The key difference between a technological civilization like ours, and butterflies, is the butterflies have predators to limit their numbers. What is limiting t

The key difference between a technological civilization like ours, and butterflies, is the butterflies have predators to limit their numbers. What is limiting technological civilizations? The most unnerving answer might be "predators". Butterflies don't fly very fast, but if there were no butterfly predators, they would be everywhere. Not just in your garden, but absolutely everywhere. With exponential population growth and a slow flight speed - or even flightless varieties - they would have conquered Earth millions or billions of years before mankind arrived. We don't need to be able to see a single butterfly to know they are everywhere. Everything we know about the physics of the universe tells us energy would eventually be the limiting factor for EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING. Whether we're talking about butterflies or technological civilizations, the easiest thing to see from a great distance is their energy demand. You could have a planet full of butterflies on the other side of the solar system, and I guarantee you any cheap telescope could detect their presence simply by looking at the spectra the planet emits. No image forming capability necessary. Not a single butterfly has been seen. But we would know they are there. In fact, I'd bet my left pinky toe if that butterfly planet were anywhere else in the galaxy where we could see it, within a few decades from now, or perhaps a single century at most, we would notice it is not at all like any of the other planets. Something is consuming energy on that planet, converting it to different forms, changing the atmosphere, and making it completely impossible for the presence of butterflies to go unnoticed. The same is true for technological civilizations. But, unlike butterflies, technological civilizations are fully capable of changing the spectrum of not just a single planet, not just a single star, and perhaps not even just a single galaxy. If there were no predators to limit population growth, every galaxy in the universe would be the color of butterflies. So where the fuck is everybody?! You want to take a closer look at that butterfly planet with a fine new telescope that can photograph a single butterfly in perfect color. But you look, and you don't see any butterflies. Not one. You see leaves. Lots of leaves. That seems nice too, at first, but then you realize those aren't all truly leaves. Some of them are butterflies, and they look like leaves. How interesting. Why would beautiful butterflies want to look like ordinary leaves? Because they are afraid of something out there. Should we be worried about predators? For now, there are no leaf-shaped butterfly planets, but one thing is certain. We will all agree about this, I guarantee it. This universe is violent, and it will never stop trying to kill us. We have to get up and move, NOW. We have one chance to do this right. ONLY ONE. We decide to fight and survive NOW, together, or we die here. In the nursery where we were born. Daydreaming about butterflies in the garden.