There is a whole institute at Oxford University that has the sole purpose of working out when and what might cause human extinction. Seems quite a lonely job. They suggest that it is possibly going to be technology that will cause our extinction: nanotechnology, synthetic biology etc, things we don't yet know about and don't know their consequences. We'll let them grow and develop without ever getting a full handle on them and they will be our destruction.
There is a call in there to be more aware of the ethics and take time over the development of things. There are questions about what our guiding principles are and the mantra of technology for the sake of technology. These are all good questions that you need time to ask but I doubt we will be slowing down technology any time soon. As they say, you can't undo any of it.
There is another side to that however. Well, it's not another side of it but a parallel side (can you get that?). Being so focused on our destruction we forget to live. Ignatius always said: Go with the life, and so we should. It's a Christian principle: go with the life. Ends come and go, but it is the living that is done that marks us out; the quality of the lives we live and share with others.
The article makes comment that there were more academic reports published on snowboarding than human extinction. Thank goodness! It's about living.
Yet, thinking about extinction might put into perspective the lives we live and the chaos they might bring. Perhaps thinking about our demise might enable us and show us the way to live more fully, more richly with each other and more in balance with was we are able to cope with ethically.
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