Unless we go to the stars

A bunch of friends of mine started re-watching Babylon 5 recently, so I picked up the seasons to run through it a fifth (or 10th, or whatever; I stopped counting) time.  It's probably been 5 or 6 years since the last time I watched it.

And I got to the end of fourth episode of Season 1 - "Infection" - and had to stop for a moment.

Sinclair's being interviewed by a reporter.  Here's the exchange:

Mary Ann Cramer: Is it worth it? Should we just pull back? Forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems, at home.

Sinclair: No. We have to stay here. And there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes… and all of this… all of this… was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars.

That was first broadcast on television in 1994.  I was 16 at the time (I turned 17 a couple months later).  I had, by then, figured out that I was capable of really terrible things - and, in a way, was searching for reasons why I should or shouldn't do them.  I had a basic formulation of an idea, the initial shape of it in my mind - a kind of virtual lump of marble within which was still hidden the statue that I could only reveal by chipping away at the stone.  It took me probably 10 years to realize it - the first time I went back and re-watched the series - but this speech was, and is, a big part of what shaped that eventual reason.

It probably seems pretty grandiose to say so, but if you ever want to know my motivation for anything - literally, anything - start with this notion: that, in a few million years, our sun will die and with it everything in the solar system.  And that's only if we last that long - there's the "cosmic bullet" notion as well, some comet or x-ray beam coming our way that will wipe out all life on the planet.  If we're still here - and only here - then we'll be wiped out, and everything we've done will have been for naught.

I often use the phrase "to teach the world to save itself"; while I'm sure most people think I'm being poetic, I'm really not.  Every little step - every dollar for the homeless, every shoulder offered to cry on, every pleasant smile for a stranger, every encouragement given, every dream fulfilled - is a little step on the path towards the goal of getting us off this planet and out there into space.  On, literally, the path towards saving all known life in the universe.

Progress isn't constant; for every step forward, there's a half step back.  We only progress by averages, but we still progress.  Most of us only ever get a chance to do small things, but the small things add up: to either hold us, as a species, back or help nudge us forward if only a little.  But if "small things" are all I ever get a chance to do, I'll make them as positive as I can.