TissueBox

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,983
Urinated States of America
We've kissed the sky, touched the moon, created hundreds of genres of music, found the value in morals, laid cables through the sea, created cyberspace, perceived existence in all its accoutrements and channeled it into art, stories, romance; developed civilizations with innumerable checks and balances and complex social infrastructures, learned deep applications with the utility of numbers, axioms, and shapes, examined ourselves and evolved through social, logistical, technological, intellectual means alone, despite our biology remaining mostly the same since our original germination, observed the constructs behind our instincts and wondered, for once, if there were more to living than just following them.

We are this world's Forerunners, the awakened ape, a collective Icarus, the grand audience of a lonely universe who have turned a chunk of Earth into a wide-scale, planetary tribute to existence itself.

We are all collectively insane, dramatics, lovers and poets -- the theater kid of the animal kingdom, with rich parents that lent us one great privilege rattling between our ears, even if not, necessarily, the responsibility with which to use it.

But on we tread regardless, endeavoring to wade through history in all its ups and downs, its foibles and missteps, its triumphs and victories, no matter where the end may lead.

Shout out one of your fav human accomplishments, or any which one you feel like proppin', down below..!! ^^'
 

Nephilim

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,557
Agreed. Now think what humanity could be if nations would stand together and not loose themselves in war, political agendas etc...

But that also is humanity i guess.
 

QisTopTier

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,118
Shout out one of your fav human accomplishments, or any which one you feel like proppin', down below..!! ^^'
Vaccines are crazy as fuck

Agreed. Now think what humanity could be if nations would stand together and not loose themselves in war, political agendas etc...

But that also is humanity i guess.
It sucks but the series of world conflicts and wars from the 20th century is what led us to where we are today in terms of rapid growth
 
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Apr 17, 2019
1,455
Viridia
-snip-
Shout out one of your fav human accomplishments, or any which one you feel like proppin', down below..!! ^^'
Fire and the earliest metalworking. Been on a primitive technology (the OG one) binge and damn the crazy dude who first explored and did that much work for a few grams of metal should've been immortalized in history.

Oh and while we're in the mood, can someone recommend good HFY stories that don't devolve into jingoism please?
 

Beren

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,737
Shoutouts to whomever discovered the first recreational drugs. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
 

Typhon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,323
Ironic that our accomplishments will likely be the thing that destroys us in the end (climate change, nukes, take your pick)
 

I am a Bird

Member
Oct 31, 2017
7,615
society-peaked-when-gamecube-had-tiny-disks-v0-lpsefx4otbjd1.jpeg


Beer. It's amazing how intertwined with human history the making of alcohol is.
 

Geido

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,201
We spread out across the entire world and then figured out a way to instantly communicate with anyone anywhere.

I had a meeting where I saw and heard a person halfway accross the world just now and how mundane it actually is to do that is mindblowing if you think about it.
 
Oct 27, 2017
7,943
We've writ our existence large in the stars, in the void of space our planet is lit by a billion lights in the dark. And a surprising amount of people choose to squander their sentience and humanity by being absolute pricks.
 

EatChildren

Wonder from Down Under
Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,172
Someone cynical is going to scoff at the concept of human accomplishments due to the damage humans have objectively caused to the environment and themselves, as a vague justification for the absence of "accomplishments", despite "accomplishments" being relative and requiring a point of reference, of which we're explicitly limited to and, using the limitations we do have, fairly objectively note accomplishments.

And I say that as someone relatively cynical.

But to answer your question, medicine and science in general. The human capacity to critically reason and innate, biologically wired to understand how mechanisms work, to understand the world around us, has given us a profound and ever growing insight into reality and existence and, by virtue of this, the ability for us harness of altruistic purposes. Medicine in concept is just so unbelievable, really, when you think about the goal of survival, healing, and caring for one another. We've built entire schools of thought, disciplines, and dedication of life to understanding, building, and implementing means to cure illnesses, support the less able, fight aging, and in general better understand ourselves, our limitations, and how to overcome them.

If you were to distil the 'purpose of living' to the most rudimentary, accurate, biological reasoning, that being that the purpose of living is to live as long as possible and procreate, we've achieved this in a way no other living creature has, with such profound complexity and nuance that it is, in practice, utterly remarkable.

And obviously yes the double edged sword here is for all these achievements we've used the same intellect, and sometimes even the same practice, to inflict immeasurable harm and suffering on others and ourselves. But, you know, nature and its perceived balance is painfully romanticised. We're a work in progress.
 

Daphne

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
4,047
Fire and the earliest metalworking. Been on a primitive technology (the OG one) binge and damn the crazy dude who first explored and did that much work for a few grams of metal should've been immortalized in history.

