Power is older than Adam. Yet, it must have evolved considerably in the ten thousand years we know as civilization. We could view the power elite as a kind of symbiotic parasite, merged with the social organism like chromosomes or mitochondria within the cell. This parasite plays a key role in the development of society. It evolves along with its host, gaining influence over time.

There have always been elites: hereditary chieftains, warlords and nobility, captains of industry, nouveaux riches, corporate empires. One way or another, such groups have always been well placed to dominate society. Of course, there has also been resistance to this domination—and competition among the powerful themselves, who enjoy privilege that motivates them and positions them well to refine their control and adapt to resistance.

Power may be a strange concept to people content with more modest goals, struggling to make ends meet. Religions prescribe fair practices through which society can function in relative harmony. Yet, ironically, it was Jesus who articulated the rule of history: those who have shall get more, and those who have not will forfeit even what they have. Henry George said something parallel in the 19^th century: wages never increase in proportion to the wealth of society. Quite the contrary, today we see unions floundering and governments subservient to corporations, wealth obscenely concentrated in ever fewer hands. How is that possible?

While most people’s wants are modest and straightforward, some people demand far more and intend to get it. This puts ordinary folk in an awkward position. They must devote resources of time, energy, and money they don’t have, just in order to defend their modest station against the intentions of the more aggressive. They are not in a good position to adapt quickly to the inventive strategies of the elite, who count on the masses to be distracted, passive, short sighted, busy repaying their debts, looking the other way.

Social movements over the centuries that challenge the unequal distribution of wealth have inadvertently strengthened the stranglehold of power, by training it to adapt to resistance with ever subtler strategies. Power has evolved to be less visible and more devious. Discretion is the lesser part of power, which has the leisure to plan and plot. Cool heads pull strings in back rooms, hire mercenaries, buy up media to control what the potential resistance believes. How many of the hundred richest people can you name?

Is history just the story of the evolving ability of the rich to dominate the poor? Is a revolution possible that does not eventually revert to the business as usual founded on greed? The masses are at a disadvantage. For, only through poverty and homelessness can one secede from dependency on the modern economy. Instead, we collude with our masters by playing their games: every time we buy one of their widgets, we add to their power and the widening gulf between us. Through savings, investment, and retirement funds, we lend them the means to tighten their grip. Through agreeing to a governmental structure which they are skilled to manipulate and control, we underwrite our domination. It was clearer in the days of powdered wigs who was “them.” Now the lines of class and of responsibility are blurred, even as the middle class dissolves back into a peasantry and an aristocracy. Unless we can understand the evolution of power well enough to think ahead of it, we will always be on the defensive. Worse, we will always be part of the problem, inadvertently working for the enemy.

While language is how we communicate, it also both shapes and reflects how we think. Language and thought use categories, which are man-made containers to hold a variety of things that have something in common. Naming or labelling something puts it into a container with other things that may have little in common besides the container itself! For example, calling a person tall glosses over an undefined range of heights; it indiscriminately applies whatever positive or negative associations might be conveyed by the label. Green covers an undefined range of colour shades, with no distinction among the infinite number of green things it could refer to. Yet, each person hearing the word ‘green’ will likely associate with it something definite—a particular colour or image (e.g., a freshly mown lawn)—which may not correspond to the shade or thing imagined by someone else because of their association. This mismatch between tangible specific experiences and the generality of terms and categories is both a strength and a weakness of language.

The strength lies in the power of abstraction, which is the process of identifying that common essence of otherwise unrelated things. Colour is an abstraction, which does not refer to a particular hue or object but to colour perception, in which a whole range of wavelengths and things can be distinguished. The use of such abstractions enables logic. “All men are mortal” places “men” (an abstraction) in the category of another abstraction. By putting Socrates in the container labelled men, we can conclude that he too belongs in the larger container labelled mortal. On the other hand, “Socrates is mortal; all men are mortal, therefore Socrates is a man” is not a valid deduction, even if the conclusion happens to be true. (The category mortal contains other things besides men.)

Through the power of abstraction, words are used to treat individuals as members of a category, without regard to myriad other properties that have nothing to do with that category. As well as being mortal, Socrates might be wise or foolish, tall or squat, rich or poor. Singling out his mortality reveals little of his other qualities. (It is also uninformative because we assume that everyone is mortal through no fault of their own.) On the other hand, accusing someone of being a communist, terrorist, or pedophile is highly informative even if false, because of the stigma we bring to those categories. One ceases even to be interested in the person’s other qualities.

