I woke up and had an existential crisis this morning. It's always in the morning for me, just after I wake up, that at least one aspect of the strangeness of my existence will blindside me between the eyes. I guess my brain gets surprised that it's still here most mornings. Most of the time it passes before I have time to do any real thinking about it. I feel it and then it's gone. This morning I suddenly comprehended reproduction in the oddest way. That it all started because a vesical was smashed in two by a rock or something, and now replication of organisms has taken over the surface of the earth. All these squirming little balls of cells making more, and more, and more. Mutating, again, and again, and again, until you get a monkey shaped ball of brain that calls itself Julia, that didn't choose to be here, and is planning on making more squirming balls; growing slimy humans inside of her body. And then pushing them out onto the surface of the earth so that they can squirm all over it, and pass on a few mutations that get to play in this game called natural selection that nobody set up, and nobody is watching, it just is.
I felt all of that in just a moment. And then I began following this reproduction process further in my mind, following the path far into the future. What's going to happen to us?
Lets say all the best circumstances take place. Lets be true optimists right now, and say that all of this will be possible in the future. Our first step to insure that we can keep replicating is to get off planet. The Earth could become unsuitable in a thousand different scenarios, and if anything goes wrong, we're screwed. Our next step is to get out of this solar system before the sun dies, and kills us all. We need to populate the galaxy. But we probably need to get out of the Milky-way before it collides with Andromeda, and occupy the rest of the universe. And then, the hardest of all, we need to get into other universes before this one undergoes heat death, where every star is dead, and every bit of matter/energy disintegrates into heat, which finally cools and then nothing exists at all.
This is a big project. But lets say we pull it off in trillions and trillions of years. We're a species that has figured out how this universe works, well enough to leave it, and probably control the fabric of space somewhat. We're not human, but we resemble humans in the same way humans used to resemble chimpanzees. We're a new species probably called "Gods." Perhaps our binomial name is Homo deus. We've probably integrated computers into our brains, so that our consciousnesses can now complete tasks that were impossible for brain tissue. We've eliminated aging, and if you're careful, you can live forever. We continued to advance socially, and now the species at large is more benevolent, kind, gentle, loving, forgiving, and we've long since weeded out bigotry.
So what do you do with your time, now that you can travel from universe to universe? I think I would start a project. Maybe I'd start an evolutionary cycle on a planet very different from earth just to see what kind of life was generated. I'd probably try and see if there are other ways that intelligence can be evolved. Maybe I'd spend my time as a xenobiologist, studying alien life, or trying to communicate with it. But do you know what I think would be my big project? I think that I would search around the multiverse until I found a planet very, very much like earth. As close as possible to the conditions on earth when life began there. I would try to get there before there was any life, and I would start a system of competing vesicals, as close to how it began on earth as possible. And I'd watch. I would have so much knowledge about early earth and the events that led to my evolution, that I would know what events needed to happen for a similar creature to evolve. Perhaps I would have control enough to propel a large asteroid toward the planet to eliminate the far-too-successful lizard-like creatures that most likely would never evolve intelligence. But I would want to see, with all my heart, a creature that started to resemble an ape. I guess there would be no real reason for it, other than the excitement of it, the feeling like I wasn't alone in my ape-ness, the desire to recreate my origins. It wouldn't be my only project, but good God I would want to see if I could do it. I mean, why not try it? I literally have forever to play with. I would be thrilled beyond belief if the apes started to evolve to look like my predecessors, homo sapiens.
So lets say my big science project worked. An earth-like planet with intelligent beings on it that remind me of myself in the cutest way. What would be my relationship to them? Would they know about me? Would I talk to them? How much of my time would I spend in the observation room? Would I care about their behavior?
I don't think that I would make them aware of my existence. Such a thing would have too large an impact on their societies. I wouldn't want to mess with it. If I came to their planet and showed them how advanced I was, they would certainly start to worship me, factions would start, some would want me to rule, others would conspire to kill me, they'd probably start killing each other because of me. I'd probably end up dead in the end if I lived with them. If I set up the kind of government that actually works, in order to help them, I think it would be a disaster. You can't force knowledge or freedom on anyone. Besides, it's not like I could control them. There would be too many of them. The only way to set up a proper government for them would be to enlist my Homo Deus friends as enforcers, and then too easily it would become a slavery situation, God's ruling over great apes. No, the truth is, humanity was able to become great because they didn't have a supreme authority making decisions for them. If I ever wanted these creature to progress, I would need to leave them alone. I guess it would kind of be like they were my children. I would hope the best for them, but like a parent, I would need to let them go and let them make decisions for themselves, even when the answer to their problems is so obvious to me.
