(Foot)Notes on a Pre-Apocalypse

Complexity and Interdependence 

Wow! You found your way here! Just ponder all it took for this moment to happen. For you to be here in this moment clicking onto this website. This is a moment 13.8 billion years in the making — at least — just like every other moment in your life, give or take a few years. 

 

But let’s think about all that had to happen to make this moment possible. 

 

First, there had to be a tiny explosion that released an unimaginable amount of energy, so powerful that what we call the universe is still expanding from that initial blast. All of the particles released and forces that resulted needed to organize into atoms of elements and later into stars that created even more elements.

 

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All of the matter created by the blast and the stars had to organize into celestial bodies like asteroids, gas clouds, planets, etc. And then, those had to organize into solar systems, galaxies, galaxy clusters. 

 

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Then the earth had to form, to cool and solidify. Elements had to organize themselves into what we call living cells. Those cells had to adapt and evolve for multicellular life to form. Millions of years of evolution and extinctions of different species had to happen along with constantly changing physical conditions on earth for the human species to emerge. 

 

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Once humans emerged, it took another 100,000 to 200,000 years of small groups of hunter-gatherers to roam the earth, acquire knowledge of how the physical processes around them worked to begin to understand how to manipulate the environment to cultivate plants and later animals as a reliable food source. Thus, agriculture and what we call civilization were born. 

 

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Over the next 10,000 years, we had to develop cultures that explained the natural processes around us, that enabled us to communicate, to keep records, to build frameworks for understanding our world and ourselves. 

 

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Human culture grew to include new ways of surviving, building, creating, and even interacting with the world. Our societies had to become more complex to the point where we started harnessing energy to produce more and sustain larger populations, and to develop new technologies. 

 

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Over decades, researchers developed different forms of computers, and continued to make them smaller, more powerful, and more connected until the internet was born. 

 

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Then all of the people in your lineage had to live their lives, reproduce and ensure the survival of the next generation over and over until your parents gave birth to you. 

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