Insidiously, such categories remain without clear definition, subject to our wild imagination. What exactly is a communist? Does it mean belonging to an outlawed political party that proposes violent overthrow of the government? Or does it mean a belief that people should share their wealth? Instead of meaningfully defining the category, the use of such labels simply stigmatizes the other guy as bad. One can get closer to the truth by focusing on the actual behavior that led to the accusation, and its context. Often this reveals that the label was not applied to warn others against real danger so much as to impose a prejudice or inflict damage on the accused for a personal agenda.

While subject to interpretation, behavior tends to be tangible and a matter of fact. In contrast, categories and labels are nebulous and subject to abuse. We call others names so as not to be troubled by the finer points of who they are on the whole or in other circumstances, or not to feel obliged to consider their arguments seriously. We label them if they do or say something we don’t like, fixing outside time. They may deserve our disapproval in that instance, but then we think of them forever as “that sort of person.” Unkindly, we imprison them in a container of our own creation, which becomes for us their identity. But the pointing finger also points back at itself, rigidifying its owner.

Some nasty changes in the world make travel—and even life—less appealing. Some changes in my own body and mind have the same effect. A Bucket List seems increasingly irrelevant in old age, not because I’ve already done everything I imagined desirable at an early age, but because the prospect of doing those things no longer appeals. A Bucket List also suggests an unsavory consumer attitude toward experience: a desperation to “have” certain experiences before one kicks the bucket. But, even memories you can’t take with you.

On the other hand, I do seem to accumulate a backlog of self-dissatisfaction, remorse, nagging doubts, and memories of failures or shortcomings. I feel a mounting anxiety as my personal deadline approaches. Some people are experts at judging themselves harshly, however lax they might be otherwise. While I’ve had a lifetime to accumulate mistakes, I’m running out of time to atone for them. Formerly, if I erred or failed to do my best or what I ought, I could chalk it up to learning. I would simply do better next time. But, as the remainder of life shrinks, so does the possibility of “next time.” How many occasions will there be to do better? I begin to see the appeal of religion and the blanket forgiveness of “sin.” It takes away the burden of guilt—though at the price of believing absurdities. At this late date, I’m not about to add that mistake.

There is something else one can do to ease the burden of guilt and forgive oneself. I call it the F**kit List. Instead of checking off a list of last-ditch efforts to make my life complete, I check off self-reprobation as it comes up and symbolically put it in the trash bucket. “You were too self-centered and insensitive to someone’s needs!” That may be true, and will likely happen again. But too late to whine about it: onto the F**kit List! “You live too much in your head!” (True again, but paradoxically also: “You are too attached to sensual pleasure.”) Onto the F**kit List with both! While merely ceasing to attack oneself for a jumble of imperfections hardly guarantees to improve one’s character, it might improve one’s mood.

Who knows, if my mood improves, I might act like a better person. But, of course, thinking one needs to be better is part of the problem. What then? Should I believe I am already the best possible version of myself? No: I must simply stop judging. But easier said than done, since evaluation is a biological prerequisite for being alive at all, and probably the very basis of consciousness. If I cannot be a good self, perhaps I could give up the idea of being a self at all? If that’s what enlightenment is, it doesn’t come naturally.

No doubt confession serves to ease a contrite heart (a prerequisite for a wrathful God’s forgiveness?) A deeper benefit, perhaps, is that it acknowledges fault. Self-forgiveness is not for the queasy. It requires swallowing pride, which can give you indigestion. Recognizing, admitting, and naming one’s failings brings them painfully to the forefront of consciousness before letting them go. Otherwise, they percolate in the unconscious, creating guilt and anxiety, and also further misbehavior. Guilt is like an insecure child, always trying to get attention.

Even without the external threat of Hell, there remains the threat of self-judgment. I don’t worry about a final Judgment Day at the end of time. But what about a personal reckoning at the end of my time? What about a final rush of regrets and self-doubts on the death bed? Well, F**kit! Let every day be Forgiveness Day!

No man is an island. The production of knowledge is a communal enterprise, regulated by gate keepers. The other side of that truism, however, was well expressed by Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan): “The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know.” And the problem with the control of knowledge by an expert elite is that it can obstruct knowledge that they do not already possess.

