Agreed. I must admit that in my list of dominant traits intelligence is the baby of the group.
I agree. Not that it makes it less likely to survive, my point is only that we don't know what such a highly evolved intelligence will lead us to.
Sometimes I think our intelligence is a kind of runaway function that developed too much for this environment. As Blue Jay has pointed out, we have taken over the planet. Spread out to every corner of Earth, and with that, we have needed to use the resources of those areas that we inhabit.
No other species has done this, but MAYBE that's because no species should actual
be able to do this. The planet has limited resources, obviously. A species that uses up all of it will fuck itself out of them, eventually.
I suppose "we'll see?" Or, more likely, we probably won't 'cause you and I will likely be long gone before any of this is figured out.
To steal the idea from Michio Kaku, I think we eventually will need to work as one single unified race of human beings to expand our existence to not just Earth, due to it's limited resources and our inevitable use of all of it.
But for that we would need to shed so many ideologies from race issues, to religious beliefs, to politcal positions and nationalism.
Ah... No, I don't mind the thought of being alone either. If there is other intelligence out there, and they're anything like us (currently)... it would certainly be safer for us to be alone, anyway... :]
That's a very good point that I hadn't even considered. They may be just as big of assholes as we are.
- Oni