The answer is a sad yes. Not immediately perhaps but sooner than later there will be no need for humans except for very specific purposes. It does not require a rogue asteroid to cause an extinction event. With diligence we can extinguish ourselves. We are doing this right now with no thought about it all.
Don’t look at the sky and worry about the asteroid. We don’t need it. Considering the estimated probability of an asteroid impact big enough to cause extinction of all life on earth as very remote I discount that idea. Because there exists and grows another far more insidious entity out to grab us by the throat and murder us all.
No I am not talking about some far-away distant dystopian world. I am talking about now. The seeds were sown much earlier and the roots are already firm in the ground on which it will grow. Looking carefully we can detect the feeling less shoots erupt all over the place.
I talk about ourselves. No not ourselves as purveyors of nuclear death or biological weapons. Grotesquely enough, we don’t need any of that.
Remember that ancient question “Who am I”?
We have grasped a lot and discarded that fundamental question somewhere along the way as an aberration. And yet the moment we saw mirth in this question instead of existence of ourselves the doom was spawned.
How did the Roman Empire get out of reality and walk into history. Not by that comet which blazes forth the death of empires. I sought an answer to this in another blog of my blogs. Consider the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, india, China. How long did they last. And look then at the Romans. They did not last as long. They could be measured in centuries. And as for the longevity of later, self-styled civilisations or empires if you please, their survival is truly in decades. Like a century is ten decades.
But notice that although our old animosities still survive humans essentially span the earth now as a conglomeration of organisms. Question: For how long?
There is no meaning in talking about specific groups, categories or powers. The time to for that distinction came and went while we were too busy to notice. The extinction of humanity began sometime back on the back burner. It was too subtle for our arrogance to notice. In the Conflict of Karna I mention, en passant, how battles have changed and transformed themselves into automata. You don’t kill a worthy opponent in combat; you squash a flea.
In the course of this mechanisation of basic emotions we planted our own seeds of extinction. That was long ago. Now it is a giant, invisible and totally powerful ocean in which we swim our daily lives. It is like dark matter and energy. We only suspect it must exist because otherwise our pet theories will not stand scrutiny.