humans should be giving as much of our intellect as possible to make sure we do not suffer with mass extinction. but what do we do? we like to believe we are intelligent, but are we? if we were we would of figured out a way in which everyone on the planet has enough resources and is reasonably content with their lot in life. however we have not even come close to achieving this. what are we good at then? we are very good at exploiting. only a sniff of opportunity is needed for someone to exploit another. we are also very good at violence of course. we will even enslave our own kind. the slave trade is bigger now than it has ever been apparently. excellent at demanding our rights. great at reducing the numbers of other animals. we are very reliable at asking and thanking make-believe beings, even straight after disasters.[where was this god?] what does our future hold? does it get worse from here on in?
Not all of us, but collectively, yes of course. Our collective intelligence is such that we can mass produce devices that contain so much scientific insight about how the world works, the average person would be unable to comprehend all of it if they devoted their entire life to studying it. We have send robots, possibly even men, to the moon! Not because we are not smart. Because we do not care enough. It's not a priority. It gets better as our ability to understand how the universe works improves even further. That is incidentally the only way by which the issues you care about can be addressed.
We are alone in the dark and fearful because of it. Yet nobody seems to want to admit it to each other, or even to themselves. Many of our issues, if not all, come from our sense of being separated. Cut off. Our own person. The separate self. We're moving through space without a clue where we came from or where we're going. Who knows what the future holds. Perhaps a comet or meteor impact will make it all moot.
I'll tell what we are not supposed to be. We're not supposed to thibk like senator Jim Inhofe claiming climate change isn't influenced by man because, hey, it is even mentioned in the bible. We are also not meant to elect people like Jim Inhofe and we aren't supposed to appoint him chairperson of the senate environment committee
Compared to other life on Earth humans are awesome. But if you compare what humans collectively know against what we don't, we are complete idiots. Also, human history is relatively young, so we are like a young kid learning from their mistakes, it will get better.
Humans have the intellectual capacity to build a great society, but we tend to organize ourselves into groups and horde resources. It makes sense if you think of the way we evolved. We didn't have the internet during our evolution, so we couldn't know who was good and who was bad. We didn't understand other people's cultures and so on. It was easier to think everyone else was the enemy and just take their stuff. We have expanded the tribal situation into a nationalistic one, but it's still basically the same. Plus there's plenty of social problems on the tribal, family level as well. People cheat strangers to benefit themselves, their families and friends.
We are intelligent but also tribal, and we are also still very much animals of instinct. I find most human behavior predictable even if not understandable. There are a bunch of sayings about how humans eventually get around to doing the right thing, and that is true. We will "get around" to working on the climate. Many will suffer and die in the meantime, of course. We will get around to lowering poverty levels as well. But here's the rub - Japan is peaceful (now), highly educated, prosperous and completely fucked. The population is in decline, men are dating dolls and women are having solo weddings.
To work together it requires leadership and organization, and then it depends on the best interests of the leader(s) as to what direction things are taken. Usually the motivation is self interest. It's not intelligence that is the key factor, although intelligence is required to build elaborate social structures.
You are asking too much from evolved, biological organisms. Why should I be altruistic if my genetic line will benefit more from my efforts? Seems like a genetic dead end. And thus a failure.
Humans are incredibly smart, can communicate to one another, and have hands that enable us to build. And humans are very cooperative. Which is why we are at the top of the food chain even though individually we are probably P4P the weakest animal on the planet.
