The end of science, and humanity's fear of being alone

 If there is such a thing as real-life good versus evil, it may be found in humanity's struggle between reason and dogma.

When wandering tribes of hunter-gatherers established the seeds of modern society in places like Sumer and the subsequent Akkadian Empire, it would blossom into (among others) the civilisations of Ancient Egypt and Rome, bringing to people a life where clean water, hygiene with bathing houses and sewer systems, and general prosperity and happiness became attainable. Along with this came the liberty to contemplate the broader sense of life beyond mere survival, which culminated into the great thinkers of the merchant state of Ionia in what is now Greece, and the establishment of the great Library of Alexandria.

That is when the dogmatic rot began to set in. Rather than the violent destruction of the Library of Alexandria and the Roman Empire, their demise was marked with increasing corruption and reduced intellectual freedom. This is perhaps best illustrated by the adoption of one of the then new branches of the Abrahamic religion, which we now know as 'Christianity'. Rather than a pantheon of gods who were a reflection of fallible human beings, instead it was assumed that there was this singular Abrahamic god who was not only omnipotent, but also perfect and infallible.

Rather than gods as a sounding board for the internal struggles of humankind, this transitioned society into one where dogma and absolute obedience are an absolute given, something which probably pleased leaders, but also coincided with a neglected Library of Alexandria and the slow demise of ancient Rome as a beacon of civilisation and engineering prowess. As the bright flame of human civilisation guttered and turned into a sickly yellow pinprick of light, European civilisation descended into its thousand years of medieval regression. At this point it might have seemed that all hope was lost, and humanity was on its final, dystopian course towards its demise.


Yet beneath the suffocating blanket of dogma and Holy Wars, reason and with it science persisted. From monks tinkering with plant biology to the increasing trendiness among the affluent to 'do scientific experiments', science and engineering re-emerged like new growth after a wildfire. Throughout the Renaissance of the 15th century and subsequent Age of Enlightenment which began in the 17th century, the old became new again, and society began to pick up where the ravages of dogma had left it floundering for over a millennium.

In many ways, today's society is still struggling with the same old questions of the Enlightenment, churning over and over through the benefits versus disadvantages of separating church and state, to question freedom of thought. Not only with religious freedom, but also including the freedom to discard dogma altogether. After all, what reasonable argument can be made for the Roman or Greek pantheon of gods being any less real or vice versa than the Abrahamic god or the gods of any of the world's other religions? Aren't they, when reasonably regarded, not merely allegories and reflections of the human mind?

Throughout history, humankind has rejoiced in the opportunity to convince others of them being wrong on some dogmatic topic. Whether it concerned religion, nationalism, or another topic which seemed so incredibly important and just at the time, dogma has caused untold suffering at the hands of those who were convinced of this dogmatic belief. At the same time, dogma also has provided humanity with something it craves so strongly: a sense of belonging and stability. These are things which are now being threatened more than ever.


When we look at science-fiction stories - whether in book, TV or movie format - they all share a common theme: there is other life, other civilisations out there. Surely the Milky Way Galaxy must be teeming with life, after all? Yet it's easy to forget that, although from a recent historical perspective it seemed natural that explorers would find other humans living elsewhere on Earth, those humans too originally came from a central location on this planet. Many thousands of years ago, the first human explorers were the first humans ever to visit parts of this planet. They did not meet existing tribes, just a world devoid of humans.

Based on everything we know today, from Earth-based telescopes and space probes we sent out into Deep Space, there is no sign that there is other life elsewhere in this entire Galaxy. That would mean that as we find our way outside of our solar system, through Deep Space and explore other solar systems and galaxies, we would be the first one there. There would be no cheerful, aggressive, paranoid or idyllic civilisations and worlds waiting for us like Sci-Fi wants us to believe. No Klingons and Romulans, or Vulcan faster-than-light ships zipping by Earth. Just the complete silence of galaxies devoid of humans.


