If our near extraterrestrial neighbors are aware of us at all, I’m sure we’re an embarrassment. Must we forever be the savage planet? Is civilization less a veneer and more an illusion? Does it have to be this way? Are humans really this bad – this hopeless? Is war a permanent feature of the human condition?
Sometimes I wonder. But then I think of Michelangelo, said to be somewhat beastly himself, and yet a font of beauty, transcendent and sublime – and I have reason to hope that we are better than our history suggests. Even in all our crudeness there is something profound within us.
