Temporary doesn't mean disposable.

I've been listening to the same song over and over.

Angels on the Moon by Thriving Ivory.

I didn't sit down and decide it meant something.

It just started meaning something.

My aunt is dying.

She has stage 4 cancer and is unconscious.

She wasn't just my aunt.

She took me in when I was young alongside my cousins.

She was another mother to me.

At the same time, I'm around the anniversary of my brother's death from an overdose.

My mother is aging in a home with dementia.

There were three sisters.

Three matriarchs.

For all us siblings and cousins, we grew up without fathers, the matriarchs were the structure of our family.

Now one is dying.

One is living with dementia.

The youngest is aging with her husband, children and grandchildren.

And I'm 57.

I look at my daughter and realize how quickly generations replace one another.

People who seemed permanent when you were a child suddenly aren't.

One day you're the kid.

Then somehow you're the parent looking backward at the people who raised you and forward at the child who will someday remember you.

I've been driving around thinking about that.

About how short a human life actually is.

Then my mind keeps pulling farther back.

A person gets decades.

A family gets generations.

A civilization gets its moment.

A species gets an evolutionary window.

Earth gets billions of years.

Stars are born and die.

Even the things we look at and imagine as permanent aren't permanent.

And strangely, that doesn't make me feel like nothing matters.

It does the opposite.

It makes being here matter more.

More than religion taught me.

That's something I've been thinking about.

Religion often tries to answer death by making death not really the end.

There is another life.

Another existence.

Heaven.

Reunion.

Eternity.

In some traditions, even this Earth is temporary and will eventually be replaced or transformed.

A new heaven.

A new Earth.

Everything will eventually be made right.

Maybe.

I don't know.

I hope so.

I'd like it to be true.

And that's the point.

I don't know.

Neither does anyone else.

Not truly.

People believe.

People have faith.

People have scriptures.

People have traditions.

But belief isn't evidence.

Faith isn't evidence.

I spent a lot of my life surrounded by religion.

And I'm beginning to wonder whether certain religious ideas can actually make our relationship with this life less healthy.

Not every religious person.

Not every religion.

There are religious people who consider the Earth sacred.

There are traditions built around stewardship.

There are people whose faith makes them more compassionate, more responsible and more protective of the living world.

I'm not denying any of that.

I'm asking something different.

What happens when believing in another world makes this one easier to lose?

What happens when believing in another life makes this one seem like preparation?

What happens when suffering can always be explained by saying everything will eventually be made right somewhere else?

What happens when destruction itself becomes part of a prophecy people are waiting to see fulfilled?

If you believe the Earth is eventually going to be destroyed and replaced anyway, does that change how urgently you feel the need to protect it?

I think that's a fair question.

Because I don't see a new Earth in the geological record.

I see this one.

I see species appearing.

Changing.

Adapting.

Branching.

Surviving for enormous stretches of time.

Then disappearing.

Extinction.

Again and again.

Entire worlds of living things existed here before us.

They didn't receive another planet when their ecological world changed.

They didn't transcend biology.

They disappeared.

The Earth continued.

Human beings are incredibly recent.

We talk about ourselves as though we're the point of the story.

But measured against Earth's history, we're barely here.

Measured against cosmic time, our entire species may amount to almost nothing.

A flicker.

A moment.

A tiny interval that the universe will never notice.

And I find that beautiful.

Because maybe the universe doesn't have to notice us.

Maybe permanence isn't what gives something value.

Maybe being temporary is precisely what makes something precious.

My aunt doesn't need to live forever for her life to matter.

She took me in.

She looked after me.

She changed the direction of another human life.

That changed how I became a father.

That became part of what I gave my daughter.

Something can end and still echo forward.

My brother doesn't have to still be alive for his life to have mattered.

My mother doesn't have to remain exactly who she once was for everything she has been to disappear.

My daughter doesn't need the universe to know her name for her existence to matter to me.

And I don't need eternity to make Tuesday matter.

I'm here.

She's here.