Amidst this silence, we would find our dogmas falter. We'd have no nationalism (or planetism?) to fight over, nothing to prove, argue or defend. Just empty worlds and quiet, sometimes dark worlds amidst the void of Outer Space. Quiet places that will only reflect our own humanity back at us when we look at them. There is nothing to conquer, no enemy to defeat but our own ghosts. All the comforts and certainties we have established on Earth over millennia are meaningless here.

Will new dogmas arise in this environment? Will reason and science win out at long last? Can humankind survive when it is thrust back out into the wilds like this, to face its own solitude? In some science-fiction works, such as the Gundam series, humanity establishes colonies beyond Earth, followed by those worlds eventually turning against Earth, setting the stage for interplanetary conflict. In this scenario humanity would continue what the ancient Sumerians and Akkadians already did: nationalism, conquering and keeping the bright red flame of dogma burning as it is fed with more blood and more suffering.


Perhaps the biggest challenge for humanity is thus not whether it can establish a foothold beyond Earth and travel among the stars, but rather whether it can conquer its own internal needs and fears, to let go of this infantile desire for dogma, and to work up the courage to look up and see things for what they truly are. Even if it means abandoning comfortable self-deception.


Maya

The gendered brain myth and excusing sex-based discrimination

 Everyone knows that women are more emotionally sensitive, while men have the emotional capacity of a turnip. It's also a common fact that men have better spatial awareness, can read maps unlike women, and this is then portrayed as an evolutionary left-over from our hunter-gatherer days. Back then, it is said, women would stay back at the camp to take care of the children while the men would take their grizzled selves out to take down more big prey.

In many ways it's a comfortable fantasy, one which supports the current societal notion that men and women are simply different, and thus it is only natural to assume that they will have different interests and paths in life. While some changes here are noticeable - such as in most societies granting women personhood in the form of voting rights and not requiring a guardian to handle their affairs - the notion that a child is confronted with even before they are born is that men and woman are simply different.

Although the generally less muscular nature of women is used with these arguments too, primary to this statement is that male and female brains are somehow 'different' (dimorphic). Essentially this is a modern-day version of phrenology, the once seriously considered pseudo-science that assumed that it could deduce anything of worth from a person's skull and related features. Phrenology supported everything from slavery (as non-Caucasians were deemed 'inferior') to the treatment of women as less than men, along with other pseudo-scientific views that excused what was essentially wide-scale discrimination against anyone born with female genitals.


Many years ago, I was indoctrinated in this way of thinking as well. All of these statements about how men and women were supposedly different rang true for me, even though neither I nor my brothers were raised in a gender-discriminating manner by our parents. It was just the way that the world supposedly worked. What changed my views there were the years that I spent dealing with the discovery of my intersex body, and coming to terms with the fact that my body was not as assumed previously male, but phenotypically primarily female.

What did this mean for my brain? Based on what I had been told, and what I had grown up with, the assumption was that this meant that my brain had to be either male or female. For years I would struggle with this notion, while being reassured by psychologists and medical professionals that I just had to figure out whether I 'felt' more 'male' or 'female' so that I could decide on what my body should look like to match my brain's gender.

The irony here is perhaps that while initially I translated my discomfort with my situation into the notion that I 'felt female', while having a male body, and even began hormone therapy to establish female hormone levels, at some point my body reasserted its own female hormone production and I was hurled straight into a proper female puberty. My 'male' body turned out to be a hermaphroditic intersex body, with naturally female phenotype and hormone levels. Some biochemical messages had apparently just been delayed by years.


When it came to figuring out the 'feeling' part, one of the biggest revelations came to me in the form of a study by Daphna Joel et al. (2015) [1], which examined the brains of male and female participants with an fMRI scanner to see whether in their brain activity any indications could be found of this purported 'male/female divide' within the human brain.

As it turns out, they couldn't find any indication of this, with each individual brain forming its own unique mosaic of activity. Alongside my own experiences this completed the picture of each human being having their own unique brain, without any sign of dimorphism, together with a body that showed many degrees of variation as well.


