Sometimes, as is true in all facets of life, coffee isn't as good as it could be. But, when the Folgers drip swill is all that is available to you, you drink. (Or you don't, but at least the choice is there for you to make.)

An interesting post was made on Reddit today, where the poster lamented that humanity, when it all is said and done, will fail. We're going to die out, and that will be that. All we'll have to show for our existence is some scars on the planet we took for granted, and maybe, if our remains our discovered in short order, some monoliths and craft-work that, to the new found discoverers will speak of our antiquated forms or art and technology. We will be defined by whatever happens to remain, not by what we may regard as our highest attachments.

What it, in 26,000,000 years, all that remains of our species is the still lingering effects if the Exxon-Valdez wreckage and spill? Extrapolation could lead our discoverers to the conclusion that we were a careless people, one bent on greed and profit, and one who remained stagnant on our quest for higher knowledge. "Why," they might ask, "would this group of mammals put such a great amount of time and money into harvesting and burning the pressurized remains of carbon life forms long dead?" Surely they wouldn't have gone so far in determining the cause and intended purpose of such a scene, only to stop there extrapolation then. Surely they would have also noticed that despite the still ruined coastline and still un-mended debris we, as human, took on a herculean task of attempting to right our wrong. Surely they would have noticed the toothbrush marks on the rocks as we vainly attempted to scrub away our great misdeed. Potentially, although less likely, a breed of super-ducks emerged from the quagmire as the new alpha-species and these same ducks were the cause of humanities demise. But I consider that all very unlikely.

But what it something else is the defining discovery that is made, that will define our existence for future races? What if it is the CERN Super-Collider, or the International Space Station. What if these, our crowning achievements, are what we are remembered for. They will show us a race of beings that put aside our differences and instead worked together to build and perform on a scale exponentially higher than what any one individual could attain. We are not bent on greed on profit. We are explorers and discoverers. We seek, find and never rest on past discoveries. We are an ingenious race of creatures, and we are pushing ourselves to the very limits of our capabilities.

I think then, that when I started writing, I was going to say something about my coffee getting cold, but now I'm saying something about how humanity is not all that bad, really. I don't know how I got here from there.

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