This is How Humanity Ended

Written: 7-2-24

Typed: 7-3-24

            This is a story about how humanity ended. It ended the way you would have honestly expected, but not exactly how you would have imagined. The obvious explanation is they did it to themselves, but you knew that already.

            It may come as a shock, but humanity didn’t end via nuclear war. There was no nuclear fallout or bombs of any kind used in their extinction.

            It wasn’t global warming or overpopulation either.

            There wasn’t any horrible plague that reduced their numbers, or contagious pathogens that super-evolved another animal to become the dominant species on earth.

            If there was, I probably would have put my money on the octopus. Given enough time and the ability to organize, they could have easily learned to develop their own technology and overrun the planet from the oceans. But no, no super sentient cephalopods, no hyper-intelligent apes, no space fairing dolphins, or interdimensional mice.

            This is a story about how humanity ended. They ended in a way everyone saw coming but could not completely comprehend. Well, they could, but they eventually couldn’t, which led to their downfall.

            Human intelligence and creativity are a miracle of inspiration and cooperation. Without groups of different races and ideologies coming together or fighting each other, then they may not have progressed as far as they did. Their competitive spirit led to some of the greatest and worst creations in history: electricity, lightbulbs, toilets, cars, trains, planes, bombs, space travel, the internet, internment camps, hydrogen airships, coffee pods, and plastics.

            Humanity advanced so much that their technology flourished where everything was just a touch screen away. Communication, dating, education, shopping, everything was a simple button press and a machine would do the rest.

            Before you start thinking about it, the machines didn’t take over. The machines never gained sentience and overthrew humanity because there was nothing to dominate.

            Besides, humanity never truly ends in those stories. Humanity continued the good fight against the machines. Pooled their resources together and in a last stand of desperation, overcame their robot overlords and brought peace back to the world.

            This is not one of those stories. This is how humanity ended.  

            Technology became so advanced that humanity needed to adapt. Evolution started taking over and the next generation of children began developing different brain patterns to form more connections. Infants were born with the power to take in more information, process data quicker, and think on a faster level than previously seen.

            But humanity didn’t understand. These new pathways were different from what they knew. The infants struggled to handle the excess information, and many would develop seizures from overstimulation. Some died from overprocessing while others looked like they were lagging to respond.

            Doctors and medical professionals around the world declared these new pathways and infants as defects. They called it a mutation, an anomaly, and a mental disorder.

            Some parents adopted the concept that their children were a “newtype” of human.  

            The prospect of a newtype could have changed the world in ways no one could have imagined. The untold potential of the human brain, expanding to allow the mind to comprehend more complex equations and concepts, could have revolutionized the world.

            But I’m sorry to remind you that this is not that story. This is not the story of how far humanity could have gone. How they could have built colonies in space and traveled the solar system, building machines to bend the fabric of reality to traverse the galaxy and potentially spread their ideologies to alien planets. The concept of an alien race in a church, praising Jesus, Allah, Ra, or God would be highly amusing, but I’m sorry for not having that story for you.

            This is the story of how humanity ended.

            Humanity saw a threat to their children. Doctors declared these new pathways dangerous for infants. New technology was developed to stunt these new pathways and limit the amount of information infants could receive. Technology kept improving and surgeries were performed on infants to correct the pathways because it was too different from what humanity deemed as natural and normal.

            It didn’t take long before the pathways reverted to normal. However, evolution followed humanity’s suggestion. Instead of creating new neural pathways, it began stunting others.

            At first, it was subtle. Humanity was so reliant on their machines and images, that they barely noticed they lost their ability to understand metaphysical concepts. There was no reason to teach it anymore and humanity was not as interested in having that knowledge, so evolution removed it.

            After that, the next generations started losing their ability to write and read. The technology uses touch screens and pictures of everything. There was no need to read or write anymore when AI and speak-to-video generators were available. Soon after were the arts and creative pathways.

            It was around this time that several mental disorders started vanishing too. The creative spark in people soon vanished.

            Those who were creative, eccentric, and a little crazy were ostracized and eventually eliminated. I’m sorry to say that I don’t know how the last artist died. They were most likely depressed in a cluttered room, surrounded by their works, wondering if they were any good at all. But this is not their story. This is how humanity ended.

            Once the last artists and creators died, humanity kept devolving where they struggled using their highly advanced technology. The pictures were easy to read, but the technology itself baffled them. No one knew how to fix the machines when they broke or knew how to build new ones. When their power died out, humanity returned to a dark age.

            Each generation lost more pathways, stunting the brain's ability to form complex thoughts where humanity practically returned to a primitive state where their base desires governed their thoughts.

           And even then, evolution kept severing connections; their primal desires to seek food, shelter, and mating were weakening. Humanity regressed so far that they lost their ability to understand danger. The predators of the world quickly seized the opportunity and started taking back the planet by devouring the human population.

            Not long after this, humanity no longer understood the desire to mate and stopped mating entirely. Pregnant mothers were easy targets for large predators and quickly devoured. Mothers who survived the 9-month pregnancy gave birth to infants they couldn’t even recognize their offspring. Confused by these creatures spawned from their bodies, the mothers abandoned the children for the wilderness to consume.

            This could have made a better story too. A lone mother who defies the odds and wants to protect her newborn from the wild instead of abandoning it to the elements. She fights valiantly against predators, weather, and all manner of challenges to give her child a fighting chance to live, and inadvertently giving humanity a second chance at life.  

            Unfortunately, you are quite aware that this is not that story. This is the story of how humanity ended.

            The remnants of human civilization will stand far beyond humanity. Impressive superstructures towering above mountains and into the clouds are a testament to what humanity was and what they could have been if they kept evolving.

            But instead, humanity stalled. They could not understand the seeds of evolution. Instead of flourishing into a newtype of human capable of limitless calculations and creations, they convinced evolution to regress their intellectual superiority.

            I’m not sure what will happen to the earth now. Perhaps a new species will develop higher intelligence and start a new cycle of progression. Maybe humans will rebound thanks to a lone surviving infant with an extra connection that could give people a second chance. Maybe those super-sentient cephalopods rise up and adopt the technology left behind. Perhaps aliens will descend upon the planet and take Earth as their new home because of some galactic conquest or safe haven.

            All of those ideas would be fun stories to tell. But those stories haven’t happened yet. I’m here to tell you about this one. Which I did, and now you know, that this was how humanity ended.