And in fact this sort of achievement will be critically necessary for the survival of any species. Earth has had numerous mass extinction events, and we're well overdue for another one. And on a long enough time frame, even the Sun itself will eventually engulf the Earth. The only way to 'win' this game is technology and expansion outward into the cosmos.
And it may well be that that elephant beaten into a parlor trick of painting from the article (seriously, don't look up how elephants are 'trained'), is brought along so that its species may too eventually continue to persist into the future, thanks to humanity.
Or we're just the cells of cultures, or religions, or corporations, or governments, or the ecosystem consisting of all biological life, or the universe.
Or each of us is the more-structurally-defined society or construction of a group of cells, or DNA, or molecules.
The point is that we typically think of humans as "conscious" and "alive", but consciousness isn't physical; whether a human is conscious or a "ghost in the shell" makes no difference to the universe. In theory, a cell or ecosystem could also be "conscious", "sensing" and "thinking", since it also makes no difference. Furthermore, although its sensations and thoughts would be much different than any human's, they aren't completely unimaginable.
For example, an ecosystem reacts to changes, experiments, and adapts via evolution (and cells react to things and display some level of sentience). Thus, evolution can be considered a form of thinking: like how we form and execute ideas to survive and prosper, an ecosystem forms and creates species to increase the coverage of life over the planet.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-cats-conqu...
One thing humans seem to be uniquely good at is picking goalposts that separate us from other species.
I would say very complex tools are one way to differentiate ourselves
The point is that no other animals can be stewards, historians, or guardians of this planet. If there is a mass extinction event, no other animal would be capable of escaping it consciously, except by random chance.
Humans are better off understanding everything else they inhabit this planet with, it’s better for them and the incidence of life and intelligence, which shouldn’t be taken for granted, IMO.
Firstly, your argument about "consciously" leaving the planet versus bacteria doing so by "random chance" presents a false dichotomy. Evolution, the very process that led to human consciousness, is built on random mutations and environmental pressures. Bacteria's ability to survive in extreme environments, including the vacuum of space, is a testament to their evolutionary success. Studies have shown that bacteria can survive for years in space, suggesting that the "panspermia" hypothesis—life spreading between planets—is plausible. In a very real sense, their evolutionary trajectory has prepared them for interstellar travel in a way ours has not. While we develop technology to escape Earth, they have evolved the biological means. At this moment, their "random" adaptations have made them more successful at leaving Earth's biosphere than our conscious efforts.
Secondly, the idea of humans as "stewards, historians, or guardians of this planet" is a noble thought, but it starkly contrasts with our actual impact. To an outside observer, humanity would not appear as a guardian but as a significant threat to the planet's ecosystems. We are currently causing environmental degradation on a massive scale, including mass extinctions, deforestation, and climate change, which threatens not only other species but our own civilization. Attributing a unique "thoughtfulness towards other animals" to humans is an anthropocentric view that ignores the fact that we are the primary drivers of the current biodiversity crisis. The very existence of a mass extinction event, driven by a single species, is unprecedented in Earth's history.
To suggest that humans are the planet's only hope for survival is to ignore the fact that we are currently its greatest adversary. It is a form of exceptionalism that prevents us from seeing our place within the ecosystem, not above it.
Intelligent life is exceptional by itself, but human life doubly so because we have the cognitive ability to do a lot more than the majority of our intelligent counterparts in the animal kingdom, which is feed-fight-fuck. This isn’t a pejorative phrase, but a concept in biology.
Bacteria can indeed survive in extreme conditions, but what’s the point? It can never understand anything about the universe or nature of reality as it lacks the cognitive tools required to do so. Why is knowing anything about the universe important? Animal curiosity has been a major driver of many evolutionary processes, including cultural evolution.
To your last point. Every era seems like the end of the world to the people living in that time, but I think that’s just a trick of the mind played on us due to our mortality. Regardless, I didn’t make up these ideas on my own—better people than me have said them in much better ways. Hope is an important psychological trick for troubled times because otherwise there’s only defeat or death. Honestly, things are not that hopeless, there’s almost always a course correction any time things get too extreme, and that’s fine.
You dismiss other intelligent life as being stuck in a "feed-fight-fuck" cycle, a concept from biology. Yet, anyone who has spent time observing animals, even chickens, sees intricate social structures, communication, and what appears to be a rich perceptual world that is simply alien to us . To claim their existence has less "point" because they don't develop cosmology is a failure of our limited world view, not a failure of theirs. It defines intelligence only as that which mirrors our own specific cognitive strengths. This is the same intellectual blind spot we see today, as we struggle to define what truly separates human thought from the emergent abilities of LLMs.
Regarding the "course correction," I agree the planet will be fine. Mass extinctions are a form of course correction. The crucial detail is that the dominant species causing the imbalance rarely survives that correction. Our hope shouldn't blind us to the fact that we are not separate from the system we are destabilizing. Perhaps the ultimate test of our unique intelligence is not our ability to look outward and understand the cosmos, but our ability to look inward, recognize our limitations, and understand our place within the only biosphere we have ever known.