Today's society still seems to insist on discriminating between individuals based on their genitals and presumed 'brain gender', with no sign of letting up on this practice. Yet as science shows, this is an outdated practice, with no basis in reality. Individuals are denied or granted privileges purely based on this presumed 'gender', and societal gender-based roles are the norm rather than the exception. All of which raises the question of just how far society has truly progressed since the first cries for equal rights for men and women.

What was instructive for me here was how many years I could live as a 'male' in society with only the occasional bouts of confusion due to my more feminine build. When asserting a female identity, however, society's views and treatment of me as a female person changed noticeably, even though I did not.

This raises the uncomfortable question of why society continues to discriminate between men and women, when in the end the only aspect that truly differs between them is their reproductive system and associated hormones. If that is the aspect that matters, then intersex people would necessarily be partially carved off into their own 'societal gender roles'. After all, where does a person like me with female hormone levels, but both male and female genitals fit in with?

Any division made here that doesn't acknowledge people as their own person without segregation feels both unnatural and unethical.


Maya


[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468

Getting a career back on track

 There are those moments where you find yourself wondering what exactly it is that you're headed towards in your life. If the answer is 'not much', then that might explain some frustrations you're experiencing. Whether stuck in a dead-end job, or dealing with the fall-out from years of a tumultuous, traumatic life, the hardest but also most important step is to admit for yourself that you're not happy, and that you want things to change.

What does it take to be happy? If I were to consider my own life the past few years, it would have to be about regaining a measure of control, instead of being tossed around passively like a piece of driftwood. Merely promising myself that things would suddenly change for the better through a project like NymphCast [1], or by having my autobiography published. Pinning your hopes on such things doesn't make you regain control of your life.


Of course, I will readily admit the things which I have learned from the NymphCast project. It's been a great lesson in project management and development on embedded systems, getting to know the intricacies of aligned memory access with the NymphRPC project [2] on ARM processors while implementing a zero copy optimisation. Also small things like creating a lock-free ring buffer implementation [3].

Implementing service discovery in a more light-weight way than that offered by mDNS and kin in the form of NyanSD [4] taught me a lot about UDP broadcasting and provided NymphCast with a reliable, cross-platform way to discover NymphCast receivers, clients and media servers on the same network. Much like my experiences with the Nodate STM32 embedded C++ project [5], none of that was wasted time or effort, as it all gave me the opportunity to nurture my skills as a software developer.


When I left my previous job at the end of 2017, I literally travelled around the world for job interviews. I clearly was making a solid enough impression during the early (remote) tests. Where things would fall apart was always with the in-person interviews, and when I looked at some short videos I made of myself in late 2019, I understood why.

The glassy, distant look in my eyes. The impression of someone who isn't really quite present in the here and now. Having had a few years now to work on this aspect, I think I'm doing much better now in that regard. As evidenced by the videos on my YouTube channel of the past years where I read the short stories I have written, I'm gradually learning to open up more and come to terms with the fact that I do have an actual body. Same with the way that I interact with people.


Of course, the past few years also have been a major confrontation with the traumatic experiences that I have been pushing ahead of me for many years now, including those involving my existence as an intersex person and what this fact means to me. I'd be a terrible liar if I said that any of this was easy to deal with, or that I'm done dealing with all of it.

What I do know is that I'm doing much better than I did a few years ago, both physically and mentally. Also that I'm now at a point where I seriously have to seek the next steps in fixing up my life. This one involving my career.


Although as stated the projects which I have tinkered with the past few years have been and continue to be interesting and useful, in the end they are hobby projects. Great additions for my CV [6], of course, but you don't build a career and livelihood on top of a few hobby projects unless you're incredibly lucky.

