Cubs Win

Ever heard of the Fermi Paradox? If not, here's a great, long form explanation: Waitbutwhy is generally amazing.

I've been thinking (entirely too much) about The Great Filter:

"The Great Filter theory says that at some point...there’s a wall that all or nearly all attempts at life hit. There’s some stage in that long evolutionary process that is extremely unlikely or impossible for life to get beyond. That stage is The Great Filter."

Theories about what exactly The Great Filter might be include biological (the very origin of life itself, the leap to complex cell organisms), cosmological (avoidance of an E.L.E such as another doomsday meteor striking earth), or perhaps as science fiction would have it, the technological: development of something akin to "warp drive".

But what if The Great Filter is something less spectacular, less of a one-in-a-trillion shot like any of these examples, but equally daunting? Something rare not because it is nearly unachievable, but rare because of the collective effort it requires of an entire, combined species to break through?

What if the breakthrough is entirely within our reach already, and we just need to put in the hard work to achieve it?

Issues of race, religion, and gender have always been around, and it seems to me they receive ever-increasing attention and discussion and in the balance, that's a good thing. I am horrified (but no longer surprised) by the bigotry revealed in many discussions of these topics, but as much as I detest those ways of thinking, drawing them out into the light is prompting conversations that must be had if we are ever going to improve ourselves.

What if The Great Filter for our civilization turns out to be how we respond to these issues? What if the only way for us to break through and fulfill our potential is to overcome our own, human-made Filters?

To me, it is far more reasonable to believe advanced civilizations are the result of highly functional, interconnected societies, pooling together their best and brightest to achieve wonders like a warp drive or avoiding an E.L.E. than it is to think it's all the lucky result of a "Eureka!" moment. Only a civilization which has grown beyond the divisiveness of race, religion, and gender identity can bring all of their talents to bear on advancing as a species.

The story goes that Enrico Fermi, pondering the vastness of the universe and how many civilizations should be represented by all those stars, exclaimed, "Where is everybody???"

Perhaps before we can know Where they are, we need to figure out Who we are.