Human beings are the captains of innovation, the builders of tomorrow, and yet we are still at the mercy of nature and the laws of the universe. After all, we are merely bacteria with a hint of consciousness. Everything we do outside of the basic routine of sleeping and eating is a result of our advanced consciousness. It is the realisation that we are not just bacteria, but rather intelligent beings that know our place in our environment and in the universe. We care for each other, invest in personal possessions, and plan for the future.

All of our surroundings – our relations, our possessions, our jobs, our clothes – come from that single spark of consciousness. We tamed fire and used it to cook food, keep us warm, and power our machinery. We built cities, a completely new type of habitat, so that we could live and work together as a community. We conquered the night with electricity and the light bulb. We developed money, a new kind of wealth that is itself worthless, but represents a measurement of value. All of these innovations are physical manifestations of our collective consciousness.

Think about this for a minute – we created all of this – everything from the first cave paintings to the latest iPhone, from fireworks to all of our medical science. We had no directions, no manuals, no tools. Everything we have created has come directly from inside our minds. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine which is bigger – the universe or the human mind. 🤔

In Sanskrit, the root brh means “to grow”. The word for the Absolute consciousness, Brahman, and the word for the universe, Brahmaand, both share this root. This is an example of how we relate ourselves to the universe and see that both are expanding and infinite.

Ancient Sanskrit scriptures say satyam jnanam anantam brahma, or that “Brahman is truth, knowledge, and infinity”, and that it can only be observed through the reality of its own being, meaning that our consciousness is the way for us to know ourselves.

Since the universe and consciousness are related, it is not far-fetched to say that we are the consciousness of the universe, as we can only observe it because we are living in it, and we know nothing about what lies beyond it.

Read more: The Vedic Brahman is a Unique Concept of the Absolute

One of the biggest mysteries today is where we our civilisation is headed. Provided we are able to reverse catatrophic climate change, prevent humanitarian disasters, and survive the next 100 years on Earth , we may be able to live forever, but where do things go from there? We are at a point where we can either destroy everything we’ve created or take an exponential leap forward. This is the basis for a theory known as the Great Filter . The core idea is that all civilisations in the universe go through at least one extraordinary event in which the civilisation is either wiped-out or catapulted into an advanced super-civilisation. The weaker civilisations will be “filtered” and won’t survive such an event, which might explain the lack of any civilisation like ours in our cosmic neighbourhood. The question is, are we beyond the Great Filter or approaching it? It could be possible that the beginning of life itself is a Great Filter, in which case we are one of the few forms of life who made it through successfully.

But provided that all life we know of is based on the element carbon, which forms more kinds of bonds than most other elements, our carbon-based life form should be the most abundant kind in the universe. It’s almost “too easy” to make life if it is based on carbon. So the thought of having passed the Great Filter seems pretty egotistic…

So if the Great Filter is yet to come, well… there is little we can do to prepare for it. But knowing that the universe is connected to our own consciousness, we can look inside for answers to what’s outside. Perhaps the Great Filter comes from within us – it is a test of how we can handle our own humanity. Will we protect students from getting killed by banning military-grade assault weapons? How can we solve climate change before it is too late? Can we fix education to ignite young minds instead of worsening our ignorance?

Our consciousness is who we are – it gives us the awareness to do what we do, unlike no other life form discovered so far. It is this consciousness that has brought us this far – from nomadic hunters to space explorers – and will continue to take us further. Having created problems in our surroundings, we are the sole architects that can solve them as well. And I am sure when we overcome these problems, we will have overcome the Great Filter.

We have the whole universe within us, after all… So let’s get to work!

“We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.” ~ Carl Sagan

Our consciousness has brought us this far – from nomadic hunters to space explorers. So where are we headed now?

Hi Friend 👋 Thanks for stopping by! Welcome to Scribe, the markdown serverless blogging framework.

Here is a brief tutorial to get started. Feel free to have a look around and experiment with the files yourself, and let me know if you have any questions or feature suggestions!

Scribe is built to be different than most other blogging platforms. Let's go over the main ones now.

Markdown Yes, Scribe is Markdown-based. 100% (yes, this page too!). No HTML / JavaScript / CSS required. You can add images, links, tables, and style your text however you like.

Of course, you can easily embed HTML into any Markdown post if you need to. 😉

Next.js + React Blogs can be quite large sometimes, and that is what makes them slow. But not Scribe — because it is built with React for snappy performance and Next.js for server-side rendering, which means only the content you want is downloaded to your device. Faster performance, less loading, more reading. 🙌

Serverless Deployments Instead of paying a monthly fee to host your blog, only pay for when someone actually visits your blog. With serverless deployments, your blog posts, images, videos, and everything else just sit in the cloud and do nothing. When someone visits your blog, the server quickly wakes up and servers the reader with your content, before sleeping again. Cheap and still blazing fast!

More features are on the way, such as support for device dark modes 🌒 and CMS supportso edits show up instantly without the need to redeploy. Stay tuned!

Scribe is an easy way to blog and share your thoughts with the world. There is no setting up databases or giving up ownership of your writing. Just write in markdown and have millions read it in just 10 seconds!

Since June 2018, NASA had been pinging the Opportunity Rover on Mars in an attempt to reestablish communication with the robot after a dust storm covered its solar panels with sand. On the 12th of February, NASA announced that Opportunity was officially dead.

Opportunity in August 2004, taking a portrait using its front hazard-avoidance camera

The rover, launched in 2004, was on a 90-day mission to drive about 1 kilometer and test a few samples of the Martian soil. Instead, it became the solar system’s hardest working robot, serving the mission of science and discovery for more than 15 years without skipping a single day, driving over 45 kilometers! In its lifetime, Oppy took more than 217,000 images, exposed rock surfaced to reveal their mineral composition, and even found hematite, a mineral that forms in water.

