The 0th Commandment: Survival of the Species

Are you working on anything interesting? Will it matter if the species ends? We created technology. We are in a position to do something about it. We live in "interesting times". For the first time in human history there are two threats to the survival of the species. The first is the approaching disaster of climate change. The second is the approaching disaster of nuclear holocaust. We are the first (and maybe the last) generation to face this new world. I've finished reading "The Fate of the World" by Jonathan Schell (Knopf, 1982). About nuclear holocaust he writes: The death of our species resembles the death of an individual in its boundlessness, its blankness, its removal beyond experience, and its tendency to baffle human thought and feeling, yet as soon as one mentions the hope of survival the similarities are clearly at an end. For while individual death is inevitable, extinction can be avoided; while every person must die, mankind can be saved. Therefore, while reflection on death may lead to resignation and acceptancce, reflection on extinction must lead to exactly the opposite response: to arousal, rejection, indignation, and action. Extinction is not something to comtemplate, it is something to rebel against. To point this out might seem like stating the obvious if it were not that on the whole the world's reaction to the peril of extinction has been one of numbness and inertia, much as though extinction were as inescapable as death is. And yet if one gives up these aspirations one has given up on everything. As a species, we have as yet done nothing to save ourselves. The slate of action is blank. To the obligation to honor life is now added the sanction that if we fail in our oblisgation life will actually be taken away from us, individually and collectively. Use the "power of 2". Tell 2 people. Have them tell 2 people....