You know, the world is a funny place.
We occupy a minute speck of dust, on a grain of sand, among a vast beach of beaches. Everything that has ever happened to humankind has occurred here.
The chances of us ever leaving our own back garden in any realistic way is atom slim.
Of course, we could invent a way of storing our bodies cryogenically or sending out generation ships to endlessly scour the galaxy.
However, this would involve hundreds of thousands of years of travel to get anywhere meaningful. By the time the ships arrive, humans will have engaged in something drastically different from those that left them.
There is also the genuine possibility that as technology advances past that of the ships initially sent out, they could invent something that could essentially lap them. There is even the chance that humans could destroy themselves on Earth.
Those floating in the endless sea of space are the only humans left, possibly in the universe.
Get to the point, I hear you furiously shout. Well, my point is hope.
But not the cheesy movie sort of hope. I mean that, even though in our lifetimes, and even millenniums of generations, we will not be leaving this rock.
However, we still continue to watch science fiction, philosophize about it, and even think we have been visited. Entirely what the obsession with anal probes is, I will never know.
The fact is that, although we know that we can’t leave, we fantasize about doing so, a bit like a prisoner, I guess.
Anyway, what does this have to do with anything? Well, I was just watching a rather splendid episode of Stargate SG1, where our eponymous heroes go to another world through the stargate, who want the technologically superior humans to give them weapons to defeat their enemies, who have recently allied no less.
However, our hero knows better and understands that providing defensive weapons to someone backed into a corner can result in said weapons becoming offensive. Which is bad.
The Kelownans, (episode 7, series 6 if anyone’s wondering) didn’t listen and kept insisting. They couldn’t put their differences behind them and just work together with their enemies, even in destruction.
Why am I saying all of this? Well partly because I am writing this while watching TV, which is never a good thing, but also because I have been studying politics at the moment.
This has the unique ability to be both dull and exciting at the same time. Mainly because I have to go through all the material again for revision as I did not write any notes in the first instance.
By going through it all, you can really see how our differences, or perceived differences, can cause an awful lot of trouble, which can ultimately be hard to overcome.
On the other hand, if we were to face some kind of threat that necessitated the need to join forces to save our race, would we, or indeed could we do it? That is the question I posit to you, dear reader.
This finally leads me back to my original rambling. Maybe as a result of our mysterious, hopeful, curious, and thoughtful nature, we could actually be forced together in one beautiful, homogeneous blob, and fight the evil forces that may come to threaten us.
That is all. Warp speed Mr. reader, get us out of here…