Where Do We Come From ?

Ancient Greek philosophers claimed their PhDs in spontaneous generation of life from
non-living matter. A fully-formed mice wriggled out of stinky garbage. How we come from has implications on where we come from. The basic building block is just a sugar and phosphate molecule with nitrogenous base - purine, pyrimidine. The molecular structure is not mind-blowing but how that early DNA has come into being is stupendous. How did the first organic genetic material coalesce? Life has greatly been reduced to a mechanism to encode instructions in a double helix and provide the tools to probe, transcribe and translate that manual. Rest (qualia, consciousness, even this post) is all emergent from that molecular makeup.

I am not a big fan of Von Daniken’s anthropomorphic aliens flying in space vehicles. Millions of neutrinos pass our body every second. Our sensory faculties are impoverished to feel or observe such phenomenon. If there is life elsewhere, chances are it might be too alien for us to detect with our anthropic orientation and tools and that Drake Equation. But growing up, I was an unimpeachable UFO junkie with a tin helmet.

Where do we go from here? I am fascinated with the transhuman theories purported by Ray Kurzweil and his like. Upload your brains/neural network to shiny Darth Vader suits. Rather than waiting for our bodies to be revived by ‘Life Extension’ patterned on a theme from Vanilla Sky, we wake up to metallic clang in our synthetic brains. A Kuhnian paradigm, a shift in our evolution!

The Greeks were not all futile in concentrating their resources on the hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings, earlier visited mice. Humans are only a playful diversion!

 

A very deep subject and plenty to ponder about.
It is scientific, philosophical, theological.

Not just humans. Where did all this matter in this Universe come from? Where will they go?

Very difficult to answer that. When I look at the fundamental purpose of life - creating progeny then I wonder if we are here on purpose.
So I wonder if we are here for a purpose why were the dinosaurs before us?
That leads me to believe we are a matter of chance.

Yes, we certainly are evolving. We have come a long way from Homo-sapiens and Neanderthals. Our brains are evolving.

I attended a lecture by an astronomer from SETI Institute and he said that the way we are nowadays using only our eyes - looking only at computer screens and cell phone screens all the time, this is how we will evolve.


He meant it as a joke, but there may be some truth to it too

Yep.

 

That wasn’t a directional pointer, more a reflective pointer, more like a wow! yippie! gadzooks! such an intelligent sugar and nitrogen molecule that is facilitating me in typing up this post. I liked your inquiry because it is vital for us to be mindful of such intricate machinery that generates every thought and action.

That homunculus theory is fun! I fancy the early visionaries who pioneered aesthetic theories of human reproduction and inherited traits. Carbon helixes are less fun!

Don’t provoke me. I grew up with UFO lore secretly wishful that an alien race abducts me but also worried that they may beam me back when they notice that I have no good brain to dissect.

I followed the UFO folklore till I watched the mock-documentary footage film of aliens trying to attack a family by clambering down the roof and knocking on windows. Jeez! Those reptilian creatures travelled light years to rap on windows? That film killed the card-carrying UFO crusade in me. If the aliens could not procure the license to apparate or no stockpile of floo powder, then they are no sophisticated aliens to me. I will lock up my windows and not open for them. Prior to that dissolution, my favourite UFO sighting is erratic sunrise, mysterious eclipse and midair acrobatic troopers to boot.

 

Usually in science forums when the same inquiry is raised, members would excite away with strong and weak anthropic principle, mathematical multiverse models, quantum collapse: everything that can happen, is happening with some probability. But as an everyday musing, these overwrought scientific conjectures are remote and not immediate. Personally I found existential philosophy and the writings of the early proponents soothing to combat everyday crisis: why am I here. In hurry: The purpose of life is the purpose you make out of it, with no revelatory overseer or teleological essence.

 

Over my thousand arms flaying to chop such irreverent attempts. You don’t worry. I won’t let that happen. If I was a UFO-obsessed teenager, prior to that, I was a Stonehenge-dancing toddler.

First they took away our tooth fairy, then Santa, then Bermuda Triangle, if they so as lay their claim on Easter Island Moai, let us both evacuate the planet and settle elsewhere in the outer ring of the Milky Way.

 

The topic though broad is unusual for IL. In that broadness, I have never seen an ET-specked thread before.

The indulgence is mutual. I am glad you fired way one with infectious enthusiasm. As for the share away: my obsession with extra terrestrials began right from the anna prasanna, and as soon as I learnt alphabets, I chewed away all the Pustak Mahal books on supernatural and extra terrestrial lore. Back then, I was much attracted to dark theories. Their World Famous series was my summer indulgence. I searched for it and found a box set in Amazon here. Thanks for rekindling those memories.

 

I've often wondered at this @Endlesshope .
But never pursued in finding out more.
Maybe one day I will have the time to read about this.
If you have some information please do post here. Will be interesting to learn (also save me the effort )

As for Extra terrestrials, I speculate that they may not be what we assume they should be. They may be more advanced or different and their communication styles may be in different wavelength that we are not able to recognize them, or too primitive that they do not know how to communicate, yet.

Also, the distance between one star and another is so humongous that our signals may still be travelling in space without hitting a target. Then we have to wait for their signals.

Considering how small and insignificant we are, we may be missing the signals. Maybe our four giant outer planets are deflecting the signals. Who knows! More research needed there.

There yo go! My speculations.

I can talk about all this till the sun goes down and the cows come home, but not able to put all my thoughts in writing! Severely handicapped on this front, I am.