The Success of Humanity

What does it mean to be successful? From the point of view of an individual life form, successfulness may be measured in acquiring or maintaining resources for one’s use, personal survival and propagation. From the point of view of a species, successfulness is a matter of species survival, adaptation to or transcendence of environmental change and increases to population and range. Being a sophisticated and social life form, humans may deem us successful in abstract ways, e.g. in advancing our own or our families’ socio-economic status, which may be equated with resource acquisition, or in propagating a philosophy or idea, i.e. a ‘brain-child,’ rather than actual, biological propagation. Establishment of off-world colonies constitutes a species survival strategy, safeguarding the continued existence of humanity against natural or man-made disasters on Earth. Any species accompanying us off-world would also benefit from such protection. This is an extension of the strategy utilised by water and wind-borne seeding plants and fungi, where external means are taken advantage of to create a potential for increased range and population of the species, and to overcome limitations to species survival imposed by localised extinction events, e.g. forest fires, flooding or volcanic eruptions, or climate change. Within the self-mobile animal kingdom, migration fulfils the same function, and social group splitting leads to the establishment of separate colonies of diverse species from ants and bees to elephants and chimpanzees. These traits all contribute towards enhanced species survival. Through our own ingenuity, humans have established the technological means to travel between planets, and create and sustain a hospitable environment supportive of human and other terrestrial life. If we apply these means to establishing extraterrestrial colonies, we will be increasing the potential for the survival of our species in the face of even a mass extinction event, such as that which occurred at the end of the Jurassic period, where it is believed the impact of a comet or large meteorite eradicated the dinosaurs. Such things happen in the universe, and it is pure folly to assert that it could never happen to us. The longer our species survives for, the more likely it is that we will witness some form of cataclysm, and we are already approaching the average age of a species to become extinct. Human ingenuity is certainly the only mechanism by which we might prolong the normal lifespan of our species, just as human ingenuity in the field of medical science is the mechanism by which we prolong our individual lifespan against disease.