The sinking ship… is the best metaphor for most argument that goes on.

I heard on the radio while I was on my way to work, two hosts making popular argument about the creation of man. I don’t even care to get into what I actually think about the creation of life on earth and how man came about, what I really wonder is why this argument itself is so popular compared with what this information would do for us. If we came from aliens, a god, or just an explosion of matter, or even if reality is an illusion and we aren’t really here… the truth is we are here and how ever we got here, what are we going to do about it?

All the belief that we came from something special or just evolved into something special and we are separate from all the other life on this planet leads us to somehow think we can do whatever we want. We as a population keep increasing our numbers, keep making more cars, mining the resources of the planet, and if we do come from a god or aliens or this reality is just an illusion, than all of these problems we have are okay and they don’t really matter. If god put us here, then god is going to take us away before the earth is irreversibly devastated for the continuance of human existence. If aliens put us here, then we might be able to develop technology to overpower the negative effects of what we are currently doing and the harm we are causing doesn’t really matter, all the diversity we are killing off is part of the natural way of evolution. Of course if this reality is just an illusion than we needn’t worry about anything at all. But in all of these cases, it doesn’t explain why we must continue to make cars, to grow our population size, and to diminish the biodiversity around us.

So here we are on our sinking ship. As we sink we argue about what might have built the ship. So many of us don’t know the ship is sinking and many recognize the ship is sinking but would never think about getting to safety in the lifeboats. I’d be up for at least trying to fix the boat, but most people just want to argue about equality on the boat or what the captain of the boat is doing with money (that will never actually help us fix the sinking ship).