The old saying that the brilliance of the human race is how efficient we are at killing each other. In a mere tick of the cosmic clock we have we went from bashing each other with rocks circa 10,000 BCE to blowing each other up with atomic weapons. Can we make it another 100 years?
The 19th century was the bloodiest century in mankind’s memory: Napoleon, the Civil War, and dozens of other terrific conflicts. That is until we entered the 20th century. It made those old guys look squeamish. We mastered not only mass technological weaponry, but took it to the air and under the sea – even into space. In 1800 we didn’t know what a germ was, but by mid-20th-century we were annihilating people with biological weapons. And of course atomic weapons, and suicide bombing, and high-tech torture.
Now that we are 12 years into the 21st century, how will we make it onward?
There are two schools of thought. One is: We’re toast. We will either cook our own goose by global warming leading to the worst wars imaginable. The other is more optimistic. Based on actual trend counts, the massive warfare we engaged in since 1990 has attributed to minuscule deaths and dismemberment. (Of course, even one is too many.) As global population has soared, the proportional deaths have dropped. In Western cities, crime rates have plummeted even during this horrible depression we’re in.
There are no solid anthropological reasons for this. Maybe it is the lull before the super-storm, or maybe, just maybe, we have matured as a race. At least by a very microscopic amount.
So will we go the Roddenberry route and achieve peace and make a Federation, or is the worst to come?
