The Fate of Humanity

The first generation of humans were born out of evolution of a long chain of living organisms, the most near to the apes, in the lap of mother nature. Unlike the other animals, the humans grew a sense of intuition, perception and their application. They learnt to not to take nature as it provides them, but to modify it according to their own needs. They built weapons for security from the wild animals and also from their own kind, and to secure food.

Among the humans, the males, being by nature polygamous, exponentially increased the population and humans thrived and struggled for thousands of years to become the most intelligent living being of the planet, the dominant species.

But, to think in a large scale, the total time from the birth of the first generation of the humans to now is like a couple of minutes in the history of the universe. Have we ever thought for what ‘purpose’ was the humans born? As for example, the tiger thrives on the jungle and lives on smaller animals. If the tiger gets extinguished from this planet, there will be an ecological misbalance which can trigger many other environmental problems. But we humans, have learnt to outgrow the nature. We not only try to determine our fate but also try to think for the nature. We, with our finite rationality try to gauge the mysteries of nature and find happiness on finding the equations that match with our everyday life. We try to impose our thoughts not only in our lives, but on other races.

The film ‘Jurassic Park’ is an instance where humans try to impose the rebirth of the dinosaurs. The nature had chosen these creatures to be unnecessary and hence just ‘deleted’ them from the planet. But we thought to preserve them and hence followed disaster.

Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering.
(Excerpts from the script of The Matrix)
These words may seem a little weird, but on serious consideration may give rise to some serious thoughts.

What are we doing here ? Just trying to maintain our existence without any purpose? All our lives, we eat, drink, perhaps earn loads of money and expend them on ourselves and then one day the inevitable death comes and we go away. Isn’t this ringing a bell? Where is the essential difference between us and other insects and animal? Just that, we can enjoy ourselves more than them? Just that? Humans are born for enjoyment? We not only dictate our lives but inflict large-scale changes in the environment that affect the all of the other living beings.

Now I’ll give an interesting account on a theory of thermodynamics which can be found in almost all good textbooks but we always overlook it. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the entropy/disorder of the universe is ever increasing. Heat cannot be fully transformed into work. Some part is lost. Let this lost part be called ‘Wasted Energy”. Then, as heat is the main source of all the work done in the universe (and not the opposite) the Wasted Energy gets increased. This initial heat energy, the Fuel Energy can thus be formulated as :

Fuel Energy = Work Done + Wasted Energy

At one time all these fuel energy will be lost and the total energy will be transformed into Wasted Energy. There will be no light, no fundamental force-fields, nothing. The universe will then attain an equilibrium for eternity. This is called ‘Heat Death’ by the physicists. This is the fate of the universe. Hence by this theory it is proved that there wasn’t an infinite time from the beginning of the universe, but eventually the universe will be eternally stable. This is what we are heading for. Here is the quotation from the world famous Physics textbook ‘University Physics’ by Sears, Zeemansky & Young :

‘The tendency of all natural processes such as heat flow, mixing, diffusion, etc, is to bring about a uniformity of temperature, pressure, composition, etc at all points. One may visualize a distant future in which, as a consequence of these processes, the entire universe has attained a state of absolute uniformity throughout. When and if such a state is reached, although here would have been no change in the energy of the universe, all physical, chemical and presumably biological processes would have to cease. This fate toward which we appear headed has been described as the ‘heat death’ of the universe!’

(The Second Law of Thermodynamics : page 381-382)

Thus like a bunch of kids we try to defy the inevitable and in the meanwhile we miss out on the reason for which we came here for! Every damn thing has its purpose for its creation. What is ours? Neither do I know, nor does most of others. We just go on enjoying life and live the life of any other animal. Where is this heading to? Fake peace, increasing violence and then one day self-destruction (hey, not only ‘self’ but ‘planetary’ destruction). Is the fate of the humans self-destruction?