We have all had that dream or thought, especially when we think of all the stupid things we did as kids. Some of us wonder how we survived it.

While my book Echoes of Tomorrow deals with this prospect in a science-fictional way, we all know that time, at least at present, does not allow do-overs.

The difference between knowledge and wisdom boils down to one question:

Just because we can, should we?

We just lived through a pandemic that still has lasting effects on many. COVID was most probably an early attempt at biological warfare situated in China (and other countries) to give the United States plausible deniability.

That is most probably why there were so many Biden-era Democratic pardons, including Anthony Fauci’s. To make a virus even more dangerous through gain-of-function research is about as irresponsible as creating other weapons of mass destruction, i.e., nuclear weapons.

We will never know if the dropping of the first atomic bombs was the only way to put an end to World War II.

Through treasonous acts, several spies shared (or sold) nuclear information to the Russians, making technological adolescence a real and immediate thing.

Today we are creating AI and robots that if given weapons would make The Terminator look like Winnie the Effing Pooo!

While Echoes of Tomorrow addresses this as a theme, there is another novel I am currently editing in which mankind goes to Mars after making Earth uninhabitable. Unlike Echoes in Time, where aliens facilitate time travel, Quiet Dust is set in a future where humans have already been on Mars for over forty years. Subscribe to this blog for more info on when it drops.

There are theories suggesting that evidence of humanity will be erased over time. The reasons humanity may never make it off the planet in any meaningful way are as follows.

The Great Filter from the Fermi Paradox is the correct framing of the problem. Sagan’s technological adolescence is likely a real and significant component of that filter, perhaps the dominant one for civilizations that reach our stage. But it probably is not the only filter. The total improbability of a civilization reaching interstellar maturity is likely the product of multiple bottlenecks, with self-destruction during technological adolescence being the final and perhaps most severe.

The darkest implication is this: even if a civilization survives its adolescence, it may face recurring filters. Each new transformative technology (nuclear, AI, nanotech, or whatever comes next) reopens the vulnerability window. Adolescence may not be a single phase but a repeating pattern, each iteration more dangerous than the last. If that is true, then the two frameworks converge completely. The Great Filter is technological adolescence, experienced not once but perpetually, with the cumulative probability of survival approaching zero over sufficient time.

So, before I leave you for today, I have an idea that needs wings. It needs to get to Elon Musk, who has the means to make it happen.

We sent two satellites, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, off into interstellar space on one-way trips to nowhere. What if, like Halley’s Comet, we created a device with a similar elongated orbit that passes by Earth every hundred years, making itself known? In that way, after we either blow the planet to bits through our hubris or our flat-out stupidity, we could send future inhabitants a message, much like we might send to our younger selves:

“Don’t do this, idiot!”

Why the future? Have you watched the news? Do you see how irresponsible the media has become and how violence seems to perpetuate into more violence?

Money for clicks and viewership for advertisements are more important than the boring truth.

Dehumanizing your political opponent will trigger the emotionally unbalanced to act, and politicians know this. Politicians are desperate and will do anything to keep power, including importing twenty million new voters. Power is money and those two are addictive, much like Felony Glitter…

I hold little hope for humanity, and I have to wonder if Elon’s vision of Mars has him thinking the same thing.

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Authors like me need all the assistance we can get in order to provide more thought-provoking, entertaining novels for you, when you are not watching hypnotoad programming, designed to make you disbelieve your lying eyes.