Venting do you think this place has any lasting good qualities at all

[Darkover]

i mean within 300 years everything we've built all the house all the roads all the skyscrapers, hospitals, schools everything we've ever built will breakdown and cease to exist altogether, do you think this place as any lasting goodness to it or is it all doom and gloom

 

[chester]

Depends on the time frame. Even if a lot of what we have today today will disappear, we can still think of it as a necessary stepping stone to what there will be in the future. Modern science and engineering draws from hundreds of years of discoveries and experience. This way the legacy of previous generations lives on, even though the world looks nothing like hundreds of years ago. If we widen the time frame though, then nothing will eventually matter. All species go extinct sooner or later, humanity will be no different.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

No

 

[Forever Sleep]

Sure. I expect certain musicians will be admired forever. Same goes for all disciplines. We still admire the pyramids. They were built 4,500 years ago. Certain ground breaking things will be preserved no doubt.

Plus- knowledge is passed down and built upon. Without certain theories, discoveries, inventions- future things wouldn't be possible. It's not like every generation has to start from scratch. Imagine where we'd be if nothing was remembered from a few hundred years back. That's why we've developed means of recording it I guess. That's why we've become so developed.

Ultimately though, if we go extinct, maybe it won't matter at all. But then, maybe some alien species or AI will create a museum- the rise and fall of humankind. Lol. Maybe they'll learn from our mistakes. Who can say what will happen in the future?

I don't think it necessarily nullifies people putting effort in now though. Imagine if no one had bothered to learn how to synthesize pain killers. Do you particularly care what people will be doing in hundreds of years time if you are in agony now? Imagine how much worse life would be if no one bothered to do anything. You'd have to try and survive entirely off your own back. No distraction. No internet, no games, films, music, books. No housing, no infrastructure. No healthcare. No benefits because- why bother? Why does any of it matter? I expect it would start to matter if we didn't have those things. I don't see life being any easier if we were forced to live off grid because we'd all forgotten how to do the things we knew how to do a few hundred years back. So- yeah- I think things we learn and know now will still be recalled in a few hundred years (if humans still exist) and, I think it will matter.