We're here at the same time.

For this unbelievably tiny interval in cosmic history, these particular people existed together and called one another family.

That's extraordinary enough.

So why wouldn't I extend that same understanding outward?

A forest doesn't have to exist forever to matter.

A whale doesn't.

A bird doesn't.

A river doesn't have to flow for eternity to be worth protecting today.

Earth doesn't have to exist forever to be worth protecting while it does.

Temporary doesn't mean meaningless.

And temporary doesn't mean disposable.

That's where my thoughts about religion begin connecting to something else I've been writing about.

Technology.

Artificial intelligence.

The future.

Because religion isn't the only place where I see promises of escape.

We have secular versions now.

We'll colonize Mars.

We'll become multiplanetary.

Artificial intelligence will become superintelligent.

Maybe AI will solve problems humans can't.

Maybe humans will merge with machines.

Maybe transhumanism will allow us to overcome biological limitations.

Maybe we'll dramatically extend human life.

Maybe we'll upload consciousness.

Maybe we'll become something beyond human.

Maybe.

Again, I don't know.

Some of these things may eventually be possible.

Some may not.

But I keep noticing the same underlying idea.

There will be somewhere else to go.

Another life.

Another Earth.

Another planet.

Another body.

Another intelligence.

Another form of existence.

An escape hatch.

And I keep wondering why a species that cannot collectively maintain the habitability of the planet where it evolved believes its future lies in engineering another one.

Mars is hostile to human life.

Earth isn't.

Earth already has oceans.

Atmosphere.

Soil.

Microorganisms.

Forests.

Food webs.

A water cycle.

A biosphere that has been developing for billions of years.

We have all of this already.

And we're degrading it.

So I have a question.

If we're intelligent enough to terraform another world, why aren't we wise enough to stop unterraforming this one?

Maybe that's the real problem.

Not intelligence.

Wisdom.

We talk constantly about intelligence.

Human intelligence.

Artificial intelligence.

Superintelligence.

We measure intelligence.

We celebrate intelligence.

We build machines designed to amplify it.

But intelligence and wisdom aren't the same thing.

Intelligence tells you how to split an atom.

Wisdom asks whether you should build thousands of weapons from what you discovered.

Intelligence tells you how to extract oil from beneath the Earth.

Wisdom asks what happens when billions of people burn it for generations.

Intelligence figures out how to remove forests faster.

Wisdom understands why the forest needs to remain.

Intelligence asks whether something can be done.

Wisdom asks whether it should be.

Maybe intelligence hasn't replaced wisdom.

Maybe intelligence has outpaced it.

And that possibility bothers me.

Because intelligence without sufficient wisdom might not be the evolutionary advantage we assume it is.

It might become maladaptive.

A species becomes intelligent enough to transform its environment before it becomes wise enough to understand when transformation becomes destruction.

It develops extraordinary capability.

Agriculture.

Industry.

Fossil fuels.

Mining.

Global transportation.

Nuclear weapons.

Genetic engineering.

Artificial intelligence.

It gains more and more power over the world around it.

But its psychology remains tribal.

Its politics remain divided.

Its economies demand growth.

Its nations compete.

Its corporations compete.

Its people compete.

And while all this incredible intelligence accelerates, we're still fighting over land.

Oil.

Water.

Food.

Minerals.

Energy.

Shipping routes.

Resources.

We're a technologically advanced species still behaving like competing tribes around a shrinking water hole.

And somehow we talk about becoming a multiplanetary civilization.

That's the part I struggle with.

Look at what we're actually doing.

We have transformed enormous portions of the living world around our own needs.

Wild mammals now represent only a small fraction of terrestrial mammal biomass compared with humans and the livestock we raise.

We've converted forests and grasslands into farms.

Redirected rivers.

Mined mountains.

Changed the chemistry of the atmosphere.

Changed the chemistry of the oceans.

Moved species around the planet.

Filled ecosystems with plastics and synthetic chemicals.

We are living through a biodiversity crisis widely described as the sixth mass extinction.

