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Despite what the supernatural religions say, humanity is not a static structure and neither is the universe.  And despite what Plato did to science by splitting humanity from the heavens(to influence christian thinking and general ignorance views on science for thousands of years), everything in the universe is connected in space and time to everything else.  So, when we evolve through time, we are influenced from our past.  Humanity has evolved from ignorance; it's first concepts were that of rough reality of violence to get what they want/needed.

Evolution is learning; evolution is a kind of generalization, and concepts which are more dominant in humans than any other species are generalizations.  Humanity is the conceptual animal, but like in human language's modifyer words in a sentence, they can be to much or to little.  Humanity unlike most other animals can 'act' like any other animals which was a source of endless fascination for humans for perhaps millions of years as they dressed themselves up as bears and coyotes and lions and so forth.  They can also act like physical processes allowing them to become one with the universe if they learn how to act like it. But, they often either due to little time to really think things through or for socio-political reasons over or under act things out.  And, considering that humans evolved from a non-scientific attitude, they have evolved from a history of violence and attitudes.  As Eric Drexler himself points out in his "Engines of Creation", "use a hammer enough, and everything looks like a hammer."

As Alvin Toffler points out in his "PowerShift", there is three main sources of power in human affairs - violence, money, and knowledge. We started with violence, then industrialism came, and we switched, or powershifted, to money as the predominant source of power. Humanity is the scientifically dependent species, but our knowledge is forever incomplete; nature will run us over eventually if don't keep exploring and shoring up our knowledge.  Will we make the transition to knowledge in the final powershift?  Will we brake from our violence traditions that we evolved from?

There are many social forces to preserve old views.  Whenever we evolve somemore, we seem to have to kind of compromise the break from the past by bullshitting about the past. Supernatural religions today use their vagueness mongering to argue that god wants us to learn science, or that 'he' invented science.  The fact is that as we've tried to spread science and evolve away from our anti-science beginnings, we've been corrupted by such previous thinking; todays scientists are born from supernatural religious families and they just bend their religion and science together. But, they're ideas are wrong, and they try to shape future human thought(much as Plato did) to this bullshit thinking.  Thomas Kuhn wrote about his views on scientific progress in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."  Although he thought he was writing about how science actually works, what he was really writing about and proving is that scientist don't listen to logic and facts when doing science, but social custom, at least most of the time.  They only listen to the logic when the social custom has tilted that way.  Witness 'The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology."

While they do have one new logical idea, they have much colored views about why and what is right or wrong, but not based on logic or facts; in fact, they ignore all of history, and/or bend it to their liking; they only read what supports their viewpoints.  They're real viewpoints about what is right or wrong is not based on logic or facts, but on socially supported dogma of the past.  They have eaten the dogma of the past which their cultures evolved from, and now they are going to draw up what's right and wrong based on that fallacious viewpoint.  Humanities future hangs in the balance. Humanity must break from the social pressures to not think clearly if it is to survive. As Tesla sings in their 'games people play", they are noting that people play social games more than try to think things logically and take it as the logic comes. Crn will not listen to the fact that if we are to break from the irrationality mongering of the past, then we must allow those humans that want to move on to move on.

Enrico Fermi asked his famous question of "where are they?  If the history of the earth is used as a base for when other technologically dependent species could become space explorers, and the age of the universe is even nine billion years old(back in the 1900's), then we should see much space exploring technological species roaming around.  So, "where are they?"  I'd suggest they failed to break away from the irrationality fear mongering that they evolved from. People form their 'fear groups' because they are not solid enough to think things logically.  Because they are not really strong enough and have enough strength to maintain integrity, they form their social fear groups to hide in vaguenesses as Tesla points out. If a phenomenon seeps into the arts, it must be their in one form or another. The fear groups then raise their children on these fears, this is where assholes come from.  And, they dictate whether we go to space or not; whether we learn to think clearly or not.  Right now, Crn is planning on locking up humanity in a 'Logan's Run' for reasons that at first appear nice and kind. 'Logan's Run' is a 1970's cheap production based on the idea of confining all of humanity in computer controlled and fully automated ecologically closed cities where the generations pass thinking that everything inside their closed enclosure is all their is to the world much as humanity thought the earth was all their was for thousands of years.  But, the underlying truth is that they do not need to do this.  They even are speculating on a "Logan's Run" set date for suicide to keep the population down.  When humanity is appeased in this "Logan's Run", they will all give up and eat and have sex till that gets boring.  Nevermind that scientific exploration is the real essence of humanity.  We could have freed humanity and increased the majority of humanity to that realization, but no, we have to die drugged up.  And so does most other technological species I'd suspect.

This is the truth of Fermi's question and Humanities probably future