If Intelligence Is Our Only Edge, We

The Vast Distances That Separate The Stars Are Providential. Beings And Worlds Are Quarantined From One Another. The Quarantine Is Lifted Only For Those With Sufficient Self-knowledge And Judgment To Have Safely Traveled From Star To Star.

Those With The Courage To Explore The Weave And Structure Of The Cosmos, Even Where It Differs Profoundly From Their Wishes And Prejudices, Will Penetrate Its Deepest Mysteries.

Once We Overcome Our Fear Of Being Tiny, We Find Ourselves On The Threshold Of A Vast And Awesome Universe That Utterly Dwarfs — In Time, In Space, And In Potential — The Tidy Anthropocentric Proscenium Of Our Ancestors.

We Are Rare And Precious Because We Are Alive, Because We Can Think As Well As We Can. We Are Privileged To Influence And Perhaps Control Our Future. I Believe We Have An Obligation To Fight For Life On Earth - Not Just For Ourselves, But For All Those, Humans And Others, Who Came Before Us, And To Whom We Are Beholden, And For All Those Who, If We Are Wise Enough, Will Come After.

We Live In An In-between Universe Where Things Change All Right...but According To Patterns, Rules, Or As We Call Them, Laws Of Nature.