So, as a result I'll be actively seeking out new (remote) jobs the coming time that will allow me to expand my career and horizons, continuing my progress the past few years. No doubt it'll be anything but easy, what with the entire world currently (still) being on fire, but one has to start somewhere :)


Maya



[1] https://github.com/MayaPosch/NymphCast
[2] https://github.com/MayaPosch/NymphRPC
[3] https://github.com/MayaPosch/LockFreeRingBuffer
[4] https://github.com/MayaPosch/NyanSD
[5] https://github.com/MayaPosch/Nodate
[6] http://www.mayaposch.com/cv.php

Whatever you do, don't look up

 Perhaps one of the most unsettling and life-altering experiences which a person may experience involves an empty field at night. Instead of letting their gaze wander over the ground, or use a torch to light up the path in front of them, they let their eyes adapt to the faint light before they raise their gaze towards the sky.

Assuming it is a largely cloudless night, the lack of the deceiving effect of refraction and scattering, from when light from our nearby star blasts the atmosphere above us, will be most apparent. Instead of a shade of blue or grey, our gaze is instead met with pitch-black darkness. As we keep looking, slowly our eyes can resolve more and more features in the night sky. Until suddenly the Universe opens right in front of our eyes.

The experience of looking up at the night sky and seeing countless stars, the Milky Way and so much more is a special one. It's not unlike when an astronaut during a space walk takes a moment to look away from the Earth and sees this endless expanse of the Universe right in front of them. And you, as the watcher, just a very small part of it.


This will often come with the realisation both of insignificance and that the only place where we humans can realistically live in this Universe is within this narrow sliver of a biosphere on a planet in a remote and mostly barren part of the Milky Way. Even so, our imagination may begin to wander after such an experience, questioning whether maybe humankind will be able to venture into the depths of not just our solar system, but also beyond.

Although we have looked at many features we can discern in the night sky, and we have sent a number of spacecraft equipped with powerful sensors and cameras to take a closer look at the rest of our solar system, there are still so many questions that are left unanswered to this day. Perhaps the most pressing of which is whether we are truly alone in the Universe.


It might be that there truly is no other life in this part of the Milky Way, and maybe not even planets which would be suitable for humankind to live on. All of these are sobering thoughts, but yet it's also essential to remember that all of this is speculation. It hasn't been more than about a century since we gained the ability to really take a look at nearby planets in great detail, the feat of which resulted in the dispelling of many fantastic ideas and hopes for what these worlds might look like.

In the sobering shade cast by those decades, the notion that the Universe out there would be teeming with civilisations much like our own would seem rather preposterous. Mars nor Venus are home to prospering civilisations, but are hellscapes in their own right, either blasted by radiation or baked by enormous temperatures and pressure.

Is there another welcoming home for us humans out there, or will we be spreading out into the quiet darkness of space, carving out niches where we can, but never truly belonging anywhere but on Earth?


All of this is just idly speculation and vague questioning, of course. The only way to figure out the answers to those questions is to face the challenge head-on, to develop better and faster ways to explore the secrets of the Universe. While nobody is forcing us to do so, the very human trait of curiosity does.

Such are the dangers of looking into the depths of the Galaxy itself: the hazards of which have led for thousands of years to people questioning the nature of this Earth, what is out there, humanity's role in its functioning and inevitably the meaning of it all. While the point of our actions on this planet would often seem questionable indeed, there can be little arguing about the statement that for humanity to truly learn its role in the Universe, it will have to look for these answers out there.


Keep looking up.


Maya

A non-binary body is a body too

 Dealing with a non-standard body is not easy. When society has decided that you are either male or female, and biology largely concurs with that sentiment at least from a reproductive point of view, it's a tough point to argue. But here I am, with a body that is both, and neither. How much of that really matters to me today, after so many, mostly unpleasant years?

I'm still grateful that my body finally sorted out this whole 'puberty' thing at last, after getting stuck in some weird standby mode for over a decade. Having had those changes towards an adult female body, it's interesting to note the remaining male characteristics alongside this, even if this pertains essentially just to the genitals.


Most recently I have felt this sense of longing, back towards the less complicated state of being 'male'. In some ways I guess that this is because of the added complexities of a female body, from monthly cycles to having those lumps of mostly fat dangling from your chest, serving mostly as a painful spot to bump into doors by accident, it would seem.

