. But humans are a long long way from breeding themselves out of existence.
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Central Africa is exploding birth rates.
Here’s the deal. The US developed over the course of two hundred years—China in 40. They had a one child policy then after they realized it (too late) they switched to two, then three. The numbers don’t lie. They will go from industrialization to bust in a generation. They don’t have enough children to keep innovation and elderly taken care of. I know you really want to see population as a problem but less is going to be more devastating to life and the environment than innovation and population. You can see it all around. The great civilizations that collapsed left barren wastelands where in the final days burned every piece of wood and left nothing behind.
Even Germans, right now are burning timber to get through one tiny energy crisis. The impact on all life is affected by this. Not just humans.
Children are the lifeblood of innovation. Less people—less innovation. More panic, more destruction.
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Look at the difference between what people know and how they behave. Just on climate change alone nobody really believes that or it would show.
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I am saying there are people who can come up with a plan to ameliorate the effects of climate change so that humans, and other sentient beings, can survive, not saying climate change isn’t a serious problem.
Yeah, most of the world is not doing enough to fight climate change, because we our letting our screwed up leaders ignore it.
I know climate change is real, but I am saying it does not have to be the end of sentient beings.
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Cockroaches and rats could survive a thermonuclear blast so I think something — some life will adapt and thrive. But maybe not the dubious creature called mankind.
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I have some ideas about that resurgence post apocalypse. I’ll try to find that post to see what you think.
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Likely some life will Survive, enoigh to trigger a whole new round of evolution without humans on the agenda. We don’t have to be a dead end, but certaimly we are looking like one.
(Like your cats, but they look so sad.)
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Evolution will evolve to humanic forms again. Nothing that can only happen once can ever happen at all. Life is cyclical, and with the current population decline/catastrophe our chances of survival will be worse than forecasted.
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The dinosaurs uave never come back, but heither have the Dodoes.
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Give it time.
Dinosaur communities were separated by both time and geography. The ‘Age of Dinosaurs’ (the Mesozoic Era) included three consecutive geologic time periods (the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods). Different dinosaur species lived during each of these three periods. For example, the Jurassic dinosaur Stegosaurus had already been extinct for approximately 80 million years before the appearance of the Cretaceous dinosaur Tyrannosaurus. In fact, the time separating Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus is greater than the time separating Tyrannosaurus and you.
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From what I understand, the oxygen content in the atmosphere was much higher then. I doubt it will ever be that high again.
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The nature of life is cyclical. I thought that last time line was worth a few dozen polar shifts and a few dozen ice ages. After it dies it will come back to life in a similar sequence. Whether it takes 75 million years or 10, nothing would know till near the end, that it had already done this forever.
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Always possible. But from what I have read, the oceans would have to go down significantly to replenish the oxygen back into the atmosphere. Again very possible. But is it likely? Given millions of years, it just might be.
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Climate change has always been real. None of the forecasts consider our ability to adapt. We are growing more food with less land and less fertilizer than ever before. This trend is continuing at a higher sophisticated and computerized level.
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If you say so. I live on the Prairies, and farmers and ranchers buy fertilizers by the ton. Fields are never left fallow anymore to naturally replenish the minerals and such taken out of them by growing things every year.
And these fertilizers are leached into the soil and then into the water systems. Our rivers are so contaminated in places the water is barely drinkable. We are creating deserts where good soil use to be.
I don’t pretend to know everything, but every year the water in the Saskatchewan River has to be tested to see if it is still safe to be used by humans.
The point, though is that there are so many human causes of climate change that the Earth can never clean up after us on its own. The oceans are polluted to the point fish and ocean mammals can’t sustain their health. How can we clean up the oceans! We can’t. And we keep on adding to that pollution every day.
The air is another concern. When planes were grounded during Covid the atmosphere was beginning to clean itself — I have no idea how. But now that planes are flying again the air is being polluted just like it was before Covid.
We are still killing our planet! And I see no end in sight!
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I would really like to agree with you. It’s easy to get on the anti-human rail—especially if you follow Pm Trudeau. His farming mandates are crippling measures that will cause more suffering—the farmers are already using less to get more and maybe I’m specie-ally territorial with my people, but I don’t see humanity as a scourge, but a work in progress.
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I am hoping we are a species in evolutionary mode, but in my eyes we need more spiritual evolution than any other kind right now.
And I am not talking about any religion or phil8sophy. By spiritual I mean compassion for others, caring about others at the same time as caring about ourselves. As I said the other day, all living things share at least some strings of DNA, but too many humans do not feel connected to other people or other living beings. We cannot survive as individuals competing against each other on any level. Religions, natonalities, races, species, whatever. We need to connect, not just for the good of ourselves, but for the good of life itself.
You suggest I am on an anti-human rail, Jim, but you are wrong. No, I do not like humanity AS IT IS TODAY, but if I totally gave up on us I would have committed suicide a long time ago. I am still here, still fighting for a better world, a more humane world. But that world includes all living beings, not just us. Humans cannot and will not survive on our own. We must live in conjunction with every other species of life, not in a position of feigned superiority. We may be able to do more things than other species can, but we are all living organisms, and we need to learn to rrespect every other species, no matter how tiny, or how inconsequential they might seem. We need to learn humility.
