I used to spend most of the days in my childhood
wondering about how the world might end one day and the myriad possibilities
kept me awake on many nights. Yes, it was a weird and rather dark way to spend
a chunk of one’s innocent years but let’s not get into that now.
Today I am not
exactly dissecting the end of the world, rather I am pondering the extinction
of our species and what might be the trigger to start it.
A cosmic calamity of great magnitude? Possible.
Ruthless infighting and an ultimate battle for
superiority? Very much possible. But say we learn to live in peace and harmony and
choose to treat each other as equals. (Present circumstances make my very
normal expectation sound like a joke.)
How would our species then go extinct? Let us digress and take a look at the other species; less intelligent and thus less important to us. We can observe that most species nurture their children with utmost care and ensure that their offspring live on even at the cost of their own lives. This is pretty obvious because filial love is a very primal instinct wired into all living beings. The law of the nature in this regard is very simple.
You shall care for your child and help in preserving your species.
But we are human beings. We need more than a clear cut instruction. So evolution thinks, what is the biggest obsession of the mankind??? From Ravana to Voldemort to you and me, all human beings seem to crave immortality. So evolution decides to fool us into thinking that our children are our genetic extensions, through whom we can hope to get a shot at immortality. When we human beings have a child and feel that unconditional outpouring of love flooding our hearts, it is just evolution doing its magic.
But…human beings are evolving…perhaps faster than the evolutionary laws. This idea of loving someone unconditionally without expecting anything in return has become extremely obsolete. And children are increasingly being looked at as a hindrance to freedom. The elitist people are increasingly opting to not have children. It is just a matter of time before the less intelligent part of the population realizes that having kids tantamount to premature aging and such voluntary steps of self preservation, when adopted by everyone can only lead to one thing…extinction.
