This is an Opinion Piece
Why is it intelligent life has this tendency to kill others of our own species? We have been doing it for thousands, perhaps millions of years.
It seems the more intelligent our species becomes, the greater our need to kill each other.
There are many reasons why we kill one another. I am not talking about random murders of a few people by some deranged person. I am talking about the murder of millions. Politics, religion, and technology are perhaps the big three.
Fear, jealousy, power and greed may also play into it.
One race of humans do not like another race of humans, perhaps because they see that race as inferior to themselves. Perhaps they covet what the other race has, whether it is land and resources or knowledge they want to obtain or perhaps it is just a hate of them.
We know that when a technologically advanced civilization come into contact with a less advanced civilization it never bodes well for the latter. When the US was being colonized by the Europeans in the 1700 - 1800 hundreds, millions of native people where killed. There was even bounties placed on them and they were murdered for money. They did not even consider them human beings. We decimated their culture with guns and cannons and swords. And what our technology did not kill our diseases did. We killed off their food supplies for sport. As many as 60 million buffalo where hunted to the brink of extinction.
The same thing happened in South America with the Incas when the Spanish arrived.
I could go on and on, however, I am sure your grasp of history is as good as mine.
I believe that with all of our technology we are reaching a tipping point where all things may turn against us as far as our continued existence on this planet. I also believe that just because we can do something does not necessarily mean we should do that thing. Take AI as an example. AI could be a boon and a blessing to humans, but like most things it is a two edged sword. Poorly implemented AI could easily destroy our species.
Outside Influences.
What about other intelligent species that exist in our galaxy? Although this is a stretch for our imaginations, it may represent a huge threat to our own existence. Any extra - terrestrial species that is slightly more advanced than us and able to travel between the stars may have an agenda that is not compatible with ours. Imagine our species after we have interstellar capabilities. Would we be a benign species, like in Star Trek, that only want to help other species we come across? I somehow doubt it. The book by Phillip K. Dick and movie Starship Troopers where we are at war with a society of bug like creatures we do not understand and cannot comprehend is a good example.
There may also be species out there that may feel threatened by other species that have reached a certain technological level and the easiest way to handle the threat would be to totally annihilate them for their own perceived perpetuation. A first strike option, you could say. And it would not take some kind of super technologically advanced weapon to do this. All that would be needed to destroy our entire planet is a 500lb ball of iron travelling near the speed of light to hit the earth and our entire planet and all life on it would be destroyed. And we would not even see it coming!
My feeling is, I hope we do not come into contact with a young highly advanced civilization but rather one that is much, much older than ours. They will have survived destroying themselves and therefore may have learned what it takes to exist. A knowledge that we could certainly use.
In Conclusion
Nothing is guaranteed. Humans have been on the brink of extinction many times in our history. Mostly because of natural disasters. 70,000 years ago we had a mass extinction event that left between 10,000 - 13,000 humans on the entire planet. We got lucky and managed to rebuild our population.
During the last century we have had many near misses as asteroids have whizzed past our planet and we only knew about them as they passed.
Our technology is increasing at an exponential rate. I just hope we can take a step back and think about what our actions could do over the long term. I have my doubts, however. Humans, for the most part, are extremely short sighted and logic does not always prevail.
Let's keep our fingers crossed!
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