Seeker

by Douglas E. Richards

In 1811, an organized group of weavers and textile workers, calling themselves Luddites, destroyed weaving machinery to protest what they believed to be job-killing automation. Because of this movement, the term Luddite had come to refer to anyone who was resistant to new technology and technological changes.

I’d like to think any aliens able to get here would be peaceful, but I know better. We don’t even understand human behavior—and we are human.

The automated self-construction of a human being from a single cell, including a working brain hundreds of billions of neurons strong, was a staggering, mind-boggling feat of engineering. But since nature made this look relatively easy, it was largely taken for granted.

“If nothing exists outside of yourself, if you inhabit the entire universe, if you are all there is—in all of time and space—then what do you have to compare yourself to? If you’re the only being in existence, you’re the strongest being there is, but also the weakest. The biggest, and also the smallest. Without contrast, nothing has scale. You’re everything, but also nothing. Worse still, you’re destined to go through infinity and eternity with no external stimulation of any kind.”

Struggle, purpose, accomplishment, and challenge are what truly brings meaning to existence.

The lesson of evolution is that struggle and competition are the only sculptors that can ensure a species reaches its highest potential. Only a struggle for the ultimate stakes can bring out the best on all sides, as each side is forced to adapt and improve in response to the other, in a constant escalation of potential.”

“Because hope and optimism doesn’t sell nearly as well as pessimism and despair. Your news outlets earn clicks and viewership by sowing alarmism and division. Your social media plays to addictions and creates unprecedented social pressures. You’re wired by evolution to find bad news more motivational than good. To seek it out. “If your ancestors heard the rustle of a friendly breeze far away in the tall grass, and ran away, mistaking the breeze for a lion, this cost them very little. But if they heard the rustle of a lion in the tall grass, and mistook it for a friendly breeze, this would cost them their lives. Seeing potential bad news behind every harmless breeze is a survival instinct.