Oh and while we're in the mood, can someone recommend good HFY stories that don't devolve into jingoism please?
The "basic" technologies that we totally take for granted are the ones that get me. Like cheese-making, working out a way to preserve easy to spoil milk and creating something delicious, or domesticating crops, selectively breeding an apple tree, for example. I just had some corn chips and that's because some people thousands of years ago worked their asses off cultivating maize as a crop.
 

Transistor

Or else Pizza is gonna send out for you
Administrator
Oct 25, 2017
38,505
Washington, D.C.
We accomplished the Steam Deck, which is the greatest advancement in human history.

Penicillin? Shit
Flight? Shit
Refrigeration? Shit
Pasteurization? Shit

The Steam Deck beats them all
 
Oct 26, 2017
7,859
In 2001 when I first went to Japan I needed to go to an internet cafe to send an e-mail to my parents to tell them I had arrived safely to the other side of the world. And that was still instant, if limited. If it had been in 1991 I would have needed to send a letter (that would arrive after I came home) or make a super expensive phone call.

In 2016 I could make a video call from my phone, connected to the hotel wi-fi.

If I went today, I could do it through VR chat.

Of course, this entire scenario depends on me being able to step into a tube that takes me to the other side of the world in less than a day.
 
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Sanctuary

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,986
Despite riding in them a couple times a year, I still don't really believe airplanes work.

Despite watching shows or interacting with games through a monitor, I'm still in awe how much we've progressed in a technological sense in just a hundred years.
That's just a damn TV/monitor. Our technology has vastly eclipsed that at this point.

That's also what has me pause. We're so worried on whether or not we can, we aren't considering if we should. It seems like science fiction eventually becomes our reality, and despite all of the reassurances that any fears regarding AI are "simply unfounded", they are until they aren't. We're going to be the architects of our own destruction. Nukes haven't done it yet, so let's build something even more dangerous...because we can! If the planet doesn't kill us first due to our design.

Ironic that our accomplishments will likely be the thing that destroys us in the end (climate change, nukes, take your pick)

Yep.
 

nelsonroyale

Member
Oct 28, 2017
12,204
Who are you talking to? I mean only humans care about framing things in this way, and some humans at that. To be honestly, I think it is a pretty mixed bag...with impressive creativity and at least equal amounts of bollocks as well.
 

Mudcrab

Avenger
Oct 26, 2017
3,512
Unironically the process of water sanitation is an incredible achievement and there's lots of amazing things like that that we take for granted every day
 

Miamiwesker

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,870
Miami
What we did in the last 124 years is nuts, more advancements in that span than the rest of human history combined. Think of what 1900 looked like, no airplanes, TV hasn't been invented, no indoor plumbing or electricity for pretty much every home. Look how that century ended, we could communicate with anyone in the world on a computer instantly. It's wild.
 

AvianAviator

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Jun 23, 2021
7,472
Ever since I've entered the engineering industry I've begun to see how systemic everything is and how reliant we are on each individual person in the engine doing their part to make the system flow. (This goes beyond just human industry, it's also given me a better appreciation of natural ecosystems, they were the first systems after all.)

It is frustrating when people, particularly the rich/elite, can't see beyond their own nose and don't realize that all this industry, all their luxury is only possible because of everyone beneath them working under their own specializations to generate growth, to generate progress. It is frustrating on a historical level too, when people act like you can just flip a switch and racism/sexism is over, when we still have institutions in place that were built on those outdated ideas, when the ripples of past actions are still flowing through the present and will flow into the future. Acting like that doesn't exist is frustrating.
 

Fanuilos

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
4,617
Music is kinda nuts. It's like painting with time and vibrations. There so many different takes on it and the medium is limitless.
 

Cipher Peon

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,547
Great thread OP.

I love our accomplishments and things have gotten so much better in my lifetime, let alone the grand scheme of things. Outside of the obvious (agriculture, internet, indoor plumbing, mathematics, industrialization, etc), I will say Silent Hill 2 is my favorite achievement by humanity. One of our greatest qualities is to make incredible art and there is no art more incredible than Silent Hill 2.
 
Oct 27, 2017
6,471
Written language has to be the top achievement. Without it I don't think anything else would have been possible.
With it we're able to store knowledge, communicate across great distances and time, and so much more.

Just think about how crazy it is that we know the names of people from thousands of years ago.
That we still read stories written by those who couldn't even comprehend the world of today.
That we know of random legal rulings from ancient civilizations, or that we know about a random guy working on the pyramids taking a day off because he was hung over.

The fantastical and the mundane are all available for us, and that's a wonder in itself.
 

mantidor

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,328
Cellphones are something else.

But really, the fact we have changed the world to such extremes, and also that we have the tools to know that yes, this change was our fault, it's kind of amazing. it's the tiny silver lining of the mess that is climate change, we know the cause, we can work on it.