The human species is doomed

The human species is doomed

One popular hypothetical question often discussed is, "How will the world end?"  Naturally, there are several theories:  Humanly created disasters such as climate change or nuclear war, or natural disasters such as the sun burning out or an asteroid hitting the earth.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was inclined towards the belief that the end would come from an uncontrollable, incurable, airborne virus most likely created in, and escaping from, a laboratory. 

The reality is that humans do not have to be directly affected.  Any virus that destroys the soil, plants, water supplies, trees, and/or breaks the food chain will be lethal.

A curable virus

Today I am more convinced human beings are most likely doomed to destruction from a controllable, curable virus.

This epiphany came about due to the convergence, or perhaps more accurately the collision, between COVID-19 and the "cult of Trump."

Cult leaders expect their devotees to sacrifice their time, money, relationships, thoughts, and very lives in service to their "masters."

And, much like the Chico Marx quip in the classic movie Duck Soup, "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes [or ears]?" cult leaders are especially adept at convincing their toadies to accept their master's self-serving version of "reality" and "truth."

But, perhaps worst of all, the sacrifices many, if not most, cult leaders demand from their followers they don't demand of themselves, often living lives of opulence and licentiousness at their sycophants' expense, and more than willing to exploit and sacrifice these sycophants to achieve these ends.

After all, why would anyone with even a modicum of common sense give their devotion to someone who tells them that taking preventative measures against a pandemic is somehow a "personal" affront to him; demand that people remove masks; conduct massive rallies where preventative measures are not only ignored, but even mocked, yet is privately caught on tape detailing how deadly COVID-19 can be and how "easily transmissible"; how, when someone sneezed in his presence, says, "The entire room bailed out . . . .  Including me by the way"; or how, when asked if he's worried about catching COVID-19 at one of his aforementioned rallies, flippantly replies, "I'm on a stage that's very far away, and so, I'm not at all concerned."

Common sense

Unfortunately, as Voltaire said, "Common sense is not so common."

Which means that America is now being treated to the puerile, and sometimes violent, antics of  "anti-maskers" and "COVID-19" deniers who have deluded themselves into believing they are making some "noble statement" about individual "freedom," when, in reality, they are serving as nothing more than subservient drones slavishly genuflecting, and risking their lives and the lives of others, in the mire of the "cult of Trump."

In my Pravda.Report article, Drink the Kool Aid for Trump and Fox News (May 19, 2020), I discussed the controversial physicist William Shockley, who argued that the primary problem with the human species is that stupid people reproduce at greater rates than intelligent people.

While I didn't necessarily embrace Shockley's premise regarding the quantity of human stupidity, I do acknowledge that, when the truth be told, most of the world's progress, in areas like academics, technology, and medicine, amongst others, has normally been conceived, and ultimately accomplished, by a relatively small group of people, while the vast majority of the human race simply benefits from these achievements.

Then I realized that the inverse must also be true:  If it only takes a handful of intelligent people to advance the human race, it will only take a handful of stupid people to destroy it.

Therefore, if a few "anti-maskers" and "COVID-19 deniers" can spread a potentially fatal disease to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people, what chance does humanity have if the lethality of a future pandemic is magnified?  It literally would take just a few people, obsequiously following some delusional demigod's self-serving agenda, to wipe out most, if not all, of the human race.

If anything positive can be said about today's pandemic, it is that it offers a preview into this future.  Which tragically means that the destruction of life on earth will most likely not occur from some uncontrollable catastrophe, but from something that, but for human stupidity, would have been perfectly preventable.

And I'm equally certain that, whenever some far wiser beings rise from the ashes and begin to document the history of the human race, they will memorialize humanity's extinction with a simple epitaph:

"Never was there a species more capable of preventing their own destruction, nor more deserving of it."

David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor of Pravda.Report

Photo: By The White House from Washington, DC - White House Press Briefing, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88210068