2020→ The Great Filter
If our universe is so unimaginably large with countless of habitable planets, why have we until now found no evidence of life beside our own planet?
It may be that’s it’s difficult for life to appear as is, or that once it has it’s difficult to survive in suboptimal conditions. These are the great filters - barriers that make it hard for life to proliferate further.
Some say the great filter is behind us, that as improbable as it is, life on planet earth has jumped all the hurdles in its path and is now advanced enough to grow indefinitely.
There is however the idea that we haven’t yet passed the great filter, and that’s something that frightens me. What if the reason we see no life in the stars is that something happened to those intelligent life forms before they could venture beyond the confines of their own planet or solar system? What if self destruction is an inevitable outcome of high intelligence?
[For exhibition “Note To Self”, The Hague, 2020]