Maybe the great filter is the misuse of apostrophes?

Hell of a shower thought, Mr. Sagan.

The the DNA brick wall we've been climbing is exactly that.

You've reminded me of some of my favorite hip hop lyrics of all time. If you never heard Eyedea before he died (27 club, I think?), Eyedea had Eminem level potential. Fucking incredible lyricist. If this tickles your fancy, go peep the album First Born.

Eyedea & Abilities - Man vs Ape

Move!

There's no telling what I'ma do

I'm eighty-thousand years of natural selection comin through

You ain't got as much aggression, possessions, weapons

I'll be damned if I get outdone by the next man

If you're beliefs are different than mine, then we gonna fight

Who needs peace when you can profit from being right?

I hold picket signs outside abortion clinic doors

Take what I want with force

And my God could kill yours

.

Involved with a species evolving so slowly

Genetically infantile, violent and holy

We think we're so smart but there's not much to know

Caveman is still alive behind those robot eyes

Fully controlled by ten thousand year old instincts

Hands on the war button, flinch and your world's extinct

This is technology for the barbarian

I see the future: the past, we'll be there again

.

Remember, the atom bomb came from the same place as poetry

.

Die dirty hippy commie scum, Christian, Muslim Buddhist, Jew

Democrat, factory-workin, college student you...

My nervous system don't take no bullshit

Been dominating since the day I touched the monolith

I only breed with sex-symbol worthy women

They stay at home and cook while I go out a make a living

Don't challenge my ego, don't step on my shoe

Otherwise the next wake that you attend might be for you

.

Grindin' my teeth as I'm battling uphill

The fight against ape-hood is fate versus free will

We think we're advanced but there's nowhere to go

Mammals stay captive to animal actions

So slowly we climb up this DNA brick wall

Addicted to emptiness, anger and pitfalls

Desire for space, territory, or lust

We'll eventually turn this whole planet to dust

.

There can be no peace when man is still a part of it

.

Purpose, perseverance, wordless amoeba surface

To lead the first coherent paleolithic circus

Specific neuro-circuits link man and Neanderthal

However, recent bio-chemical imprints

conflict with primitive urges

It's full blown ontological warfare

Murdering memories in the future two million years

Peace is a word we often say,

But it can't exist as long as the ape is here to stay

I think the evolution of multicellular life is most likely to be the great filter, since it took the longest to develop on earth.

Maybe the great filter was the friends we made along the way?

I don't think that's an "if" at all. I firmly believe that that's exactly it.

The same behaviours that we needed to evolve are harmful now that we've reached a potential "post-scarcity" stage.

To put it more bluntly, the drive to compete for resources in order to survive is what made us the dominant species. Now that post-scarcity is essentially upon us, our nature is to create artificial scarcity in order to satiate that drive for competition. And it will be the ultimate end of us.

What if the great filter is our love of carbs?

I like the idea that the Great Filter is really just civilizations turning inward. Like they all get to a point where they realize that space travel is just really not viable and so they stop looking to explore the universe or find other life. Instead they turn to virtual worlds to prolong their existence with what resources they have available in their own star systems. Not even Dyson spheres or anything, they just go into digital hibernation and live out the rest of their lifetimes in a fabricated paradise for however long they can. Maybe they're able to use drugs/genetics/whatever to slow time down to a crawl where it feels like they live thousands of years within a normal lifespan.

For Outer Wilds fans, basically:

I don't know if this theory has a proper name but I have seen it multiple times.

If a species has the ability to push their technology to the point they could become a space faring species, that technology will destroy the civilization before it can get there

Then we better hurry the fuck up before we make it impossible to live on the planet.

Reminds me of my thoughts after reading "Why Buddhism is True" by Robert Wright. If you haven't read it before I highly recommend it.

So we all just happily go back to living in forest?

Hey OP, here is some serious DD you might like