We live in a paradoxical situation where our putative intelligence has become a mimetic pretender, an imposter, and this disease is rapidly obliterating the remnants of our inherent relational and intellectual dynamism. Our institutions are corrupt, malevolent, domineering, and toxic. Our models of reality are so abstract that some rather sophisticated people believe that the solar system should be rendered down into a nanocomputing construct. That we would be better off as or with machines as symbionts than we are with organisms. That no amount of human or environmental desecration is too great a price to pay for a moment’s profit.

Yet I must remind you that it is at precisely such grim junctures in history where the amputated assets of our relational, human, and animalian nature return to our direct access and recognition, calling us into new evolutionary opportunities catalyzed by the revival of these lost or neglected capacities. These inhibited abilities are shockingly more adept than their grandstanding replacements, and represent the vehicles of powers and opportunities that surpass everything we can imagine.

Crisis awakens prodigy. Whether or not we can take advantage of these opportunities as a ring of linked civilizations remains to be seen. But as individuals, this is the time to pioneer, to dream, to surpass our ideas and beliefs, and to discover the transentient prowess at the core of our human form, history, and potential. Together.