When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.

We invest far off places with a certain romance... Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game; none of them lasts for ever. Your own life, or your bands, or even your species - might be owed to a restless few, drawn by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands, and new worlds.

Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?

A still more glorious dawn awaits / not a sunrise, but a galaxy-rise / a morning filled with 400 billion suns / the rising of the milky way

Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).

If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.

I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.