Would there behavior matter to me? I think yes. Not on a small scale, but in the great scheme of things, I would know how much they would need to progress in order to get off their planet in time. If they were behind, I would get worried. If they couldn't figure out how to end bigotry and prejudice in time, they probably wouldn't be able to pull together to figure out the big puzzles. Perhaps I'd even get interested in a specific person's life every once and a while. In fact, I'm sure of it. Because I'd know that really the only thing that matters is the individual. Only observing the species as a whole would get dull. I would want to see the art, the intimacy, the beauty, the real purpose of life that you can only find when you look closer. I wouldn't read their thoughts though, even if I had the technology to decipher their brain waves. Truth be told it would be a waste of time, an invasion of privacy, and what would I do with all that information anyway? How would that help either of us? And even though I'd be aware of their major mistakes, I wouldn't send punishment to steer their actions or anything creepy like that. I have no business doing that. Because I know that humanity learned well enough through natural consequences. No need to assign extra weight to their actions. There would, of course, be no reason to send a friend there to pay the price for their mistakes. There's no great cosmic justice here. Each action they take either leads them to survival or destruction, starflight or nuclear war, and it's their choice. Besides, if I did send someone to help, it would probably just end up polarizing them, and they'd kill whoever it was.
Would I ever try to communicate with them? Maybe. Maybe when they were intelligent enough to understand I'd feel comfortable giving them little tidbits about science or government or proper behavior, the type of behavior they would need to have if they ever joined the community of intelligent universe-hoppers. Why not, right? This is my project, I can do what I want. But how would I get the information to them? For Homo Deus, we have computers built right into our brains, and we all access the Cranialinternet instantaneously in our minds. I guess sending an "email" via Cranialinternet, a message that travels directly from mind to mind would seem a lot like telepathy, but it's not. I would need to invent some way for these creatures to perhaps access this trans-universal web of information with their brains, too. Program some feature to specialize in connecting to unaltered brain tissue. It wouldn't be impossible, would it? It's designed to be accessed with at least partial brain tissue, it seems like they could get some access to it. Their connection would be deathly slow, but that's better than nothing. Yes! This is genius! I've got the figure this out. Because this way, I don't have to try and communicate with them one by one (slow, impossible, and futile), their minds will be accessing small amounts information from the Cranialinternet when they need it. This could make all the difference in speeding up their progression.
How much time would I spend paying attention to them? I wouldn't consume myself in it. I'd keep myself updated, watch their news, keep up on world events probably. But I have my own life to keep me occupied. And watching everything too closely would drain me no doubt. I'm not perfect, and I'm not all-powerful. It would suck not to be able to do much about the things I saw.
Or maybe, I would pay a huge amount of attention. I do have so much time to kill.
And finally, what would be the fruition of my project? Introducing them to the rest of us, I think. When they finally began to resemble us, when they finally were more like peers, I would definitely want to meet them. Just thinking of it, I know my heart would explode. Being equals for the first time. Finally getting to teach them everything we've learned. It would be glorious. Perhaps we'd even have advanced enough biological science that we could reassemble old consciousnesses, and I could even meet some of the people I was more intimately interested in who died along the way.
Then I thought, maybe someone did something like that for us humans. Maybe someone did set up all these squirming replicating bags of slimy human brains.
But she wouldn't make herself known. She wouldn't read our minds. She wouldn't keep tallies on sins we committed. She wouldn't send punishment. She wouldn't set up organizations for us, or encourage factions. She wouldn't know our future. She wouldn't send a God to rule us, or to save us, or to be killed by us. She wouldn't speak to us personally; it would be up to us to download inspiration from the cosmos into our minds. And maybe, if we play our cards right, we'll join the community of universe-hoppers someday. Surely there must be things more intelligent and advanced than that one species, on that one planet, in that one Milky-way galaxy, out there already.
Or maybe we're the only life that has existed, anywhere, ever.
And that's why I laid in bed for hours this morning.
