The Jar of Civilization: Why Our Greatest Threat Is Breaking the Only Home We Have

The Insect Jar

One month ago, I was watching a Junji Ito manga explanation video and there was one concept that one character used to do. I don’t remember the exact story, but the idea was: he used to collect different kinds of insects in one jar and watch them fight there until only one survived. He used to find it very interesting.

Now imagine that jar was placed in a vacuum, hit by deadly rays, with some random shards of stones that could hit the jar and break it. So even though that last insect may survive the conflict inside, it could not survive once the jar broke.

The Same Situation for Our Civilization

Same situation I am thinking for our civilization, except we are not insects that only know fighting for survival. We conquered this planet using our brain. Maybe our ancestors may have wiped out entire species, but that was for our survival when they needed to protect themselves from those man-eater predators. So they chose survival over empathy. They also wiped out other human species for the same reason. We even murder our own population based on religion, ideology, color, race, etc.

Apart from all the good and bad things our species did, they are the reason we are here. So no matter what they did, they protected their next generations. And I think this is also our responsibility to protect our upcoming generations.

The Obvious Threats (That Probably Won’t End Us)

The most obvious scenario that comes to mind about our civilization’s threat is nuclear war, but all the conflicts that are happening in the world indicate that no one is that kind of maniac to do something this stupid that could endanger our entire species.

Other concepts are alien invasion, asteroid impact, natural disasters, global warming, and maybe to some extent pandemics. But we already survived that. If we talk about global warming, it could be a threat, but the day we really want to fix this, I believe we will fix this also within decades. The same goes with natural disasters — it will cause casualties but somehow it will not become an existential crisis for sure.

For asteroid impact, sure it’s threatening and there are some asteroids that can destroy our entire Earth environment, but the last one that actually did this was millions of years ago. Right now our scientists are keeping an eye on all those asteroids and they will definitely be able to do something if we face this kind of issue.

If we think of alien invasion, yeah this will be a real sci-fi threat. But if you compare the distances that stars have from each other, and also nothing is stationary — everything moves, plus the horrors that are present and maybe waiting to be explored — so if somehow any alien species is able to visit us, they will be far beyond our capabilities and it will definitely be like the movies or shows. But I think this is just some sci-fi imagination about them.

What Really Scares Me

What scares me most is that idea I shared in the beginning — being inside a jar.

We have only this planet that supports us, keeping us alive. There is no other planet in our solar system that can do the same. Our Sun is showering neutrons/radiation, so no way we can build some ships and just live in space. Also our gravity helps us stay in this form — any other place where gravity is different, we will become another species, entirely different than this.

Going to Mars is a horrible idea for now, and those first people who go there — it’s very bad for them. We can’t go to the Moon at this time and live there.

This Is Our Only Home

This is our home from where we can take our step and conquer the solar system, maybe other solar systems also, but we have a lot to learn now and we must try not to lose what we have preserved till now.

For the first time we have data of our history, we have technology like never before, we can do so much more than we could in the past, we are stable now (mostly), the world is connected as one. If something bad happens, then we will be the ones who lose the most.

Other species will only lose population and maybe go extinct, but if they survive they can do the same thing they are doing currently. But not us — we lose all the things I mentioned. And it’s not about losing, it’s about preserving what our greatest minds have given to us and will give us in the future.

We have to protect all this we have here. It’s our responsibility.

Protect the jar. It’s the only one we’ve got.