our place in the universe

I recently watched How The Earth Was Made. It's a 2 hour documentary on Astro's History Channel. What can I say, I'm a bit of a science nut, mostly on astronomy. It's really quite amazing to learn the history of Earth. At least what they know of it so far (which is actually after a couple'a hundred years of research, mind boggling thought, isn't it?) and all I can say is if you've any interest, at all, in this, go check it out. It is worth the 2 hours.

What I got out of the 2 hours is this - homo sapiens is actually the most insignificant in the scheme of things but also the most significant element to life on earth.

We, humans as we call it, are actually at least the 6th or 7th generation of lifeforms on earth. Starting from microscopic organisms (which is actually our common ancestor), to more complicated organisms to giant insects to dinasours to cavemen and finally to us. And we, who think so highly of ourselves are not even the first to populate the earth. But we're definitely the first to start killing it. Yes, we are indeed murdering the host that is supporting our life. And we've only been here for about 10 thousand years. If we do not start taking care of the earth, we will eventually kill ourselves and unfortunately, the majority of us are still marching blindly towards that end. All in the name of power, money and what? fame? The more technology we develop, the faster we use up the earth's resources and the faster we're pushing towards our own extinction. So yes, we are indeed very significant to the life of our planet earth.

On the other hand, it's like everything has it's place in the universe. Look at the mass extinctions before us. Why is it that everytime life flourishes, at least 70-90% of the species gets wiped off the face of the earth? Billions of years of evolution, gone, just like that. Every single time. It's like there's a timeline to every generation. When the time comes, there will be ice ages, plate tectonics movements, mass volcanic eruptions, the asteroid strike that killed off the dinasours, etc. We're talking mass planetary extinction that are completely out of our control. What use is technology in this? Money? Power? Completely useless. All these happened in the past and it definitely looks like a cycle to me. It's already happened 5 times that we know of.

It's like the earth makes the decision because it is alive too. It is evolving along with us and most of us are either too ignorant of the fact or just plain not paying attention. I do believe that we have no say as to how long we have on this earth. The only difference is whether we'll leave enough of the earth for a next generation of lifeforms after us. Which is pretty slim to none if what they predict comes true - in about 2 billion years, earth will become another Mars. Which brings a question to my mind. Since they discovered traces that water possibly existed on Mars before, was Mars a previous Earth? Another planet that was perhaps killed by similar lifeforms like us? Possibly thousands or millions or even billions of year ago?

Anyway, the sobering thought is that we are truly insignificant because we'll be completely helpless to forces beyond our control should it come time for us to cease existence. If we take care of our planet, and if we're lucky, we might go out with a bang (fast and with the least amount of pain), but if we continue damaging it, it acts like a slow poison, and our descendents might have to go through intolerable sufferings before the end.

So I say, live well and appreciate your life everyday but try to be friendly to the earth too. Think of what really matters... don't waste your lifetime on unimportant things.