"Possible Worlds"

My university held a writing competition that asked us to discuss a "possible sustainable future." The prompt required 500 words or less, so here is my go at it. Enjoy!

"The only truly sustainable future is one wherein humans push to the stars in search of energy sources. Considering humanity’s demand for energy and resources only grows exponentially, it’s unreasonable to assume the comfort we enjoy on our blue planet will be indefinite. Suppose that in some R&D lab, our most brilliant engineers bring us inexhaustible supplies of food and clean energy to power our lives. Perhaps then, not a single soul would go hungry, and ills of humanity could be forgotten. The implications of this thought experiment seem wonderful, but it fails to account for the most inefficient and insatiable consumer of all: the indomitable human ego. In the face of limited resources, it is our egos - that is, the culmination of our most intense cravings for power, control, and understanding - that have fought the bloodiest of battles, traversed the seven seas, and even learned the nuclear secrets of the universe. Our thought experiment is not entirely fictional: humans currently produce enough food for 10 billion people. Yet, only slightly more than 8 billion populate the earth. When we begin to enumerate reasons as to why we simply cannot board planes and boats - preferably those used for military transport - to feed all those who are starving and impoverished, we begin to make our thoughts servile to the institutions that uphold the most vicious structures of power. Please, think clearer. I fear that humanity is at a point comparable to the literal birth of Columbus. The sudden boom in the private space sector metaphorically suits his birth. When humanity comes of age, the three components of our egos will readily board the Santa Maria, Pinta, and Nina. However, it is our generation's duty to ensure only one of these vessels leaves our planet: one filled with our most altruistic intentions of understanding, free of any weapons of any kind.

Skeptics of humanity’s ability to become multi-planetary should consider the Law of Accelerating Returns, proposed by Google’s Director of Engineering Ray Kurzweil. This gives plausibility to a space faring civilization on technological grounds, and on economic grounds we should consider the largely closed system that Earth is: 1 single Earth to meet the demands of an ever growing population. Speculatively and philosophically, we should discuss the ethos of humanity.

Consider the various city-states of ancient Greece who in fact had knowledge of a round Earth, yet fought nearly all their battles within a 400 mile radius. This ignorance and refusal to cooperate made them blind to the wonders of the Earth, resulting in their downfall. I wonder if the collective whole of humanity is now poised to make this mistake but on a larger scale: strangling ourselves within the confines of Earth. When we become capable of traversing our own galaxy, I undoubtedly know we will find more than we could have ever needed. My deepest fear is that the our viciously territorial egos will needlessly persist into infinity, reducing the magnificence of the cosmos into a mere battleground. "

Submitted May 22, 2016 at 03:58PM by suckstosuckdamn http://ift.tt/25gwxWL