Before the Internet, a traditional job of librarians was to vet knowledge. A similar role falls upon universities and academic presses and journals. The name of an unvetted open repository (Research Gate) is ironic, since a gate is not an open portal, but has the dual function of allowing or denying entry. The gate for academic journals is economic as well as scholarly: you can pay to access an article if you don’t have institutional access. Likewise, authors (or their institutions) can pay to have it published with open access by the public. There is an economic dimension to the dissemination and control of knowledge, which is big business.

To unlock the gate, you normally have an academic affiliation. Academics enjoy free access to the expensive journals through which they exchange ideas. Their institutions pay the subscriptions, which no doubt contribute to the skyrocketing cost of university tuition fees. On the other hand, many scholars want their works to be more widely read, so they (or their institutions) pay the extortion demanded by journals for the privilege of making them available to the public for free. There are databases dedicated to such free postings, such as Philpapers, arXiv, Academia.edu, and ResearchGate. Often a scholar will post an earlier version of a paper directly online, allowing access to the same information as in the costly official publication. The ideal behind the WWW, of course, was unlimited free access to information—basically a global show and tell. The reality of the Web turned out to be more about commercial opportunity. The struggle goes on even in the academic world, where the issue of access is not only about maintaining a high standard of scholarship but also about money.

The same question confronts those deemed guardians of knowledge and those deemed guardians of the state: should the gate be simply removed from its hinges, so that anyone who wishes can pass through unimpeded? In the case of politics, that would mean that every citizen has a direct say in governance. Apart from the logistics involved, this has never seemed desirable to those already in power, who have traditionally represented the privileged class. Their political power rests on their economic power, and vice-versa.

The monopoly of ideas, like the monopoly of wealth, implies a class system. Until recently these coincided: only the rich could afford education and had the leisure to exchange ideas. The ideal of democracy required an educated public, hence public education. But just as we are not equal in wealth, so we are not equally educated. In theory we each have one political vote, on an equal footing. We hardly each have an equal voice in creating the communal reality through the exchange of ideas and opinions. Yet the popularity of blogs and social media indicates that there is a longing for that participation. People want to be heard—not only in matters of government but also to express their views of life and reality, their contribution to knowledge.

Like the rich, those with letters after their name have status in our competitive society. But in the end, they only know what they know. The idea that saves the world could come from outside their closed circle, even out of the mouths of babes. On the other hand, the foolish clamor of voices tends to prove the need for gatekeepers.

For some, religion offers meaning in life. Others might find meaning in family, career, politics, activism, or some cause. In contrast, science seems to offer an indifferent view of physical existence as inherently meaningless. While it is possible to take comfort even in that stance, the comparison is flawed. Meaning (or the lack of it) is not a property of the universe itself. It does not exist in outer space but in inner space. Nor can meaning be divinely given, for it is a mortal human judgment.

More precisely, it’s a biologically-based personal judgment. Every organism evaluates things and events in its environment as significant, potentially bearing pain or pleasure, opportunity or fear. It could not survive otherwise. To every organism the world is inherently—even compulsively— charged with significance. That’s our natural heritage. In addition to it, we humans have overlaid a detached viewpoint, in our relative security at the pinnacle of the food chain. Yet, this relative detachment has not spared us existential anxiety, bogeymen in the closets of imagination, nor real dangers. It has not freed us from the realm of meaning, with its potential for suffering along with satisfaction or happiness. But it does give us the insight that meaning is something we confer or withhold, not a property of the world itself. It is our doing and responsibility. Though life can seem painfully significant, any complaint that “life is meaningless” is no more than an ultimately meaningless personal judgment.

Science has formalized the detached viewpoint. It focuses all the better on objective reality by removing the subjective from its picture. There is no intention to directly free anyone from suffering, which is not its purpose. On the other hand, there are philosophies which do intend to free one from suffering—Buddhism, for example. Its formula: don’t be attached and you won’t suffer. The irony, however, is that one may then be attached to the formula: to avoid suffering, maintain an even keel, a tranquil state. That is little different from the natural homeostasis of the organism. Even the amoeba seeks to carry on undisturbed. And even the diligent meditator can fall into distraction and be upset at this failure.

The situation is far worse for the religious believer, who seeks salvation but is always in danger of falling from grace. The logic is: let God judge me so that I don’t have to. (Of course, not being an organism, God has no need to judge anything at all!) Being an organism, one may continue to judge oneself, projecting that judgment onto God, society, or others and forfeiting responsibility for it.

