Clock Makes a Fool of History

[ragecutter]

Have you ever wondered how long evidence of our current civilization and existence will last? Check this, the Great Pyramid was built 4,500 years ago, and still stands today. Great Roman structures like the Colosseum are still around. Also, consider that the written word is only just over 5,000 years old dating to the cuneiform system of the Sumerian civilization in the near-East. We know these things because they were carved on stone. Our modern writing systems are printed on paper, or transmitted through cables, or through the air as ghostly invisible electromagnetic waves. Will our cultural achievements that are stored on film, tape, paper or hard drives stand the test of time? Will our skyscrapers still be around in 4,000 years? These questions are impossible to answer now, but there will come a time when our existence is completely forgotten and washed away by the sands of time.

I made this because at the moment I'm acutely aware of the arrow of time. How do you feel about the future?

[tafkaga]

In recent years, I've endeavored to be more mindful of the present, to check in with myself regularly to make sure I'm living in the present moment, not in nostalgia for times that will never come again or in hopes and fears for the future. It's because I spent too much time thinking about how things didn't work out the way I wanted them to, and being bitter about where I was because it wasn't where I thought I'd be. When you get a little ways down the road, you tend to look back at times you didn't appreciate and say "those were pretty good times. I wish I knew that when I was living them." Yes, one day it will be as if we never existed at all, so I think the only way to live well is to learn to exist in the moment.

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

There's an interesting History Channel series called Life After People which would be somewhat applicable here. Were humans to become extinct, or the population decline significantly enough to no longer sustain the upkeep of everything that makes our way of life possible, almost every physical piece of evidence that our civilisation ever existed would crumble into nothing and be reclaimed by nature within a few thousand years, except for a lot of the stuff that has already been around for thousands of years already.

I hope for a better future, but I'm acutely aware that most great civilisations have a tendency to self-destruct, and human civilisation is now at a stage of technological advancement that such a self-destruction could also bring about a total extinction.

[Limity (BLM)]

If you want to get particularly existentialist, we can discuss how time doesn't actually exist!

All clocks measure is the swing of a pendulum, the vibration of a quartz crystal, or the decay of a radioactive isotope. An eminently useful and perhaps vital tool is time, but it's a measurement unto itself. The best definition I've heard is that it keeps track of ourselves in relation to change.

[tafkaga]

Jan 31, 2024 18:06:29 GMT -5 Mighty Attack Tribble said:

There's an interesting History Channel series called Life After People which would be somewhat applicable here. Were humans to become extinct, or the population decline significantly enough to no longer sustain the upkeep of everything that makes our way of life possible, almost every physical piece of evidence that our civilisation ever existed would crumble into nothing and be reclaimed by nature within a few thousand years, except for a lot of the stuff that has already been around for thousands of years already.

I hope for a better future, but I'm acutely aware that most great civilisations have a tendency to self-destruct, and human civilisation is now at a stage of technological advancement that such a self-destruction could also bring about a total extinction.

This reminds me of something that always bugs me in movies, shows, video games where they depict a world 50-100+ years after a nuclear holocaust, and you see desolate cities, but aside from garbage and debris being everywhere, they don't look that different.  In reality, nature is always trying to reclaim those areas, and if even a year or two went by there would be trees and vines all over everything.  

[Futureraven: Beelzebruv]

Feb 1, 2024 10:20:53 GMT -5 tafkaga said:

Jan 31, 2024 18:06:29 GMT -5 Mighty Attack Tribble said:

There's an interesting History Channel series called Life After People which would be somewhat applicable here. Were humans to become extinct, or the population decline significantly enough to no longer sustain the upkeep of everything that makes our way of life possible, almost every physical piece of evidence that our civilisation ever existed would crumble into nothing and be reclaimed by nature within a few thousand years, except for a lot of the stuff that has already been around for thousands of years already.

I hope for a better future, but I'm acutely aware that most great civilisations have a tendency to self-destruct, and human civilisation is now at a stage of technological advancement that such a self-destruction could also bring about a total extinction.

This reminds me of something that always bugs me in movies, shows, video games where they depict a world 50-100+ years after a nuclear holocaust, and you see desolate cities, but aside from garbage and debris being everywhere, they don't look that different.  In reality, nature is always trying to reclaim those areas, and if even a year or two went by there would be trees and vines all over everything.  

Hell, even during the big lockdown when things were just slowed down a lot, there was evidence of nature changing things up, animals entering new areas, weather being affected.

['Foretold' Joker]

Yeah I remember watching a similar show, one thing that may remain standing for a very long time is the Hoover Dam and also the Mt Rushmoore Presidents.

[J. Hova]

Life after People was one of the last good History Channel shows they produced before they went full alternative history.

I did enjoy seeing pictures during lockdown of nature slowly creeping back in.

It is always interesting when some new ruins or artifacts are found somewhere that sort of screws up accepted timelines of history.

Answers with Joe on YT went through a really fun thought exercise a year or two ago basically asking if an advanced civilization existed in the past, would we really know? www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtJ49gXWwA0&pp=ygUmYW5zd2VycyB3aXRoIGpvZSBhZHZhbmNlZCBjaXZpbGl6YXRpb24%3D

["Cane Dewey" Johnson]

It's all Ozymandias, baby.

Serious version.



Happy version.

[Fade is a CodyCryBaby]

Me throughout this entire thread

[Bones58]

Sometimes I actually feel better realising in the grand scale of things how insignificant we really are if that makes senses. We live, work, love and die like billions before us.

[cosmo]

Time is an illusion. The only time is party time.

[Limity (BLM)]

Feb 3, 2024 17:22:32 GMT -5 Bones58 said:

Sometimes I actually feel better realising in the grand scale of things how insignificant we really are if that makes senses. We live, work, love and die like billions before us.

We are merely the latest inheritors of all that has come before us.

[yokohamacpfc]

Jan 31, 2024 18:06:29 GMT -5 Mighty Attack Tribble said:

There's an interesting History Channel series called Life After People which would be somewhat applicable here. Were humans to become extinct, or the population decline significantly enough to no longer sustain the upkeep of everything that makes our way of life possible, almost every physical piece of evidence that our civilisation ever existed would crumble into nothing and be reclaimed by nature within a few thousand years, except for a lot of the stuff that has already been around for thousands of years already.

I hope for a better future, but I'm acutely aware that most great civilisations have a tendency to self-destruct, and human civilisation is now at a stage of technological advancement that such a self-destruction could also bring about a total extinction.

The nuclear waste stored underground glowing away isn't going anywhere even if we do.

The international radiation hazard symbol (black trefoil on yellow background) and the one for radioactive danger (same but in red and black with a skull and crossbones) were designed on the assumption that the waste would one day be discovered by humans from the far future where all written languages and records of them no longer exist so they got linguists or psychologists or whoever you go to for this niche job to design something that a human brain with no modern language would identify as danger.

[Non Banjoble Tokens]