Even so, I don't feel any antagonism towards any part of my body. For me I think the biggest part of the experience was actually getting to know my body, to finally have that meet-and-greet and to be able to compare our mutual notes on expectations and requirements. Gone is the external pressure of many years ago inflicted on me by society, of conforming to one or the other body type, with the lure of having an 'Awesome Genuine Female Body' as promised by the transsex ideology.

The strong notion that I had to choose, that somehow my brain 'knows' whether my body has to be a Genuine Female or Genuine Male body. That pseudo-scientific notion has been well and truly shot down at this point. Not just by scientific studies, but also by my own experiences. My brain just contains my personality, my memories, dreams and hopes. And an appreciation for having a healthy body.


Does it matter which genitals this body has? Not really. That neither side is fertile doesn't bother me either. It does not reduce the value of my body, nor that of me as a person. A healthy mind in a healthy body. That's really all that one can ask for.

Most of the problems only appear with societal and cultural traditions, which I have largely resolved for my own purposes by being registered as 'female', to match the mostly female phenotype of my body. Yet I still get annoyed at the widespread discrimination between the sexes, even when it makes zero sense to do so when it doesn't concern the physical characteristics. Like, giving preferential treatment to either, or by essentially forbidding that either doesn't get to wear certain clothing items, or even like things that have a particular colour, or things that are 'cute'.


I'm not male. I'm not female. I'm both. I'm neither. The liberation of being able to let go of the madness of too many years and literally just accept things for how they are is immense. The realisation that the only authority I answer to whether my body is okay, and whether clothing is okay on this body, is me.

That whatever preconceived notions society has about what behaviour is 'proper' for someone with my gender designation and social status is absolute bunk. I'll decide that myself, thank you very much. If that gets me a called a 'tomboy' and such, then so much the better. I'm still that 'boy' who grew up doing 'boyish' things because they were fun, and I carry zero regrets for having a good time.


The short version is that society can basically stuff it when it comes to dictating to individuals what they can and cannot do or like, as it pertains to themselves. Society doesn't teach you how to be yourself, or how to be happy. Those are things that you have to figure out yourself, with the experiences by others potentially helpful in that discovery process.


Maya

On being accepted as a person

 Sometimes a new perspective comes from unexpected influences. Suffice it to say that the past years I have spent plenty of time thinking and writing about what I think the relationship between me, society and reality is. Yet it's so hard to see clearly when you have your nose pressed virtually into the tarmac of some aspect of reality. To regain this global perspective, you have to get back up onto your knees, onto your feet, so that you can finally take that look around you. Make sense of what happened.

When I got confronted with Dave Chappelle's newest Netflix special 'The Closer' and decided to give it a whirl to see what the fuss was about, it hit me in a way that I had not seen coming. The comedy show starts off coarse, with very uncouth jokes that are sure to offend anyone with a disposition for easy triggering. Yet when Dave starts digging deeper into his experiences with the LGBT community and especially his friendship with a transgender person: Daphne Dorman and her struggles with making sense of life. [1]


What hit me the most about this story was that Dave Chappelle does not believe that a transgender person who starts off male can become a biological woman. Gender is a fact, in the sense that biological sex (gender) is something that at this point in time cannot be altered. And yet none of this has any bearing on these transgender people. He has his views, others have theirs, and yet he doesn't have a stake in the LGBT community. Instead he is more than happy to respect others for the people they are.

The key point here is that one does not have to agree with the other person's views and opinions in order to treat them as a person.


We cannot expect that everyone around us understands the larger parts of what makes us into the person we are, never mind the infinite number of small details, but the one thing we can expect and ask for is to be respected as a person. Someone living their own life and going through their own human experiences.

The liberating and perhaps cathartic part of listening to this part of Dave's show was in how it made it obvious that I do not care about this LGBT community either, and never have. What was instead happening to me was the very human experience of coming to terms with my intersex body, amidst the strong desire to - just once - feel that I was being accepted as a person. My frustrations and perhaps jealousy when I was spending so many years of my life on getting nowhere with the struggle to get answers about this curious body of mine, even as in my eyes this LGBT community got all the help and attention they could ask for.

