In case you missed it the last time...

[Mythsaje]

"Pandora's Planet."

I'm not superstitious. I don't hold the 2012 ending date of the Mayan calendar in any particular awe, nor do I have any faith in Nostradamus's or Edgar Cayce's predictions. I discuss these things on a fairly regular basis with my father.

Hold on. Let me clarify. I think if there IS any merit to the Mayan calendar, it's more to do with what some of the southwest native tribes, the Hopi in particular, consider the cusp of what might be called the "next" world.

I don't believe civilization is on the verge of collapse, all "evidence" to the contrary. I don't believe we're on the verge of driving ourselves into extinction. I don't believe in Armageddon, Ragnarok, or any other "battle at the end of time."

Instead I see a massive change on the horizon, one that will SEEM to be the end of everything as we know it. I cannot foresee what path it might take, but, rest assured, it will be a great upheaval that might well seem like "the End."

Despite the fact that I am not superstitious as most people would understand it, I do believe in what might be called "magick." I believe that our individual and collective will DOES have power beyond the obvious. Belief and words that express that belief have a validity of their own.

Now this might annoy some who lean entirely on the material world for their succor, but that's okay. Some such aggravate me as much as the most fundamentalist Christian might. I am beyond the point I feel I must justify myself to anyone whose narrow view cannot encompass a greater possibility.

I believe that sentience has a purpose. I believe we have the ability to think, perceive, and affect our environment not by accident, but by some kind of design, though I do not pretend to understand the purpose beyond that design. In that direction lies madness, or arrogance beyond tolerance.

Thus I have some measure of faith that we can somehow rise above the folly of our past, and reach a point where we can begin to repair some of the damage we've done. I think it's our destiny to move beyond this planet to seek out and capture resources that are even now lying in wait for us. To those who belittle space exploration and its "waste" of the resources we have now, I can only answer "it may be our only hope."

Some may see this as something akin to a cancer spreading beyond a single world and into the cosmos, but we must keep in mind that Earth is a "living" world and our footsteps have weighed heavily upon her. Out there, among the "dead" planets of our solar system, the asteroids and comets traveling through the heavens, await elements we may use for the benefit of all.

I am sick with hope, some might say. I turn my back on the evils that have escaped the box and, instead, look within to the one thing that remains in its depths.

Perhaps that is true. But the absence of hope is despair, and none of us can afford despair. Not as individuals, and not as a species, or as the eyes, ears, and hands of "God" in this part of the universe.

I hear the doomsayers, and those who think perhaps the world would be better off without us. I hear them, but I do not deign to listen. There is more to all of this than an accident of chemical interaction, I believe, or the selfish curiosity of a bizarre and incomprehensible deity.

Call me a fool, call me crazy, call me what you will. But in my heart I hold the key to Pandora's Planet, and that's good enough for me.

On the cusp of despair, I hold forth the last remaining contents of that mythical box.

Someone has to.