For today’s generation there is a singular question, made conspicuous by violence, intolerance, righteousness, and outrage across the globe: Are we to be saved?  God, I hope not!

Take that last as a plea to whatever universal spirit you may conceive of, or merely a gasp of exasperation. I’ll admit to both.

It is not befitting our species, in my belief, to have its nose wiped and its skinned knees patted with salve. How much further beneath our dignity for any power, divine or extraterrestrial, to intercede on our behalf. Our excesses are clear, if oft denied. Our narcissistic arrogance, when studied from afar, holds the attention with the fascination of the northern lights.

Yeah, we have flaws and big ones at that.

And yet we, of all the creatures that have arisen through the myriad transformations of stubborn and indomitable life, across billions of years and through fitful extinctions and rebirths—we alone stand beneath the dark immensity of night with reasonable expectation that we shall claim the stars for our own. 

And if that sounds like shameless audacity, may your life be long enough to see it through.

Saved? We should have nothing to do with it. This is our game to win or lose, to play all out for the future of humankind. Humankind, that community of singular creatures adapted by their own indefatigable questing to migrate from pole to pole and sea to shining sea. 

Island to island, continent by continent, planet to planet, it is we the people who share the soul deep democracy of exploring new worlds and building new civilizations. 

Saved? Even within our own ranks, look to no leaders for your salvation, give no time to prophets or soothsayers who exhort you to aggrandize their own agendas and sign away your powers to their benefit. Celebrity is no qualification for discovery. Neither ancient doctrines nor paranoid conspiracies are true by the benefit of their tenacity.   

All that is necessary to bend the future toward the stars is… you.

Architects, engineers, and builders: roll up your sleeves. Scientists, mathematicians, and researchers: reveal the fundaments of existence to our demon-haunted minds. Artists, authors, and creators: call us to truth and inspiration both, for the recognition of fault is without meaning in the absence of hope. Physicians and healers, usher in the end of suffering and the quietus of death. Workers and wanderers, craftsman and caregivers: the future is your birthright far more surely than the soil of any single world.

Dreamers, make confident your voices! Call all those who seek a better world to the banners of reason, community, and civility. The fellowship of humanity awaits. If we, together, turn our backs on the shrill voices of division and destruction, of persecution and loathing, regardless of their ideologies, the fullest potential of our civilization shall be set in motion.

Whether you want to save a planet, protect a species, or serve a people, we are the problem solvers and the scholars, the warriors and the wisemen, the builders and the architects of destiny. That which we endanger we can restore. That which we lose we can win back again. That which conquers us in our ignorance we can defeat in the light of honest examination.

Skepticism, science, and community are our superpowers. 

Outrage, dogma, and contempt are as poison to us, the kryptonite that haunts us from our long-forgotten origins.

If it all sounds so simple; it’s not. A single life lived with integrity is among the hardest tasks of all, to recognize the suffering of others a burden greater still; to mature to the realization that neither outrage nor indignation are useful tools for any but the charlatans who would provoke you—the work of a lifetime.

And in that lifetime, there will be both triumph and tragedy. Reversals and losses to stagger the spirit are commonplace. Persistence is a treasure to be held in the face of overwhelming apathy. 

In the end, we must be indomitable spirits to claim our birthright, for the stars wait patiently yet offer no encouragement.

Science Fiction and Fantasy have their parts to play—as the literature of ideas, not the bulletins of despair. True, our success is hardly assured and has never been certain. When we were in our thousands, with lives short and brutal, the rise of the billions could not be foreseen. Flight was a dream; the sea a surface beneath which we could never venture; the space above us a dark and inhospitable void. 

Neither harangue nor hypocrisy, doomsaying nor visions of dystopia made our achievements possible. Therefore, in the face of all the dangers, and when you calculate out all the forces at work toward our destruction, and all those who wish and behave as if these are the end-times of Earth, forget not the one indefatigable and indomitable force that both causes and un-causes, selfishly destroys and selflessly creates, adapts to challenges and discovers new and unforeseen potential in every generation — and that only now is enjoying the powers of almost limitless capability: us.