When you feel invisible and mostly ignored. Even when appearing on talkshows and in the media it didn't feel in hindsight that I was there as a person, but more as a curiosity. Who truly cared about me as a person?

Certainly not the doctors who dismissed me as being 'transgender', and who tried to push me into that direction. A direction I didn't want to head into, because it didn't feel right and didn't make sense, and yet it appeared that nobody was interested in my opinion. I felt so terribly alone and frightened for all those years.


Now, years later, with a body has well and truly asserted that it was - in fact - always that of a hermaphroditic intersex person, I have been able to at least put a lot of those questions to rest. It's easier for me to look at what remains at this point. As I get back up on my knees, and onto my feet, I can see with clarity now how everything related to gender and biological sex ties together. The main source of confusion for so many years. Now it's clear to me how the brain is just this neutral entity that has no specific preference for a particular arrangement of genitals. Which is a good thing since I was worried for years that I might have to pick a set to have removed.

But above all, that my brain, and the person inside it is just that: a person. Something that transcends basic things like gender and sexual preferences, skin colour and the languages one speaks. In learning to accept myself as a person, I have also learned to accept others as such. EAch of them individuals with their own lives and experiences.

While I may not agree with everyone's views and opinions, and cannot understand everyone's motivations, that shall never take away the basic notion that every person is deserving of sympathy and respect. You owe it to yourself to respect yourself as a person, as much as others deserve it to be respected as such. Respect and sympathy do go both ways, after all.


Maya


[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/dave-chappelle-backed-by-family-of-late-transgender-comedian-daphne-dorman-from-the-closer

The Cosmos from the perspective of a biochemical reaction with self-delusions

 In the zoo, a man is standing in front of an enclosure which holds a group of primates. Of the latter, most are doing the things that primates like to do when left to their own devices: eating, sleeping, arguing and so on. Yet one primate in this group is different. From where he is standing in the primate enclosure, he is looking outside, beyond the walls of the enclosure. Beyond the bars. To the skies and the freedom, but also this primate that is standing there. Outside the enclosure, looking at him.

As the gaze of both these primates meet, many thoughts flash through their minds. Who is this other primate? What are they thinking of? What would it be like outside these walls that confine? What would living inside the enclosure be like? Might these other primates at the other side of the confinement also hold similar thoughts?

As night falls and the group of primates is herded back into their night enclosure, this one primate in the group steals one last look behind him. At the night sky with so many points of lights, and the place beyond the enclosure where that odd primate was standing earlier that day. The thoughts they shared with that one gaze. Maybe one day...


If there's one thing which is remarkable beyond description, it truly has to be the ability of the human species to both amaze and disappoint. When on one hand you have thousands of years of science and the most brilliant minds that humanity has produced so far, and on the other the ceaseless attempts by humanity to not only sabotage itself and destroy as much of itself as it humanly can, but also to ruthlessly ignore or even destroy the scientific works produced by others.

After reading Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos', one cannot help but feel a sense of intense loneliness and pointlessness, along with desperate hope and appreciation for the amazing feats that humanity is capable of during its better moments. Even so, humanity as a species has barely registered in a geological sense, never mind on a cosmic scale. Are we alone in the Cosmos? What is the point of all of this?

Unless we are actually just that group of primates in an enclosure called 'Earth', while being observed by other intelligent species, it is highly likely that we are in fact alone. Or at least in this tiny, minuscule, mostly deserted part of the Milky Way, which itself is a rather dull galaxy in a Cosmos that is so vast that the primate inside the enclosure has more of a chance to grasp the vastness of Earth's surface, rather than us human primates of grasping even the vastness of our neighbourhood of the Milky Way, never mind the Cosmos.