At least science does not deny the dilemma, but simply ignores it. Yes, the universe and life have no inherent meaning. So? It is absurd to imagine they should have. If there is only us chickens, then the only meaning is the one we make while scratching about. It can never amount to more than chickenfeed in the cosmic scale of things. It is up to us whether that suffices.

Detachment does not mean not caring. There is a difference between caring and taking things personally. One can have goals that matter and not take frustration or defeat in a personal way that discourages further effort. If we put value on such efforts, then disappointment is an inevitable possibility we must face. Just being alive is an effort, ultimately frustrated by death. It would be sour grapes to shun effort simply to avoid disappointment—and then justify that because life is meaningless anyway. Disappointment and suffering (feelings, after all!) are symptoms of life. Life will continue to lack inherent meaning whatever we do. Just because the universe is indifferent does not mean we have to be.

A long time ago a man got the idea to clear some land and build a house. This was a good idea, because up until then he had been living like the beasts, whose only food was berries and grubs and whose only shelter was the trees. He thought: “I could use those trees.” But the biggest and straightest trees were far away, so he set to thinking how to bring them home as lumber. Looking down, he noticed a line of ants carrying bits of food and wood. The ants would stop briefly to talk to each other along the way. He thought: “I could use those ants.” But they were very small and couldn’t carry large loads and it would take them forever to bite through trees with their little jaws. Besides, they seemed to be about their own business and he had no idea how to get them to work for him. So, he set to thinking again how to accomplish his purpose.

Now, there were other people living in the land, but they were not so well organized as the ants. The man began to talk to the other people and they began to talk to each other and pretty soon they all had the idea to build houses and settle down and dig up the earth to grow some food. But the best trees for building were still far away and too heavy for one person, and digging was a lot of work, so the man said: “Let us work together.”

After some years, life had changed. The man now had a steady line of people doing his bidding day and night. With their help he had factories and trucks, tractors and ships coming and going at his service. He had computers and machines that would do exactly what he told them. He had the biggest, fanciest house and the most lands, while his faithful “ants” had smaller dwellings and some had only tiny shacks or none at all. But together they all had civilization.

He had the cleverest words, which they believed, and they were content to help him because now nearly everyone had a better life and no longer lived like the beasts. What’s more, they had the promise that they too, with hard work, could have a line of “ants” serving them.

Meanwhile, all the big trees had been cut down and all the good earth paved over to make the civilization. Though he had a thousand times more to eat than needed, the man could imagine nothing better than getting even more. While the whole world was like a factory at his fingertips, the man was curiously obsessed with trying to make machines that behave like real ants—or better—like people so smart he couldn’t control them. As all the forest was being used up, he couldn’t imagine what to do with his lines of ant-people, except to have them start taking apart their own houses and shacks and gardens and carry the boards and furniture and food to his house, making him even richer. Still, the people thought: “This is the land of opportunity; if our leader can rise to greatness, so can we!” What the real ants thought of all this no one knows.

According to James Ussher, archbishop of Ireland in the 17^th century, the universe was created on the 23^rd of October, 4004 BC. (It happened to be a Sunday.) According to the latest figures of cosmologists, the Big Bang occurred 13.77 billion years ago. The first dating was based on a thorough study of the Bible, the second on a thorough study of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. What they have in common is an implausible precision, given the uncertainties involved in both.

No less than biblical exegesis, the latest figure for the age of the universe depends on complicated interpretation. Yet it is happily announced as a fact. This is a general tendency of a science with little place for dwelling on its own assumptions. Though not a scientist, I find there is always room for doubt. Skepticism has a creative role to play in science, as in life, at each stage of the game—not only at those critical points when new evidence (or accumulation of old failures) forces abandonment of current cherished belief.

It is commonly thought that science, unlike the arts, represents a growing body of objective knowledge. This fits well with our modern idea of progress. However, what actually accumulates is data, which always remain open to new or revised interpretations. Evidence grows (if we preserve it), while theories come and go. If one assumes from the outset that there is a truth of the matter (“the butler did it in the library”), on which the evidence must converge, then it would make sense to believe that theories get closer to the truth over time. However, the evidence often is not consistent, does not converge. (Even in law, new evidence can reopen a case or reverse a decision.) Scientific bravado, abetted by the media, may present the verdict as beyond a reasonable doubt—that the evidence unambiguously dictates it. Even in science, however, what is “reasonable” doubt is a matter of opinion. While official tolerances for error are prescribed, tacit underlying assumptions involved in measurement may go unexamined. The latest measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation are only meaningful when coordinated with distance scales that remain sketchy. Conclusions are only as valid as the premises on which they are based.

