Philosophers and scientists have initiated a debate on existential crisis of humanity. Since life first took birth 3 billion years ago, more than 95% of all species that have ever lived on the earth have become extinct – indeed some would say that a more appropriate number could be 99%. Biologist E O Wilson has been quoted by the media very widely stating that of all the species that exist today, at least half will vanish within 100 years. I have not seen any list, if he has prepared one, of the 50% species that will survive by 2110. I wonder if human being would belong to the survivor list.
If we discount the possibilities of a supernova gobbling up the earth or an asteroid hitting us as something not likely to happen for at least a million years, we may believe that we need not bother about the question of human extinction for several millennia. All religions predict the end of times, but provide for a chosen few to be rescued by their God or his messengers. As times go by most of the theological prophecies seem unrealistic. There were rumours of the end of life around 1000 AD but we have survived another millennium. Malthus talked about population pressures creating shortage of food and threatening our survival but we have learnt to manage despite increasing our numbers to 7 billion from 1 billion in his time. As Malthus would have never believed that a world with 7 billion people could survive, today’s sociologists and economists would find it impossible to imagine a world with 30 billion people in the next two or three centuries. Would they be wrong in any Malthusinian resource-based calculations? Will the world survive next few centuries with several billion people?
Those who are concerned about the risk of human extinction do not put forward the resource argument. Some mention climate change causing massive floods or other natural calamities. Some worry about nuclear wars, biological wars, spread of dangerous nanobots or a new type of pathogen, pandemics, and accidental creation of black holes in physics experiments. Some even do not rule out attack by an alien civilization, even though all our efforts so far to establish the presence of any other intelligent life in the known universe have failed.
Underlying all these possibilities, accidental as well as deliberate, there is one common factor. It is the human greed for power. Our pursuit of power has led to the stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction, exploitation of environment to the extent of changing climate patters, alienation of half of the world’s population driving some of them to terrorism, scientific experiments that can carry the risk of accidents with unintended consequences. So far all efforts to contain dangers have been on the supply side. Arms control treaties are a typical example. They are designed to limit the spread of particular kind of weapons (or actually create monopoly in the hands of a few states). Emission controls are intended to limit the release of green house gasses into atmosphere. Bio-ethical laws put restrictions on producing certain kinds of chimera or germs outside the laboratory.
Supply side restrictions impose some discipline on the behaviour of states and limit exercise of power. However, they do not do away with the current model of conducting inter-personal, societal and international relations on the basis of power dynamics. In fact, scientists and fiction writers extend the same theory to the extra-terrestrial world. Most authors assume that a technologically superior civilization would survive – underlying this view is the belief that extra-terrestrial beings also believe in domination, competition, survival of the superior, which are essentially human values. It does not occur to anyone that extra-terrestrial beings, if they exist anywhere at all, may have an opposite view. They may abhor conducting relationships based on power and if they see us, they might find our way of thinking regressive.
Species become extinct not only because they are attacked or deprived of their living conditions by mightier or smarter species. Species can become extinct if they fight between themselves by more and more sophisticated means in the pursuit of power. The species that are used to the psychology of conflict at the basic unit level – be it family or tribe – continue the same thought processes in different forms. Tribe becomes a religion when it acquires a book. It becomes a nation when it hoists a flag. In the name of a book or a flag, mosque or temple, church or synagogue, honour or patriotism, we try to hide our naked desire to want more and more and more. In the process, we produce weapons that can kill more and more and more and then we indulge in hypocrisy of arms control. When our insatiable appetite for power reaches a point of no return in a few centuries from now, we will create a new germ or a new ray or something that we cannot imagine today and it will exterminate us. However, the weapon will be the apparent cause of our extinction. In reality, our own greedy mind will be our ultimate nemesis.
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