We watched a two-hour documentary on the History channel last night. I'd recorded it a few weeks back. It's called, "Life Without People" and it speculates how the world would change if people suddenly disappear. It relies on ecologists and engineers for most of its predictions, and it simulates the situation at various points after people disappear: 1 day, 5 days, 10 days, 1 month, and then 1, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, and 10,000 years.
The bottom line: It would not take long for nature to overwhelm our suburbs and then our cities. Within 100 years, wildlife populations, both terrestrial and aquatic, would have rebounded to amazing levels, many of them actually finding new (though relatively short-lived) niches in vacate high-rise urban ruins. I felt comforted by this vision of the earth's recovery.
Of course, the disappearance of humans will not be complete and sudden. We might be wiped out by an "asteroid winter" caused by a single massive impact that throws dust into the upper atmosphere, but more likely our destruction would be over a longer period of time as from global warming. In that case, there might be a lot of die off of animal species, but at after a while (maybe a long while) some species would rebound or others would eventually evolve to replace them.
Also, it's sad that there'd be no one to know, but I suppose that applies to the 99.99% of the earth's history BEFORE people were around to reflect on the wonders of it all. And, of course, there're probably billions and billions of worlds we don't know anything about where there's nobody observing, and never will be, so it's probably best not to get bummed out that we're never going to see them either.
Oddly, for me, all of this begins to lap up against my absolute terror at non existence. Yes, I admit it: I'm having the classic middle-aged (as in "midlife" AND "Medieval") longing to believe in a immortal soul. But I just can't convince myself of it. So, rather than just accept that when I'm dead I won't know it (which is good), I just kinda totally freak out.
Anyway, it's nice to know that the earth and it's many species don't give a rip and they'll be leaping, frolicking, eating, carnivore, shitting, mating, reproducing, and all the other stuff WE like to do long after we're gone. God bless them!
***
I sent an email containing the comments above to my daughter just before posting it here. This is her very wise reponse:
That show ("Life without People") sounds very interesting. It's funny that I got this email from you musing on the Big Questions because I spent the afternoon listening to the first 11 chapters of the Bhagavad Gita on my IPod and am feeling wonderfully calm and peaceful about the whole thing.
There's a lot of window dressing in Hinduism but the basic idea that everything is One and that it's all a big soup caldron of existence and nonexistence and change, resonates with experiences I've had both in meditation and daily life. I don't really believe in an immortal soul but I do believe that I'm part of something much larger than my physical body.
I don't worry anymore whether there's Atman or Anatman, I just believe that I'm having the strange, wonderful, painful, unusual experience of being human at this moment in time and that at any moment I might be hit by a bus and become something else.
The bottom line: It would not take long for nature to overwhelm our suburbs and then our cities. Within 100 years, wildlife populations, both terrestrial and aquatic, would have rebounded to amazing levels, many of them actually finding new (though relatively short-lived) niches in vacate high-rise urban ruins. I felt comforted by this vision of the earth's recovery.
Of course, the disappearance of humans will not be complete and sudden. We might be wiped out by an "asteroid winter" caused by a single massive impact that throws dust into the upper atmosphere, but more likely our destruction would be over a longer period of time as from global warming. In that case, there might be a lot of die off of animal species, but at after a while (maybe a long while) some species would rebound or others would eventually evolve to replace them.
Also, it's sad that there'd be no one to know, but I suppose that applies to the 99.99% of the earth's history BEFORE people were around to reflect on the wonders of it all. And, of course, there're probably billions and billions of worlds we don't know anything about where there's nobody observing, and never will be, so it's probably best not to get bummed out that we're never going to see them either.
Oddly, for me, all of this begins to lap up against my absolute terror at non existence. Yes, I admit it: I'm having the classic middle-aged (as in "midlife" AND "Medieval") longing to believe in a immortal soul. But I just can't convince myself of it. So, rather than just accept that when I'm dead I won't know it (which is good), I just kinda totally freak out.
Anyway, it's nice to know that the earth and it's many species don't give a rip and they'll be leaping, frolicking, eating, carnivore, shitting, mating, reproducing, and all the other stuff WE like to do long after we're gone. God bless them!
***
I sent an email containing the comments above to my daughter just before posting it here. This is her very wise reponse:
That show ("Life without People") sounds very interesting. It's funny that I got this email from you musing on the Big Questions because I spent the afternoon listening to the first 11 chapters of the Bhagavad Gita on my IPod and am feeling wonderfully calm and peaceful about the whole thing.
There's a lot of window dressing in Hinduism but the basic idea that everything is One and that it's all a big soup caldron of existence and nonexistence and change, resonates with experiences I've had both in meditation and daily life. I don't really believe in an immortal soul but I do believe that I'm part of something much larger than my physical body.
I don't worry anymore whether there's Atman or Anatman, I just believe that I'm having the strange, wonderful, painful, unusual experience of being human at this moment in time and that at any moment I might be hit by a bus and become something else.
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