memes

Fun fact: great filters don't necessarily have to wipe out the species, they just need to be obstacles unsurmountable by our current resources, mental capacity and evolutionary state.

It may be that for any species that develops spatial reasoning and language while still carrying survival instincts, that they can never get past a certain point where their tech keeps outpacing their own mental/cognitive capabilities and they keep bombing themselves back to the stone age, or creating some kind of technological wonder that they can't control because they're still unevolved primates/reptiles/insects/cephalopods despite having individual potential for thought and self-awareness.

There may be millions of civilizations out there just like us, who can look out at the stars and dream of a larger universe, but can never make a progress past their own prejudices and fears to ever get out into the universe until eventually their species just evaporates away into the great sea of entropy that comes for every world.