Is science a search for truth? Perhaps, but no more so than jurisprudence, which often requires a unanimous jury. Both are social institutions, not open windows on reality. Especially now that scientists rarely work alone, it is all the more important to be tentative—not to deny the hard-won advances, but to keep limber for further progress. The exact age of the universe is beside the (decimal) point if the whole big picture could go at any moment.

Imagine an opaque sealed container with a single input and a single output. You don’t know what it contains or what it is supposed to do. You can see what goes into it and what comes out, but that is all. Such a container is a “black box.” By definition, you are observing from outside the box. You want to understand what is going on inside it, by noting what goes in and what comes out. Here’s the twist, though: The brain responsible for “you” and for all your experience is sealed inside an opaque container, your skull. From an observer’s point of view, it is a black box. Your sensory interfaces with the world provide inputs to you as an organism. Your motor outputs provide input to the black box of your environment. While you are a black box to the world, the world is a black box to you.

Like for any black box, the best way to understand what makes you tick is to watch your inputs and outputs. An observer can note what seem to be actions you perform (including what you say) and also what seem to be stimuli to which you respond. However, identifying these clearly is a matter of interpretation. Observers from your own culture will make assumptions about your inputs and outputs, based on what you all have in common, which an observer from another galaxy might be reluctant to make.

Your brain cannot leave its skull to have a “direct” view of the world outside. The world thus has no intrinsic look to it. There is no “real” appearance of the world when no one is looking, and there are no appearances at all without someone’s eyes to see, from within some black box. In this regard, a scientific observer is in the same boat as their own brain inside their skull. The challenge is the same: poke the black box of the universe to see what happens, or poke the black box of the organism to see what happens. Naturally, the organism doing the poking is part of that universe, which complicates the picture.

Including yourself in the picture introduces a maddening circularity, like standing in a hall of mirrors, where you see endless reflections of reflections. You can only interpret the world outside your skull by means of processes within it. But those processes are part of the world outside. You want to know how your brain produces your experience. But the idea brain is part of the experience your brain is supposed to produce, while the idea experience is also part of your experience produced by the brain… and so on.

Of course, everything that can enter your consciousness is part of your experience, a private show unfolding inside your black box. It only seems otherwise when it figures in a story you tell. It can then seem to be an element of an inter-subjective reality, potentially a story science can tell. Science would like to explain your personal experience—your sensations, thoughts, and feelings—ultimately in terms of the movements of atoms and electrons. But atom and electron are concepts occurring within the experience they are invoked to explain. Science bites its own tail when it tries to explain mind in terms of matter, because both matter and mind are concepts in the mind, which is presumed to arise from matter.

While thinking of yourself as a black box may present a dilemma, it’s also an opportunity. You are uniquely positioned as both the inquirer and the object of inquiry. Questions like “why did I do that?” or “why am I feeling this right now?” invite a look from both perspectives. You can search your black box for reasons in your own internal logic. You can also wonder, what in the world’s black box caused this feeling or behavior?

When I was a young child, a little friend asked me to care for her terrarium while the family went on vacation. It housed a small pet lizard to which I was to give water and food. I put the glass box on a sunny shelf in my clubhouse and promptly forgot about it. Some days later, to my horror, I found the desiccated tiny corpse. This was my first lesson about irreversible loss—in this case the extinction of a life—for which there is no remedy, no second chance, no appeal. It was also my first lesson in moral responsibility, for there was no retracing steps to do undo my neglect, no way to go back or to deny my guilt.

Humanity is now in that position, of a young child glimpsing beforehand the possibility of catastrophic change and irreversible damage through sheer neglect, with utter moral responsibility. In this case, it is not about a single creature but the fate of a planet. Now we find ourselves in the terrarium, desiccating.

On the local scale of daily life, we are used to continuity and gradual change that is potentially reversible. If something gets out of kilter, there is often something we can do about it. We feel empowered by technological success. This gives a dubious sense of confidence, especially in regard to threats posed by technology itself, or concerning the little understood delicate balances that render a biosphere possible in a hostile universe. By definition, there is no way back from a tipping point that leads to our extinction. There can be a “too late.” While the biosphere is astonishingly resilient, our sister planets Venus and Mars may be examples of things gone wrong.

