I have questions

I have questions. Lots of questions. My biggest question is how in the world has humanity managed to last this long?

Let me break it down for you.

The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Humans have been here for approximately 200,000 of them. In that time, we have been trying to kill each other for as long as history has been written. We fight wars over religion. We fight wars over territory. We fight wars over the color of someone’s skin. We fight wars over differences in politics.

And it’s not just wars either. We kill each other everyday for no reason other than someone pissed someone else off, or because they were in the wrong territory. Or because you don’t look right, talk right, believe what someone else believes.

How are we still here?

We like to believe humanity is the top of the food chain, the cream of the crop. We can reason, therefore we are superior. Are we?

Let’s look at the facts.

Are we superior to lower forms of life? We can reason, we’re smarter, and we can talk to each other. We can work together to figure out problems and find solutions. We can teach each other and grow.

Guess what? Most animals on Earth can do the same,

Alligators have been around about 245 million years longer than humans. Why? Because they learn, grow and adapt to what’s around them. Birds are ancestors of the dinosaurs. They adapted and learned to survive.

But here’s the problem with humans. WE NEVER LEARN from our past.

Here’s something you probably don’t know: There have been thousands of wars throughout history, with estimates suggesting that over 187 million people have died as a result of conflicts since 1900 alone. That’s a staggering statistic. And it’s not just humans we’re good at killing.

A total of 777 animal species have been confirmed to have gone extinct since 1500 due to human activities, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. However, estimates suggest that the actual number could be in the hundreds of thousands when considering unrecorded extinctions.

According to Smithsonian Magazine, approximately 571 plant species have gone extinct in the last 250 years due to human activities, which is an extinction rate that is 500 times faster than what would occur naturally.

Think about that. We kill off plants and animals at staggering rates. And for what? Land? They were here first, we are the interlopers.

That is the fundamental problem with a lot of humanity. We don’t seem to care about anything on this planet but ourselves. But it’s the plants and animals that keep us alive.

We keep fighting wars over nonsense. We keep killing off the plants that can sustain us. We keep killing the animals that can help us survive.

So, the question is, how much longer is the Earth going to allow us to be this way? How much longer can humanity survive?

I can tell you this. Earth will be fine after we’re gone. The Earth, the plants and the animals will continue on as they have for 4.5 billion years. And all that will be left of humanity will be scraps of what we could have been, but couldn’t get out of our own way to keep going.

We need to actually learn from our mistakes and stop repeating them over and over again, or we become the species that goes extinct.

Tim Marlow lives in Storm Lake.