Of course, not everything for the past 15 years was flawless — there were many problems that the rover had to face on the unknown and sometimes unpredictable Martian terrain. A year after landing, Opportunity lost steering in one of its front wheels and got stuck in a sand trap. Luckily, it was able to escape and continue on its path. A heater in its robotic arm limited the power supply, especially at night, so the team began to shut the rover down every Martian evening to avoid discharging the battery completely. In 2015, Opportunity’s 256MB flash memory died, and in 2017, it lost steering in the other front wheel. These failures are understandable for a rover that outlived its expected lifespan by a factor of 60. But finally, in the summer of 2018, a massive dust storm covered Opportunity’s solar panels and blocked out most of the sunlight during the day (pictured below), which completely exhausted the on-board batteries.

A view of a normal Martian day on the far left, with simulated views showing typical dust storms on Mars, with the one that defeated Opportunity simulated on the far right

(NASA’s latest rover, Curiosity, which landed in 2012, also faced these same dust storms even though it was on the other side of the planet that Opportunity was on. Curiosity, however, was unaffected by the lack of sunlight because it is nuclear-powered)

Normally, mechanical failures or system crashes don’t draw much emotion. But as the news about Opportunity spread, tributes and thoughts poured in from around the world for the little rover, whose absence created a large void that can’t be easily filled.

How did we become so attached to an inanimate metal box, about the size of a washing machine, that was crawling around on the desolate Martian surface?

Since the dawn of human civilization, we have used tools to increase our reach, our perception, and our understanding of our environment. Stone tools allowed us to break open nutshells and fire helped preprocess our food. Just as we use these tools to change our environments, these tools affect us in return. We extend our consciousness, our emotions, and our thoughts to the tool, and the tool becomes a part of us.

Let’s take the example of our personal devices — our laptop, TV, and phone. It’s almost like these screens and devices have become our eyes, able to see all around the world in just a few milliseconds. It is said that you cannot be in two places at the same time, but these technologies allow us to create multiple avatars of ourselves, letting us watch a cricket match in Australia while reading through the day’s Brexit updates from the UK, while making a cup of coffee in an apartment in New York. We are participating in all three events, yet physically we are only in one of them.

And that is where we turn back to Opportunity the rover. Although humans have not travelled to Mars, we sent a little piece of our consciousness with each rover, orbiter, and lander. The things we are observed through the eyes of Opportunity (and Spirit, the first rover to go out of service on Mars). In effect, Opportunity is our avatar on Mars. We sent it 55 million km to the red planet, and as a result we made the journey along with it. So many young scientists grew up hearing news of Opportunity’s latest discoveries, and that is how a distant, 174 kg rover become so human.

Just like Spirit before it, Opportunity sits at rest in its home on the red planet. One day in the future, humans will walk up to it and brush the dust off of their beloved Martian avatar.

Until then, farewell Opportunity, and job well done!

“On the distant plains of Mars, the #Opportunity rover now joins its twin, Spirit, as a monument to humankind’s drive to explore and discover.” ~ Bill Nye

NASA announced that Opportunity is officially dead. How did we become so attached to an inanimate metal box crawling around on the Martian surface?

We know that humans don’t need meat to thrive and that a vegetarian diet is healthier. We know the ethics and terrible conditions where animals are kept and later killed. Lowering global meat consumption would also help the environment and prevent oceanic dead zones. But there are a couple of aspects about meat consumption that are often overlooked. Let’s look at those today.

First is efficiency. It’s 2019, and our phones, TVs, and cars have become more efficient than ever at an exponential rate. Yet, our food is stuck in the past. Just as we are transitioning to renewable energy, we should transition to more efficient forms of energy for ourselves as well. Meat production accounts for a large percentage of global warming, while plant-based food production is much more efficient. For example, growing one pound of broccoli uses 34 gallons of water while producing one pound of beef uses 1,847 gallons.

All of our food starts with a few raw ingredients such as sunlight, water, and soil nutrients. The best way to cut back on emissions from food production is to eat closest to these raw ingredients as possible. Every level of the food chain only harvests 10% of the energy consumed from the previous level due to heat loss and digestive inefficiencies. For example, a rabbit eating a plant only harvests 10% of the plant’s available energy and a fox eating the rabbit only harvests 10% of the rabbit’s total energy. So the fox ends up with a mere 1% of the available energy of the plants that the rabbit ate. In this simplified example, the fox would theoretically have to eat 10 rabbits to get as much energy as it could get by eating the plants that a single rabbit ate.

This is why 20 servings of vegetables have less greenhouse emissions than a single servingof meat. If we are capable of growing enough plants and grains to feed these animals, then why not eat the plants to begin with?

The second issue is food waste. About 20% of meat and dairy is wasted each year, plus another 25% of seafood. All of the raw material production, water supply, transportation, processing, packaging, and shelving that goes into a food product is wasted when the plate is thrown away, and that waste is much worse for meat products. Throwing away one pound of beef is more than 50 times as harmful as throwing away one pound of broccoli.

Not only would eating less animal-based food help the environment and cut back on waste, it would ensure fewer animals are killed. Many influential thinkers are pushing for everyone to move away from meats, and they are leading the way themselves. For example, Richard Branson stopped eating beef a few years ago and has pushed for a healthy plant-based diet. He says we should step toward plant-based lab-grown “meat” that can be grown without cruelty or impact to the environment. That would be a great step toward a greener, healthier, and peaceful society.

“One day we will look back and think how archaic our grandparents were in killing animals for food.”
~ Richard Branson

It’s 2019, and our phones, TVs, and cars are more efficient than ever. But, our food is somehow still stuck in the past.

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