Essentially everything that we can think of is eventually possible. You may think this sounds ridiculous, but it really isn't. If you take someone who was alive 4,000 years ago, bring them into the year 2020, and show them the things that we can do now, they will call you a wizard, a sorcerer, a gypsy, a magician or whatever other crazy words they might have to describe someone who can seemingly perform magic. Yes, you may have heard this before but I want you to do it in your future now. In other words, you are the caveman or the ancient Egyptian. Right now we are living in a very basic and simple time. You think we're technologically advanced, but that’s only because we are looking backwards. If we look forward, the future looks so big and scary. Yet everything that we really want to do is eventually possible in this big and scary future.

Take the moon for example. I'm sure that people have stared at the moon for tens of thousands of years wondering what it was, how far away it was, and what relationship it had with our Earth. And yet, we decided in the past 100 years that we wanted to walk on top of that gray sphere. That is insane. That is a crazy notion. And yet we did it. and we did it multiple times. And now, we're going to walk on Mars. And we will do it. There is no question. It's just a matter of how long.

Almost anything that we want to do is really just a matter of how long. We will eventually make increasingly faster spaceships. We will solve all the problems that face us. They are just engineering problems waiting to be solved. There's really nothing that can't be solved. It just takes time. 

We have global warming. So what? It is a problem, and it will be solved, just like all our other problems. How? The same way we solved everything else - humans thinking creatively, systematically, heuristically, and empirically in a collaborative fashion. We will figure out a solution. We might use fungi that end up converting carbon back into water for Christ's sake. But we are going to do it. 

Nature evolves, it gets better, it adapts. And we are part of nature. If we look around we see nature trying to survive and adapt. And by just learning from nature, we are able to overcome so many problems. How are we flying now? Because we looked at birds, just like Leonardo da Vinci did, and thought, “we can copy how they fly and make machines that will enable us to do the same.” And the Wright brothers believed this as well. And they made machines that utilised wings, and they used forward momentum and tail feathers just like a bird does. And they flew. And with that plane, the whole world of aviation was started. And it's only been a bit more than a century since we figured out we could fly, and now we can practically fly to Mars with a human inside. We've sent Voyager I past the outer regions of our solar system already. We will figure it all out. It just takes time. But anything is possible.

What this means is that we really don't need to worry about the future as long as we believe in ourselves. Because we're going to fix it all. We're going to survive. But worrying about us not surviving is a waste of time, and isn't really true. We're really good at surviving. We're really smart. Yeah we do some stupid things in the short-term, but when we need to fix something, we tend to fix it. We're really good at problem-solving. The better question that we should ask ourselves, rather than are we going to survive, is how is our world going to look in the future? Because while the caveman or ancient Egyptians would be starstruck by all the technological innovations that we have now, all that really matters is whether the quality of life is better now versus back then. 

At first glance it seems obvious that it is. I don't know how much joy cavemen had, or suffering they had for that matter, but not having modern dentistry certainly suggests that suffering was higher in their lifetime than ours. Regardless, it is the joy and suffering, and the ratio of the two, that really determines whether we're going in the right direction. Because we're going to fix global warming. We're going to walk on Mars. It's going to happen inevitably. But what we don't know is whether it's going to be a robot that tells us how to live, whether we're going to be hooked up to a machine like the matrix, or whether there's going to be anything left to live for that has meaning. 

We have to create meaning, find meaning, cherish meaning, protect meaning, and make sure that our lives have meaning. Because we can solve problems until we're blue in the face, just like we have for thousands of years. We will continue to solve problems, continue to evolve, and eventually look unrecognizable to today's civilizations. But if we don't have a larger joy:suffering ratio than we do now, then all of our progress is just a waste of time. 

Survival without joy is akin to being a robot. You are just an object going through motions, but there's no meaning to your actions. Why are you doing anything if you don't experience joy? There is no purpose to life if there is no joy. Life without joy is itself meaningless. Joy, experience, emotions, happiness -  they give life meaning. Surviving, in and of itself, does not matter. Tell someone who wants to commit suicide that survival is important, and they'll either spit at you or laugh at you. Their life lacks meaning and therefore their life itself is meaningless. Telling them to survive is a dumb thing to tell them. Because you have to give life meaning for it to be meaningful. There is no point to spending our time solving problems if the lives that we've saved are not filled with meaning.

Meaning isn't found in fear-mongering and anxiety. Meaning is found in peak experiences. Subjective experiences are what make us feel alive. They are what give life meaning. We are not the only animals that can experience wonderful subjective emotions, but we may perhaps be the animals that can achieve the very highest levels of peak experiences on earth. We owe it to ourselves to experience the very highest potential that a human being is capable of, and propagate this wonderful, rare, exquisite experience that itself gives life meaning. For then, keeping people alive is worthwhile, because life itself has meaning and value.

We can achieve a global consciousness if we decide to do so. We can make a unicorn. We can turn this swirling ball of blue and green into Venus or heaven. We can become one global united people, focused on enhancing joy and meaning in our lives and defending ourselves against existential threats such as climate change, meteors, and gamma ray bursts. Alternatively, we can devolve into our tribal selves where we fight amongst ourselves, pointing out every possible difference, and using it as fuel and justification for murder, rape and genocide. We can continue this fighting and misery until we've all killed each other. 

The truth is that our weapons will only get stronger. Our ability at harnessing the sun's power will only increase. Technology does not go backwards. So as our world continues to grow in its power and its knowledge and its scientific prowess, our decisions will carry much larger consequences. We will need to decide what type of a world and universe human beings wish to reside in, because we will reside. But simply residing is not enough to justify a human life. 

My computer resides. My water bottle resides. And I am more than just a water bottle that exists. Everything and anything is possible with the brains and the time that we have. Let's make the absolute best of it.