You are expendable

I know, it's not a nice thought. I'm not about nice thoughts.

There are 5 billion people on this planet. If you've seen South Florida or Southern California you know that it's too damn many.

I really don't think the world would miss it if every year 1% of the population were to get whacked by some horrible disease. In fact, if the mythical illumminati have any forethought, they'll start implementing some sinister plan to use a genetically engineered disease with a long incubation time to start culling out the stupid people. Hmm, maybe this has already happened...

Why am I expendable?

Well, what would happen if you died right now?

First of all, you wouldn't get to finish reading this page, which, while a damn shame, will not cause the universe to come to a screeching halt.

Your friends (if you have any) and family would be all sorts of bummed out, but they'd get over it; unless they're the depressed suicidal goth sort, in which case they're expendable too. Life goes on without you.

Maybe you're a sysadmin and there's a network that will melt without you. Well, I got news. Your job probably isn't that difficult. If you're at a university there are 5-10 grads and undergrads who could barely hold the network together in your place and could completely replace you in 2 years time. Voids get filled in ecology and in society.

Similar logic applies if you have a different sort of job. If you're in the service industry, there's a line of people waiting to take your place. Shut up and keep your head down or you're fired.

10,000 years from now, there may not even be a human race. Sure as hell you're not going to have made a significant dent in the temporal stream 1,000,000 years from now. Even a hundred years from now there will be no significant record of your existence. A name, a date of birth/death, some info on who you fucked and who your kids were. Maybe the IRS cares enough to store your tax records, but who can guarantee it won't get burned to the ground in the revolution? You will have no significant genetic legacy, being only 1/16 represented in your great-great-grandkids.

Maybe you'll contribute a significant idea, but one thing I'm convinced of is that ideas aren't original, they are inevitable. Somebody else will think of it in your absence. Heck, you may be wasting some genius's time on a daily basis preventing them from coming up with a good idea.

The ripple in the probability continuum caused by your existence fades faster than you'd like to think.

Welcome to insignificance. You never really left.


[RF]

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Robert Forsman <thoth@purplefrog.com>
Last modified: Tue Apr 18 21:00:28 1995