The human project

Humanity will likely not become immortal in my lifetime. I will probably die, and probably so will everyone else alive today. There is a completely new set of humans on earth every 150 years. It's hard to cope with mortality.

When I was younger, I did that by telling myself I'd be rich and powerful and to use those things to make the world better. I used to think that I wanted to make the world better out of some sense of altruism, that if I made a bunch of people's lives better my own death would somehow be less scary; I used to think that I wanted to be great so that I would be remembered — a desire for post-mortem status, as if being remembered would make facing Azrael easier. If I thought about it too long, I'd realize that it was unsatisfying.

Now I know better. I hope for something else. Human civilization is relatively young — in the something like 200 thousand years of our existence, about 117 billion humans have lived, of whom about 94% of whom are dead. Artists, conquerors, scientists, laborers, shamans, revolutionaries, all brief sparks returned to the earth.

But even in our short life as a species, as the aeons have turned we have become more free. We live longer, happier lives; we have an ever-deeper, richer cultural repertoire, today with access to some of the greatest works of centuries past and practically instant (internet) access to the greatest creators of knowledge and culture alive today. We make progress.

Look through the lens of our species. Making humanity better — deepening its culture, lengthening and improving human lives, making people more free — is our project. In becoming a part of that project, you transcend yourself. You, as a part of the superorganism, become near-immortal.

It does not matter if you are remembered. If humanity lives on, if humanity progresses, so do you; we are one. And when our children outgrow this small planet and colonize the stars, we may look upon them and smile.

Until that day, the human project is ours to sustain — ours to shape and extend and make beautiful. If my works make our culture even one fraction deeper, make our species one fraction healthier, our lives even one fraction more joyous, mine will have been a life well lived.