How will we be remembered?

I was forced to watch “A.I.” recently. After the film ended, there were a lot of thoughts racing through my head involving mankind. Besides the usual who are we and why are we here questions, I wondered how we (human beings) will be remembered. It’s obvious all the ice will melt and the world will be thrown into upheavel. If a civil society emerges from the inevitable cluster-fuck, what will we leave behind once this planet no longer sustains us?

Let’s say humans and all other life on this rock died out tomorrow and everything sat around collecting dust for another thousand years. Then, intelligent beings from other places in this universe happen upon the shit left over and start digging for more, in an effort to find out as much about what we were, much like humans today digging up dinosaur remnants. Would you be proud of what they found? Do you think they would get a distorted view because some of our worst habits and their by-products would be all that remained?

I’ve seen “Children of Men” and “Soylent Green.” Even the “Mad Max” movies or “Waterworld” are completely plausible, future scenarios. I have read George Orwell’s “1984.” Are those the types of places you would like your offspring to live in? What makes you think that most warped, human minds won’t be there to push the envelope even more so then what occurs today?

I still wonder why humans do what they do to each other. They teach history in school and we still have not learned from past mistakes that are well documented. Humans leave stains wherever they go with little regard to anything else but themselves. I really question whether or not we have evolved. We keep each other alive with technology and purposely disrupt the cycle of natural forces. We pile our garbage where we please and fill the air we breath with harmful chemicals well aware of the adverse effects of both practices. We comfort ourselves with meaningless religion so we can live our lives lying to ourselves about a better place once we leave this reality. We talk about how far we have come as living beings since Neanderthals roamed the earth. We speak of our triumph over all of the other beasts, yet we are running out of food and resources we have become so dependent on so we can live in convenience.

I am disgusted at myself because I am just as much a part of it as your are. It brings me guilt and grief to know humans will deny other humans of their culture. Standing and staring or letting out some empathatic statement or sigh is not enough. You only make yourself feel better, but that’s all the matters to most folks, anyway.