But working as individuals this will never happen.
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Your scenario is worthy of praise, rawgod, but the unfortunate part is that it will never happen in our lifetimes … maybe never. The only way I can see humanity coming together in ANY sort of coalescence is if a MAJOR event were to happen that threatened the earth as a whole. Even now we have problems (pollution being one of the major ones) that will, eventually, affect everyone on the planet. Yet as a species we do nothing but complain and/or make feeble attempts to remedy the situation … all the while fighting amongst ourselves about the COST!
I think Jim takes a more esoteric view of humanity, whereas many of us see it as it is.
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Our lifetimes? No. A hundred years? No. A thousand years? No. But if we can survive that long? Maybe!
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I think we have peaked in the evolutionary possibilities of this environment. If we are to go beyond, to change, the climate must change. And I mean the real climate, the atmosphere, etc.
Things won’t stay the same because they cannot stay the same. If anything lasted forever the bad things would last forever too.
You noted the earth was different back then and different types of life existed. So will it be with us. Without physical changes there will be no changes. So embrace it.
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Definitely things cannot stay the same. And if the entire climate changes, everything else will have to change! But humans will not evolve fast enough to survive such drastic changes, not while still being human. The changes will not be evolutionary, but metamorphical — responses to changes. Chances are that type of change will be apochryphal, and not in a good way.
No, I will not embrace it. My nature is for humanity to fight to control the change. But that takes cooperation, which we are not good at doing!
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What is it that changes thing evolutionary? Pressure. Metamorphic or not, certain mutations occur from pressure to equal adaptation. You can’t have one without the other.
It is natural to want to fight it, and it is also just as natural to accept it. The difference between you and me is, you think you have a choice in the matter.
Humans are notoriously gullible when it comes to change. They think they can harness it, but that has never once happened. Every single venture, even the mobile and “good” causes has produced unforeseen outcomes. We cannot even guess what life will be like in 5 years, let alone 100.
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Or for that matter … even tomorrow (or sooner!) Truly, we live at the whims of the forces that surround us.
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Just about everything is reactionary. Most times I think the best way to fix things is to leave them alone. We never let nature take its course.
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Pressure can take many forms, like natural pressure changing coal into diamonds. But when it comes to humans, the pressure can be onerous. The pressure of living under an autocratic government.
Of course no one can see into the future to understand every nuance of what a change will bring. But controlled change has more possibility of producing positive results than a pressure like climatic change, which is totally haphazard.
The thing about choice, and yes I believe we have choice no matter what science tries to tell us, is that if we have none, why bother living! Might as well just sit down somewhere and wait to see where the script leads. You nor anyone else will ever convince me there is no choice. That requires some kind of controlling force, and I cannot go there!
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Crichton is an absolute genius.
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Agreed. And each of us think it’s not us…. Hmm
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Rather than argue that humans are NOT sentient or aware I would argue that all living creatures, all animals and every insect, all plants and slime molds included are sentient and aware and start from there. Slime mold, which is a one celled organism that is nevertheless visible to the naked eye and can cover square yards of ground, can solve a maze and find the shortest path through it to food then communicate this knowledge to other slime molds. It can learn and adapt and solve problems. I think we humans need to accord sentience and intelligence to all life and act accordingly. But we mostly don’t even value one another so how can we expect us to value Life in general.
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I agree with everything you say, except I would use “recognize and understand” in place of “accord”! They are sentient whether we understand this or not.
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The difference between us and then is we think we are sentient beings, but it never crosses their mind.
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And you know that how?
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They don’t seem to care if anyone is watching them
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But you cannot read what is in their minds. You are being humancentric, presuming what humans do is what other species would do. That is a dangerous fallacy. They are not humans. And until we can communicate with them on some interspecies level, we can never understand what they think and feel.
We are discovering every year how intelligent other species are — in comparison to humans. What will we learn when we learn to compare them to themselves?
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Agreed
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Absolutely !!!
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I guess the point would be we can’t even tell if we actually are, so how would we know if they are?
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Crichton was on the right track. But I think we’re mired in our beliefs in lieu of God himself. Likewise Christ: “We will not have this man to rule over us.” Beliefs are comfortably impersonal.
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I’ve come to the same conclusion.
~David
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I’m aware enough to know that fire hurts my hand. I’m sentient enough to not do it again.
😉
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Conformist!!!
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Ha!
Well, I do have my moments. For instance, every single time I use a soldering iron, and knowing full well not to touch the metal part next to the handle, I have a duh moment and touch the goddamn metal part! It’s a good distance from the business end, the tip that gets hot, but that heat travels right up there.
Ever since I learned how to properly splice a wire, intertwine the wire ends, solder, heat shrink, I just refuse to do the ole wire twist/electrical tape thing, and I really dislike the crimps of all kinds, they predictably fail. Maybe I’ll catch on about that soldering iron yet.
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Most humans are sentient but in a very limited way… very limited!
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I would think sentience should be a fullness of awareness. Mostly we just have unanswered questions.
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