It’s Not Too Late to Turn Back

A Meditation on Humanity’s Path Forward

The purpose of this essay is not to convince nor to sway. It does not offer solutions or plans. It serves but a simple purpose of reminding humanity an obvious fact. It is to remind humanity of how far we have come;
look at the skyscrapers and look at the metropolis around the world. Look at the computer and AI, look at the endless gray roads we have paved. The giant flying birds we call planes, and the bullets we shoot to outer space we call spaceships. Look at the train tracks and the massive agricultural projects in the Midwest.
And the tanks, bombs, drones; all the military might. Think about how much effort we have put in - how many lives dedicated to these projects, how many lives sacrificed for them, the generational work behind humanity’s accomplishments.
Blood, sweat, and tears lay the foundation over much of the luxuries we enjoy today.

We have poured so much time and effort to build the world we have today. Except we really haven’t.

And this is not to belittle the work we have put in so far. No no no, I hail from the other side of the spectrum. To truly honor the hard work of our ancestors, we must ensure the trail of humanity stretches as far as possible.
All this hard work, if thought of as an entity, would not want us to keep stepping forward simply because of the commitment we have shown so far. Largely due to, in its perspective, we have only scratched the surface.
Humans have been around for thousands of years, and the largest event that has shaped our recent times, the industrial revolution, is less than 300 years ago. This is just a tiny spec in the timeline for humans.
A timeline of further exploration, into space and beyond, into things that we have not explored yet.

So out of respect for the hard work of our ancestors, let’s not keep pushing forward just because we have committed. Let’s understand that, if we ever need to, it is better to take a step back now than many steps back in the future.
That is not to say that we are definitely heading towards a bad destination with the current path that we have taken, but I just want to remind us all not to fall under, as a species, a sunken cost fallacy, and to look at the larger perspective of things.
Even if we need to turn back the clock 300 years and start over, that is okay.

The path of human progress is not a straight line reaching endlessly upward. It is more like the breathing of a great organism - expansion and contraction, forward and backward, each movement part of a larger pattern. We often forget this truth, caught up in the relentless march of what we call progress. But wisdom sometimes lies in knowing when to pause, when to step back, when to let go of what we thought was essential.

Step backs are bound to happen. There is no way we will keep moving forward without backtracking - to believe otherwise is to be fooled by humanity’s unreasonable illusion of a lifetime’s significance. The universe doesn’t think in centuries, much like we don’t think in nanoseconds. To believe we’re in the clear simply because multiple lifetimes have passed since our last major setback is to misunderstand the scale of time itself.

Consider how far the Bronze Age collapse (1200 BC) set us back, or the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 CE), the destruction of the Library of Alexandria (48 BC - 632 AD), the Mongol Invasions (13th century CE), and the Black Plague (14th century AD). It’s hard to quantify these setbacks precisely because we, bound to this timeline, cannot truly imagine how different our world might have been without these events. What is certain through these events is there were massive losses in human lives (and thus potential), and major technological setbacks.

The Bronze Age Collapse led to a widespread loss of written language, complex trade networks, and advanced metallurgy techniques. The fall of the Western Roman Empire led to what we now call the Dark Ages of Europe, and it took centuries before we salvaged the lost progress.
The destruction of the Library of Alexandria led to the loss of countless irreplaceable manuscripts and books, setting back scientific and philosophical knowledge. The Mongol invasions destroyed trade routes, inhibiting the transfer of ideas and goods.
The Black Plague killed off 30-60% of Europe’s population; where would we have been if the humans lost in this plague were able to contribute to the future of humanity?

Even more dangerous are the setbacks we don’t view in a negative light - ones we sometimes even celebrate as progress. Once again, our inability to imagine alternative timelines blinds us, as we only live through this one history. The Conquest of the Americas (15th-16th century AD), alongside its sweeping plagues, erased countless human lives, unique knowledge systems, and cultural heritage. We now look back in awe at the philosophical depths of these civilizations, wondering what wisdom was lost forever.

More controversially, consider the Green Revolution - celebrated for reducing hunger, improving food security, and supporting population growth. Yet it has led us to capital-intensive farming, resulting in soil degradation, water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Perhaps an alternative path through agroecology would have addressed these same fundamental needs while being more equitable, resilient, and environmentally sustainable in the long run.
Or consider the plastic revolution - hailed as the miracle material of the modern age, transforming everything from medicine to manufacturing. Yet now we find it in the deepest ocean trenches, in the blood of newborns, in the rain that falls on our most pristine mountains. We solved immediate problems of packaging, preservation, and production, only to create a burden that will persist for millennia. Our convenience of decades has become the negative inheritance of countless generations.

Today, I urge humanity to look at the path we are taking with our contemporary advances. It seems to me as our technology advances, the repercussions of an unyielding march forward also grows comparatively. I urge us to really take some time and ponder about our path.
I urge us to exercise, if needed, the freedom to turn back and start over, regardless if, in the worst case, it means the loss of years of hard work. Again, in the grand scheme of things, the slight delay will mean nothing when we are out venturing into deep space, exploring and discovering things we can’t even imagine today.

For example, as an AI Engineer, I believe the realm of Artificial Intelligence should be a main concern. Our ethical understanding and governance of these systems has lagged far behind their technological advancement. In my eyes, ethics has moved linearly, while technological advancement has grown exponentially.
We celebrate each breakthrough, each new capability, while our frameworks for ensuring these systems serve humanity’s long-term flourishing remain primitive and reactive.
Consider also social media and its promise to connect humanity. Yet we find ourselves more isolated than ever, our attention fractured, our mental well-being eroding under the weight of infinite scrolling and artificial connections.
The consequences of these technological leaps grow more profound with each passing year.

Let us remember that in the vast expanse of human history, our current civilization is but a brief moment. Our responsibility extends beyond maintaining what we’ve built - it lies in ensuring that the story of human progress continues, even if the next chapter requires us to rewrite some of what came before.

The question before us is not whether setbacks will occur - they are inevitable in the timeline of human civilization. It’s the curse of living in the present and knowing only the past. Rather, the question is whether we will have the wisdom and foresight to choose our setbacks carefully, deliberately, and on our own terms.
When we examine our history through an honest lens, we see that progress is not linear, and what appears as progress in one generation may reveal itself as shortsightedness in the next. Perhaps true wisdom lies not in our ability to push ever forward, but in our capacity to recognize when to pause, reflect, and yes, even step backward.

For all the sweat and blood our ancestors have poured into building our civilization, for all the dreams our descendants will carry forward, we must remember a simple truth: no progress is too precious to abandon if it leads us down a path of destruction.
The sunken cost fallacy becomes exponentially more dangerous when applied to the entire human species. We cannot afford to keep marching forward simply because we’ve already invested centuries in a particular direction. If we need to step back - whether it’s decades or centuries - to preserve the greater journey of humanity, then that is not just acceptable, it is necessary.
To truly respect our ancestors’ sacrifices, we must be willing to undo centuries of their work to save humanity’s future. For what is the weight of lost progress compared to the weight of our species’ future?