Most of the Cosmos we have never even seen or observed in any fashion, as all electromagnetic radiation and other forms of signals that we could observe are still on their way to this part of the Milky Way. Even after billions of years, the speed of light is not fast enough to cross these vast distances. On such vast time scales, it leaves one to wonder whether maybe humanity reached this stage in their evolution too early, or too late compared to any potential other intelligent life.

Perhaps these other civilisations don't live near enough, but a few galaxies over. Perhaps there simply is no way to communicate with another civilisation that far away which doesn't take thousands or millions of years at light speed in each direction. Or perhaps we really are the only form of life that is capable of any level of inter-planetary communication and beyond that happens to be around at this point in time.

Perhaps another civilisation will show up on a world within easy communication and perhaps even travel distance, within a mere few thousand years after humanity has managed to destroy the Earth's biosphere sufficiently that survival is no longer an option for even the most wealthy or influential members of the human species. Perhaps they caught the radio transmissions we sent out many years before that, and decided to pop over in their faster-than-light (FTL) capable spacecraft.


Carl Sagan worried when he wrote 'Cosmos' in the late 1970s that humanity would wipe itself out in a great nuclear weapons fuelled fire amidst the feud between the Empires of the USSR and USA. That fear has fortunately not come to fruition, in no small part due to the strategy of MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction. This had both sides essentially in a stalemate position with each only a hair trigger away from obliterating the other Empire and plunging the Earth's biosphere into a violent and highly uncertain nuclear winter. Since neither side felt like a suicide attack at any point in time, and a few technical glitches fortunately didn't culminate in the accidental launch of nuclear-tipped ICBMs, Sagan was able to write further books well into the 1990s, until his death in December of 1996.

Since that time, humanity has launched the International Space Station (ISS), and robots are scouring the surface of Mars and soon other planetary and other bodies within the solar system. The Voyager space craft, which Sagan was involved with, have made it far out of the solar system and beyond the reach of our Sun. Humanity has never before been this close to making new discoveries and cover ground in new explorations that may - and likely will - change our fundamental understanding of this solar system and everything beyond it forever.


Humans are a primate species which has made it pretty far through a series of lucky coincidences. We are now at a level where we should theoretically be living in peace and safety, as no predators can harm us, and we have the means to not have to fear lacking shelter, food or clean water to drink. And yet here we are.

Maybe it is that humanity is held back by its evolutionary roots. Courtesy of many millions of years of evolution, adding and tweaking, primate brains are built up out of distinct regions, identifiable as belonging to distinct eras in the evolutionary tree. We are after all self-replicating, highly complex biochemical processes that didn't form this way overnight, but had to fight to survive, to replicate and evolve. This may put certain constraints on what the average human being would prioritise and focus on. Because it was the right thing to do for millions of years.


It's depressing to consider how close humanity came well over two-thousand years ago to having a scientific revolution courtesy of the Ionian culture that spawned most of the great thinkers we often refer to as just 'Ancient Greek'. Yet ultimately humanity instead ended up dragging itself through thousands of years of darkness before the Renaissance began to revive those old ideas about science rather than superstition and kin. Tragically even today we can observe today the ongoing destruction and vilification of the scientific method and those who seek to adhere to it. All of this paint humanity as a whole into a rather grim light.


Even without the Sword of Damocles in the form of thermonuclear destruction dangling above our heads every moment, most of humankind is like the rest of the group of primates in their zoo enclosure. Uninterested in learning more about the world and everything else around them, content to live out their brief lives, or too occupied with procuring the means to maintain their existence before it naturally expires to ever really notice that there's a whole world beyond the bounds of Earth.

Those of us who gaze at the stars and wonder what else is out there find ourselves torn between hope as well as the fear both of, and for the human species. The good we can do, and the terrible things that many of us end up choosing. Will we ever make it out there, among the stars? Or will human civilisation flicker and die, leaving barely a scratch on Earth's geological record, left there for perhaps another, an alien civilisation to stumble over and wonder what things must have been like back then?

That history is still left for us and future generations to write.


Maya