It’s times like this, watching movies like Interstellar that I am rendered a field mouse once again. As human beings, why are we so incredibly proud? We lack the hindsight that more evolved beings out there have and therefore, having not experienced that capacity, we feel that the universe is ours for the taking. And perhaps that is a good thing. However, we are but infinitesimal dots in the face of the universe; and parallel universes have not even been taken into account. Brilliant, bold and beautiful infinitesimal dots, but infinitesimal dots nevertheless. We have come a long way since, and technology is growing exponentially; fast enough for stabilised interstellar travel one day perhaps, far too terrifyingly fast for the likes of those resistant to such changes for specific reasons, far too slow for the futurists.

In the terrifyingly (good kind of terrifying) vast and wide universe out there, truly, what are our place-markers? Have we always been meant to go out and explore? Move from planet to planet like colonies in search of better prospects when one source has completely been exhausted? Or are we as a race, doomed to die out, like the dinosaurs; and then perhaps, a cycle begins all over again, as though there has always been a timer to begin with?

Is our lack of knowledge about what lies out there due to the limits placed on our human capacity – for us to not know things beyond what we are supposed to? Or does that threshold exist to challenge us, to test us because we were always meant to know what’s out there and beyond, albeit over centuries? Will we even survive as a Type 0 civilisation, long enough, to shift to a Type 1 civilisation? All it takes is one reprehensible idea (for ideas grow like a seed) to reverse all technological advancements meant to take mankind to space by inciting a global thermonuclear or biological warfare.

The folly of mankind stemming from its pride has always been a common theme or rather, subject of mockery spanning through the years of science fiction. HG Wells mocked our pride in War of the Worlds in the 1800s and centuries later, Spielberg’s Independence Day put us in our place by reminding us that other civilisations exist out there.

In the context of “people fear what they do not know”, what if in our conquest to defeat ignorance, the “curiosity also kills the cat”? There are so many questions that are beyond our human capacity to currently answer. I suppose one can only tread carefully, and softly, but also only softly enough.