Extinction

by Douglas Preston

The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous. —Edward O. Wilson

Think about the miracle of life on this planet. A dust cloud in space condensed into a wet dead rock orbiting an average star. And then, somewhere on this rock, a microscopic bag of chemicals made a copy of itself. And copied itself again, and then again. Because these copies were imperfect and differed slightly from each other, some chemical bags survived better than others. That’s it. That dumb little rule, iterated a billion times, produced us and everything else in our glorious natural world! But you and I are still a bag of chemicals, fabulously complex, that somehow acquired this mysterious thing called consciousness. Look at you and me—it blows the mind that we evolved from a dust cloud left over from an exploded star!

You Sapiens, with your bleak and apocalyptic history? What a grim and self-loathing species you are! Look at what you worship as progress. The agricultural revolution turned you from free wanderers into slaves to the land. The Industrial Revolution robbed you of your souls and made you cruel. And the IT revolution gave you loneliness, hatred, and misery. What’s next for Sapiens in the glorious march of progress?”