Next in consequence to final catastrophe is the end of any interesting future. Life and society might survive, yet not as we currently value them. Our daily way of life and all the things we take for granted bear the seeds of collapse. For the first time, we have become an existential threat to ourselves. There are myriad fronts on which ours may be the generation that seals the fate of humanity. God will not save us and we cannot expect a fairy-tale ending. Salvation must come from us, through sober and deliberate intent now.

I learned another key lesson in childhood. My cub scout troupe held a tournament of physical contests. I signed up for arm-wrestling, for which I had no prior experience. I was shocked and embarrassed to find myself quickly defeated. Too late I realized I had no idea of the level of effort required, the force or preparation required to win—how hard to try, let alone how. Humanity is now in a similar position: we have little prior experience facing the present challenges. Only within recorded history have we even conceived such a thing as global warming or planetary demise. We can learn from the rise and fall of civilizations. But we are understandably naïve about how much effort, or what kind, is required to prevail in the long term as a species. Even as private industrialists plan to evacuate the planet, governments spend little on the long term. Fortunately, there are people and groups who at least think about the long-term future of humanity. If we survive the short term, it is even foreseeable that the long term will become a burgeoning field of study and practice—a career opportunity for young people now to consider.

People have long had an ambivalent relationship to the body, which is a source of both pleasure and pain. These are primordial functions of the physical body, survival mechanisms. Pleasure signifies what is good for the body, pain what is bad. Of course, we have extended those meanings to include intellectual pleasure and emotional suffering. In fact, humans have abstracted experience in general, away from its ties to the body, so that experience has become a sort of private entertainment to pursue for its own sake, apart from its relevance to bodily needs.

It is natural to seek pleasure and avoid pain, because these represent states of the organism, which tries to maintain itself. However, when experience is sought for its own sake (rather than the body’s), the link with the body’s wellbeing is broken. We can then find pleasure in things that are bad for the body, and reject things that are good for it. When thus detached from the body, we can come to resent it as a source of suffering and inconvenience. (How bothersome to have to feed and groom it! How horrifying, disease and mortality!) We resent the whole set-up—the addiction to pleasure and revulsion at discomfort. We rebel against utter dependence on the body, as though upon a stranger.

While cursed with this alienation, we are also blessed with imagination that can conceive how things should be, ideally. Until recently, this was the province of religion. We conceive the possibility of disembodied existence—of the soul after death, of eternal life: in the bliss of heaven or the torment or hell. Ironically, these project the mortal experience of pain and pleasure into a non-material future. While Christianity offers the promise of resurrection from the dead, Buddhism offers release from the cycle of suffering of bodily incarnation. What they have in common is rejection of the natural condition—the system of nature we find ourselves born into, literally the biological body.

Alongside metaphysical ideas, religions also assert ideals of human conduct and relationship. Having noticed that nature imposes certain unsavory behaviours, religion asserts the Golden Rule or kindness toward all beings. If life only exists because of the ruthlessness of natural selection, we have power individually and collectively to temper its effects. Though the more aggressive naturally proliferate and prevail, what good to gain the whole world and lose your own soul? Our species has proliferated and prevailed to gain the whole world. What might it have lost?

Technology updates the promises of religion. We can now imagine a disembodied digital existence, uploaded to cyberspace; or copies of our “selves” that continue our lives post-mortem. We can imagine superintelligent overlords—artificial gods—to either save or menace humanity. Or to replace it entirely. Just as individuals must die, so must the species in the longer run through some extinction event—if not far sooner through our own foibles, then when the sun burns out in 5 billion years. Technology promises survival or resurrection, in some artificial form or venue, the chance to redefine our nature according to our best ideals. That could be the great opportunity we have hoped and prayed for over the millennia, or it could be trivialized like most human endeavors.

For the present, we are stuck with our bodies, for better and worse, until death do us part. We are stuck with societal arrangements and political and economic behaviours largely dictated by our biological nature. Before we can re-create ourselves in a divine image, or rapture ourselves to cyberspace, it could be useful to contemplate and catalogue the ideals we would hope to enshrine in an upgraded humanity or its artificial successor. Such a vision could be the basis for a unifying and broadly ecumenical secular religion.