Tick Tock

One of humanity's final sunsets? Only math, and its
descendant time, will tell.

Deke's Note: Someone asked me recently what my thoughts were about working through this past three months. My immediate thought was: devastation. Everything we have held dear seems to have passed through a virtual shredder. Nothing is as it was in February. We could dine in restaurants, gather together in friendship and love, worship, travel, go to concerts or ballgames. A snapshot in time, just a few months ago, is vastly different than "the new normal", whatever that has come to mean.

The breeze of life has stopped. It no longer filters through any cognizant theme resembling our once-collective idea of "reality". Throughout mankind's history, one thing has remained constant: we're fighters, we're resilient, we're tough. No longer.

Humanity has fooled itself into believing it is the superhero of all evolutionary species. Instead, COVID-19 has hit our most vulnerable spot, that place where we felt secure: our dominance of this planet. Perhaps Earth is fighting back against mankind, given the horrific way we've treated her. Pollution, greed, refusal to protect her most delicate places... has our abuse finally caught up to us?

A third of this country lives in denial of science. Another clings to all types of educated opinion, and the rest don't know what to believe. It's as if we have abandoned intelligence for political nonsense, throwing common sense and searching for truth as it reveals itself into a messy game of whatever is in season. Science has become the boogeyman for some who believe that somehow the greatest minds of our time have banded together to fool everyone into believing their "facts" are "fake news". It's mind-boggling to believe that opinion has overcome logic and, in some cases, pure sanity.

Look, folks. We're more intent on killing ourselves through our refusal to acknowledge basic truths that politics could no longer matter. Science sent us to the moon, to Mars and continues to explore the outer reaches of our solar system and the great beyond of infinity. Mathematics are the study of something that has no end: numbers. Science uses math and the one thing that sets our species apart from the rest: curiosity and wonder. Once we abandon either of these, we're reduced to believing something that has no foundation in tangibility.

The Earth is known to be 4.5 billion years old. Modern humans have occupied this planet five one-millionths of its life (5/1000000), approximately 200,000 years. Our planet's life-sustaining time remaining is said to be about another 1.75 billion years. Given our species' disregard for natural resources, we are doomed to fail very soon. In Earth's lifespan, our presence here will be but a millisecond, a tiny pebble worn into sand upon the eroding waters of time.

We're arrogant to believe we're Earth's conquerers. But that's humans in a nutshell: arrogant bastards who would rather fight one another to the death for our misguided beliefs than band together, as any intelligent species might, to find a way to collectively enrich and therefore lengthen our existence. We're hell-bent upon destroying anyone who disagrees with us, because our false sense of superiority is more important than doing as our deity commanded: love one another, treat Earth as our temple, and leave a loving legacy. So far, we have failed on every count since our recent evolution. We've made intense leaps and bounds in discovery and invention, yet every step forward has resulted in 100 backward bounds because of the great mounds of rubbish we produce along the way. We've sacrificed ourselves through warfare, mostly those whose lack of wealth negated their voices in every conflict. You're either "for us or agin' us", or so the ages-old edict goes. The multitude has been against itself for eons, and that's why we're doomed to extinction. We'll kill ourselves long before some biblically-forewarned armageddon happens, and Earth will once again resume its peaceful orbit around the sun. Perhaps, before Earth enters an inhabitable zone closer to its star, humanity's horrid scars upon this beautiful blue gem in the heavens will be erased.

To those who somehow believe, even though presented with scientific facts which prove otherwise, that Earth was created 6,000 years ago, science dictates the "heavens" or infinite space has been around a helluva lot longer. What do you think "God" was doing in the trillions of years before our planet was born? He must have been pretty damn bored. That's why I believe there are billions of other life-sustaining planets scattered throughout infinity. To think our own tiny blue dot is worthy of an entire higher plane of existence known as "heaven" is horribly arrogant of us. Whether these places are inhabited by human-like beings or not, perhaps our deity has seen billions of existences similar to ours play out, and ours is just another of a trillion other bouncy balls our beloved "God" has experimented with.

Perhaps He (or She?) is trying to find the right mix, that one special place where its beings truly love each other and provide the best they can given the bounties at hand? At this rate, our lot will never figure it out. We're too busy killing those who even look different than we do, while condemning them for protesting their slaughter.

Driving a bus through this pandemic has forever changed me. It has had a similarly-drastic effect on every one of us. We've seen our once-great worldwide community reduced to a state of helplessness and despair, anger and betrayal. We have rolled through each minute of the transformation, and it has been an agonizing trip through our evolutionary downfall. Sadly, I doubt we have the toughness, the love for one another, to pull off another miracle. Having been through countless wars meant to improve humanity, we've only seen it slide even lower toward oblivion.

We could evolve into a nirvana-type existence if we only had the will. Unfortunately, from what I've seen of humans the past 50 years, I doubt we have the ability to make it work. We'd rather argue, then kill one another, than find common denominators in the mathematics time and reality have created. You can't kill math; it's infinite.

We're not being treated as "heroes", nor is any other group which sacrifices its health for the greater good. This spells doom. If we cannot work as one to benefit the greater good, then celebrating those who put themselves in danger to keep the ball rolling is like puncturing it, yet still expecting it to bounce.

Our air is spent, like the flatulence expelled in a left-cheek sneak. If this pandemic doesn't provide the wake-up call humanity so desperately needs, our extinction clock is ticking speedier than a doomed second. The dinosaurs went down to a meteor strike. Our downfall could very likely be COVID-19, or the next pandemic.

Tick tock.