3.9 billion years ago
So, while human life on planet earth continues to upset me (e.g. Me2.0 —MeTooPointOh— aka absolute stone-cold-Zeros getting nominated for the highest levels of the US government despite allegations of rape, sex with underaged females, and pillage etc. Forget accountability, we have entered Post-shame governance! Huzzah!), the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover has completed its 5th mission: it climbed to the edge of a huge crater formed by a meteor that hit 3.9 billion years ago. As mars and earth were thought to have the same conditions back then (magnetic shields, water etc) it can help us possibly understand what our world was like before all Earth-life changed our biosphere to what we know today. We are at the precipice of knowing (maybe!) what happened in v. ThreePointNine! More here: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-perseverance-rover-reaches-top-of-jezero-crater-rim/ or see the panorama of its assent! Moral of this bog-post: Dominating is for losers with tiny selfish solipsistic goals. When we work together, we can do so many neat things! (Of course, visiting and learning about mars could lead us to dominating it too - so be sure to read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy over winter break. Red Mars is all about the ethics of colonization… ).
“I think you value consciousness too high and rock too little. We are not lords of the universe. We’re only one small part of it. We may be its consciousness, but being the consciousness of the universe does not mean turning it all into a mirror image of us. It means rather fitting into it as it is and worshiping it with our attention.”