And still the dominant question seems to be:

How do we grow more?

How do we produce more?

How do we consume more?

How do we become more powerful?

How do we make more money?

For what?

Profit?

Power?

Status?

Another generation of devices?

Another percentage point of growth?

What exactly are we trying to win?

Because eventually all of our technology runs into the same reality.

Ecology.

Artificial intelligence doesn't escape that either.

AI seems almost immaterial when you're talking to it.

Words appear on a screen.

No lungs.

No stomach.

No thirst.

But AI exists physically.

Data centres.

Semiconductors.

Electricity.

Cooling.

Water.

Metals.

Mining.

Concrete.

Global supply chains.

Communication networks.

People maintaining all of it.

AI doesn't exist outside nature.

Neither does the internet.

Neither does a corporation.

Neither does a stock market.

Neither does a government.

Neither does civilization.

They're all arrangements of matter and energy operating inside one planetary system.

If the ecological systems supporting civilization fail badly enough, artificial intelligence doesn't magically float above the wreckage.

Knowledge isn't food.

An algorithm isn't freshwater.

A model of photosynthesis isn't a forest.

Intelligence doesn't repeal physics.

That's why I find some predictions about superintelligence strange when they're disconnected from ecological reality.

People ask whether AI will become sentient.

Whether it will surpass us.

Whether it will destroy humanity.

Whether humans will merge with it.

Maybe those are worthwhile questions.

But there's another one.

What physical world will any of this exist in?

What happens to technological civilization if the ecological foundation underneath civilization continues degrading?

Maybe the biggest threat isn't some machine waking up and deciding to destroy us.

Maybe it's much less dramatic.

Maybe we keep doing what we're already doing.

We keep extracting.

Keep consuming.

Keep competing.

Keep delaying.

Keep believing something will save us later.

God.

Technology.

Markets.

Innovation.

AI.

Mars.

Something.

Anything except accepting limits.

That's where religion and technological futurism unexpectedly meet for me.

They're obviously not the same thing.

But certain versions of both offer transcendence.

Religion can say:

This isn't the final world.

Technology can say:

This doesn't have to be the final world.

Religion can promise another existence.

Technology can imagine another form of existence.

And both can become dangerous if transcendence becomes an excuse for neglect.

Because what if there isn't an escape hatch?

What if this is the planet?

What if this is the life?

Not because I've proven there is nothing afterward.

I haven't.

Not because I've proven humans will never live elsewhere.

I haven't.

But because this is what we actually know exists.

Here.

Now.

Maybe accepting that isn't depressing.

Maybe it's liberating.

Maybe I don't need eternity.

Maybe knowing my life is short is exactly what makes me want to live it.

Maybe knowing my daughter won't always be here makes me want to appreciate the time I have with her.

Maybe knowing forests can disappear gives me a reason to protect forests.

Maybe knowing species can become extinct makes their existence more valuable, not less.

Maybe knowing humanity itself isn't guaranteed permanence should make us more careful with the tiny evolutionary window we've been given.

We've spent thousands of years asking how we can escape death.

Maybe we should spend more time asking how to live before it comes.

We've spent centuries trying to conquer nature.

Maybe we should finally understand that there was never anything to conquer.

We've spent generations imagining heaven somewhere else.

Maybe we should notice the extraordinary living world underneath our feet.

I don't know what happens when I die.

I don't know where my brother is.

I don't know where my aunt will go when her body finally stops.

I don't know whether consciousness continues.

I don't know whether there's another world.

And for perhaps the first time, I don't need to know in order for this one to matter.

My aunt was here.

My brother was here.

My mother is here.

My daughter is here.

I'm here.

Right now.

And maybe that's enough.

Maybe our greatest mistake wasn't believing we could conquer nature.

Maybe it was believing we needed to escape it.

Because the more I understand how temporary all of this is, the less disposable any of it feels.

Life doesn't become meaningless because it ends.

It becomes precious because it does.

It means pay attention.