It's not that I've lost hope in the future of the human race, life on Earth, and our continued existence in the universe. I'm just taking an honest look at the world right now and thinking out loud, "Yeah, this could be the shit that does us in."

I don't even really want to discuss it. You guys are watching the news. You're seeing your overly political friends' Facebook rants. You get it. World War III could be around the corner. There's quite a lot of greenhouse gas about. Every day is a new scandal. Our media closer resembles Saturday morning cartoons than a provider of information.
Nothing shocking.
I just can't help but feel like we're at this tipping point where we need to decide if we're going to buck up and do what it takes to carry on as a species and civilization, or if we'd rather just go down in flames, laughing maniacally at a universe that was never going to hear us anyway.
So here's the question I've been pondering for some time now.
If humanity ends up killing itself off, or let's even go the distance and say if humanity ends up wiping out all life on Earth through its faults, is that really such a big deal in the grand scheme of things?
From our perspective, it sure it. I'm trying to imagine a little broader than that. There are countless stars and planets out there. At this point, we're just not advanced enough to know if there is other life out there. It's probably going to be quite some time before we figure that one out. But it's a safe assumption. With all the stars. With all the galaxies. With all the possibilities spanning the great infinity, there's probably a lot of life out there. I mean just tons. Oodles. And if even a tiny fraction of the planets that support life also develop as advanced species, it stands to reason that there are still bunches of those out there. 
Our general assumption is that if a planet has life and has a technologically advanced species, then at some point, this species is going to turn to the stars and explore further and further out. Possibly colonize multiple planets. Maybe figure out how to warp around and refuel using stars and asteroids or whatever. And as long as we're imagining that, I'm going to assume that a good chunk of these aliens out there are going to make it. At some point, our universe is going to host a number of alien species who meet each other, share resources, figure out the meaning of it all, and... I don't know... develop exciting sports and interplanetary ways of making out.
But as long as we're considering the idea, it's safe to assume that for every technological species that makes it in the universe, there are a whole mess of them that don't. Just to throw out some examples:

How many civilizations reached their industrial revolution, had their cities full of smog, and never quite figured out that such a thing was problematic? It's a pretty safe bet that somewhere out there, some mass of people were suffocated by their own progress. Others still probably had scientists and researchers saying, "Wait! All this machinery is emitting gasses that poison us!" But were heavily silenced by the people running the machines.

Somewhere in the universe, an entire population died off because they never figured out STD's. Their leaders said, "We need more workers! Just keep fucking everybody!" And the masses responded, "Hooray!" until there wasn't enough food, they all turned to cannibalism, and died out some horrifying blood orgy.

...Man, that got dark fast!

Being a bit more practical, other aliens were probably killed off by whatever bacteria that happened to run rampant. I bet that one happens moderately often. It wasn't even two hundred years ago that we started saying, "Oh shit, guys! We need to start washing our hands."

Oh, sure. There are probably entire planets killed off by more sexy moments of mass destruction. Some big ass asteroid. Being too close to a black hole. Stars going nova. Hooligans running rampant after an interstellar soccer game. But odds are the things that wipe out more advanced species are going to be their own fault. War. Pollution. Overpopulation. A lack of education is all it takes for things to go to hell.

This is the kind of crap I think about after reading the news lately. Maybe our demise just isn't that big of a deal. It probably happens all the time. Just like HPV. Just another mass extinction.

Anyway, I just wanted to say it's been fun guys.[image error]