Several good holiday meals later, need to finish things up. I approach this final stretch of the column's run eagerly yet with a hint of melancholy. Many New Years have passed since they started, most good for me, one notably not so. The world has turned a few turns without suffering irrecoverable damage, and for whatever peace we enjoy may we be thankful. So this gets to be the last New Year's Resolution to change something. All these passing comments have together hopefully conveyed my general optimism with the challenges that remain for our species. And any promise that may follow.
There's something eerie in the magnificent timing we find ourselves. We are so vanishingly rare fortunate to be in historical proximity to achievement of space by our kind. It can't be remarked upon enough! Once you have access to the highly improbable, use it to your advantage. Here is our chance to do something to our credit. I already feel of all the times to be alive as a human, this is one of the best. About the only way to surpass that would have to start issuing our own starships!
As we are multicellular beings, a synergy greater than the sum of all our individual cells, so is society a synergistic multicellular creature greater than the sum of all the individual beings that comprise it. Implicit in that assumption is that few if any in The Body can or should be considered as either “waste” or “wasteful,” though Nomad would no doubt have a field day rendering improvements. Many civilizations rise and fall without notice beyond their participants. No doubt evolution accords many lifeforms the same forgettable fate. It's necessary at this moment for us to advance our civilization and life itself in a manner no other can have to send ripples in time.
There are only a few things we've done so far to merit notice. Intensive agriculture, alphabet writing, pyramid construction, and moon landing. There's probably some credit for other technologies that contribute in their own way to those remarkable ones, but all in all the progress of our culture advances according to landmarks of such stature. After the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, then what? Best I can tell they invented beer, went stagnant, got wiped out. I am not hacking on them, just making a larger point about mankind as a whole. The day after Apollo, the genesis of Aquarius, the dawn of the human adventure only just beginning … then what?