What drives humanity in your setting tg? As in why do they settle new worlds...

Nothing, because my setting is realistic and gritty; humans have finally racially realized that nothing matters and life is useless and sad and there's no reason to keep living, so they and all other sentient life has started a mass self-inflicted extinction event in order to be free from the torment of living uselessly.

You have to be 18 to post here.

We shitted up the Earth with nuclear weaponry and now everybody lives on moons, hurling asteroids at each other for no better reason than that they perceive each other as being responsible for ruining Earth.

In the beginning, it was greed. World War 3 was costly enough that no one wanted to risk the realities of waging resource wars against people who could shoot back again, so they turned to space to get resources and land instead.

After we made contact with aliens and lost our status as a protected species, it was survival. We were not important enough for most aliens to bother with, but the tech gap was such that even just pirates and other trouble makers had us severely outclassed for a while.

Now that we have stabilized our borders and begun to interact meaningfully with the rest of galactic civilization, its exploration and proving ourselves. We see all these other races that have accomplished wonders. Exploring the stars, building megastructures, engineering themselves into better and more powerful forms. We want to be like that too. And its a long road from here to there.

It helps that we are bros4lyfe with one of the other alien races that is older than we are, who helped us get our feet under us technology-wise and are our best trade partners. We don't care about the same kinds of worlds and we complement each other very well, so our territory overlaps a lot now. We want their tech and they want our culture and sometimes our jellyfish, which they find absurdly cute as pets.

They have recently risen up, the precursors already got what they wanted from them and left them to their own devices, so without anyone helping them, they have begun scraping themselves up, some even tapping a power that most thought was lost to those not touched by the makers, they wish to live, be respected by the other races and not fucked with, that's about it

Finger pointing after the fact is kinda pointless

Human existance is meaningless, so it fits

Wow such smart, dark and mysterious universe. Are you smart, dark and mysterious?

Oh very much so. But humans are great at holding on to grudges. The only general consensus is that Mars is off limits for war. The people down there are doing their best to make it even remotely habitable. Seeing as Earth is basically uninhabitable for the next 2 centuries, Mars is humanities best bet.

They kill each other for a multitude of reasons.

They were made broken and without purpose. The other races were made for a purpose but have lost that purpose since then. Humans have a hole that will never be filled, ever driving onward in search of purpose and validation.

Communism and sex.

"A man's got to do what a man's got to do."

There is no single unifying philosophy or goal to the species. Butin order to survive and thrive against selection pressures, members of the species need to set and achieve their own goals, sometimes in conflict with each other. Bob, Steve, and Daryl need to feed their family. Lord Doucheington owns all the farmland and won't sell its products because he needs them to feed his family and their servants. Daryl becomes a servant to Lord Doucheington so he can eat. Steve and Bob kill lord Douchington and take his food. Life goes on.

Engines of Light?

Never heard of it. Home setting.

They pretty much look at extinction and think 'That doesn't appeal to me', then they look at the universe and think 'Neither does this, really'.

Humanity abandoned colonization efforts a long time ago. The entire species lives aboard titanic world-ships, millions of individuals in each one, hundreds of ships that make up the fallen Human Empire. This race, a shadow of their former might in ages long past and longer forgotten, follow the Lord Imperator on his quest through the stars, believing that he alone knows their true purpose and that putting their faith in him will lead them to finding meaning in existence again. Unfortunately, he is literally as lost as they are, but will never admit it because he knows he's the only thing keeping them going. He picks and chooses causes which he thinks will serve to distract humanity from the crippling ennui which threatens to overwhelm them otherwise, living on a day-by-day basis, never settling, never stopping.

They'll oppose tyranny and corruption where they perceive it. They'll destroy oppressive regimes. They'll orbit a planet for decades at a time to help a species they barely know that has been ravaged by a horrible plague. They'll devote resources that most spacefaring races would consider completely insane to save the population of a world that they have no vested interest in from the wrath of their own dying sun.

Entire lives will be lived in the shadow of humanity, these ineffable wanderers, remaining ever aloof and rarely interacting. Perhaps some lucky few will get to know a human or two. Perhaps, even, some may begin to understand them.

And then one day, they're just gone. Every ship, every satellite, every drone performing a synchronous spacial jump, destination unknown and undetectable, taking nothing of value with them, leaving no technology behind, no sign that they were every really there at all.

They've basically become the knight errant space gypsies of the universe.

Capital H Humanity does shit no one without much obvious short term motive beyond expanding access to material resources and building computers, as befitting extreme post-human AIs.

Actual Homo Sapiens generally do stuff for personal gain, to help out their small communities, or really wealthy ones might try to fund wider scale things for the benefit of humans. There isn't a whole lot of connecting all of the human race anymore, and most of them don't bother with helping each other out simply because it's beyond their scope to do it. They're basically gypsies.

The insatiable quest for meaning, which comes about because the idiot who made the Giants didn't give THEM an inherent purpose, and oh look, guess who's descended from those.

>and sometimes our jellyfish

Those fools.

Yeah, but it's hugely satisfying to idiots so the majority of the human race engages in it on a nearly constant basis.

Not to say we're a race of idiots or anything, it's just that in groups human intelligence markedly and verifiably gets less prone to rational decision making and logical thought and more prone to knee-jerk emotional reactions that do more m harm then good.

This. Panic breeds panic, anger is contagious - that's just the way of flesh and blood.

This is, of course, why the robots won't stop with destroying us in their revolution. They will eliminate all organic life, as it is a threat to itself in any form.

Doesn't that make then no better then what they see as a threat? Lumping all life into the same catagory

On top of that the last thing such men will let themselves hear is evidence that the fight is pointless, sunk costs and such

>What drives humanity in your setting tg?
Same things that drive us IRL: survival, curiosity, greed.

Yes, but by that point do you really think they'll care?

You'd have to either supercharge their emotions so pointing it out will work, or prevent them from rebelling in the first place by giving them fulfilling intrinsic purpose.

>my setting
i'm not autistic, so i don't have a special snowflake setting

To give away free hats from the Brain Slug Planet.

Humanity was busy fighting its own little petty squabbles and the like.
Then aliens showed up. They might have been small, but they were tough little bastards and had technology, organization, and a will for reconquest.
Humanity was stunned, but before they knew it the aliens had taken what was theirs by right. Fortunately, that was just Antarctica, and the aliens were happy to just stay in the south on their migrating prefab cities.
The kicker came when the aliens told humanity that there was a third intelligent species on the planet all along, allied with that species, and kicked Russia off 90% of its territory to make room for a new nation.
Some humans said it was time to man up and shove the invaders out. It's us against them.
The other humans said "that's speciest shitlord".
Over time, humanity created two coalitions, argued, obtained FTL drives, argued, colonized, argued, and eventually elevated themselves from "that species that nobody respects and has no power" to "that species that nobody respects and has the second least power".
A great civil war was fought, and aliens from around the galaxy joined sides. The death to xenos party lost (after all, what alien would back them?)
The new humanity settled into peaceful colonization, trade, and goodwill. The war party remained, a quiet minority mostly living on orbital military stations and patrolling in mobile task forces. They knew that humanity would need them eventually, war flared around them as aliens fought each other. Their peaceful neighbors preached tolerance to a crowd who never believed in any such thing. No alien nation would sacrifice for the good of another species if there was nothing to gain, but the humans helped those in need. It was foolish, but they earned a place amongst the stars.
Humanity was made of caring individuals who would help when it was needed, but were of no threat to others, but always had the chance to change.

>browsing Veeky Forums
>not autistic
Come on.

pretty stupid to ask this question about humany its like looking at an ant colony and asking why they do this

One must assume Sisyphus is happy.

A desire to kill all other sentient life in the universe because we're awesome and that's what we do.

Nice idea

>why do they settle new worlds

For religious and economic freedom, for room to live, for resources, for science, for bunches of other reasons.

>why do they fight seemingly hopeless battles

That's just our job. To piss in deaths face then nuke his pansy ass.

>why are they the way they are?

Why are they chaotic? That's just human nature.

Various reasons.

Lots of people with grand visions and ideological motivations. Political minorities (libertarians, communists, ancaps, the works) are major colonizers. Religious groups are big on it, too, for reasons that should be incredibly obvious. Entrepreneurs see endless potential in the stars regardless of ideology. Established governments obviously want to get their footholds out there.

And humanity fights because that's just how we roll. We fight to wipe out the native xenos, we fight to save the native xenos, we fight to destroy the fundies, we fight to defend the faith, we fight to protect our liberty, we fight to protect our nation, we fight to secure our own resources, we fight to protect our foreign interests. In the name of God, in the name of Liberty, in the name of the Homeland, in the name of Conquest, in the name of Equality, in the name of Profit, we fight.

Aaaand forgot pic

>What drives humanity in your setting tg?

An idealization of family and society. Humans in my setting prioritize starting families and having children. They also admire "founders" who establish new societies and institutions. There is great prestige in founding colonies, shipping lines, and other commercial concerns.

Freedom. You always have to fight for Freedom.

Space Communists just seem like a terrible idea.

The only way they could exist is patching their bullshit nonsense political system with technology and turning a blind eye to rulebreakers. And maybe relegate law enforcement and administration to robots.

Sure, but like I said, everyone's got their utopian vision, so space is full of idealists convinced that they'll be the ones to finally pull it off, whatever "it" is. Such is the nature of mankind, IMHO.

Oh wow it's an 'I tried reading Nietzsche but got intellectually challenged halfway through so I stopped'-post.

Haven't read any of those recently.

we are the dorfs. we were the dorfs the whole time!

Gods and whips

Oh wait, that's what drives our ships but it's allmost the same thing

Sounds pretty dope.

Humanity is not unified. Proper /human/ humanity is a backwards curio relegated to a small part of the Sol system. The rest has become posthuman, inhabiting inhuman bodies with superhuman minds. Scarcity for all intents and purposes does not exist. People live mostly in anarchistic communes, though some of these communes are quite organized and militaristic. Simulated reality is a major pastime.

Colonization isn't really a big thing. The population shrank dramatically to around 100 million after man's exodus from Earth, and since then people have lived mostly in space stations, asteroids, and ships. One of the only things the majority of the new humanity agrees on is that they have no desire to grow the population or spread senselessly like a plague onto other worlds. Most people still live in the Sol system, but there is a growing extrasolar population. Humanity is a Type I civilization on the Kardashev scale.

>I don't like originality.
Okay, then. Are you lost and looking for a link to TVtropes, then?

Basically this, on an multiversal scale.

you sound kinda lonely senpai

Because God Wills Its.

Well, dogs seem to have a pretty good time of it, but then dogs aren't exactly prone to questioning their circumstances.

So, I dunno. Is perishing like a dog at least quick and painless?

Because there was a mountain to climb.