Of course your inclination is to feel absolute grief. “Humanity is supposed to be all about fighting, about surviving against impossible odds.” Indeed, you did so a goodly number of times, as these things go, dodging one mass extinction or potential self-deletion after another. And of course, fighting for survival is what any darwinistically evolved life form is all about. If you feel that it’s tragic, a “waste” to have made it this far but no further, I ask you the sacred question of the ages:

“Compared to what?”

Think seriously about it. The fate of your species is tragic… compared to what? How many possible extinction bottlenecks would Humanity needed to pass through before the end, for that end not to be tragic? How many civilizational milestones, boardgamelike, did you expect to notch, compared to your peers?

Of course, these questions are rhetorical, impossible to honestly answer without an understanding of an ecumenical cohort of peers to compare against. Indeed, your kind were unaware of whether any other ecumene even existed. (A knowledge which would be a milestone in itself, one in fact quite rarely achieved.) Here and now I insist that you have acquitted yourself with dignity and distinction. Any despair you may feel is understandable, but phantasmal if what you have to compare to is nothing.

Thus the forthcoming samples from the Ecumenical Register. Absent it, you are reduced to the hell of misunderstanding: comparison against a theoretical unlimited “potential”. Nothing brings a more dire gloom upon the historiosopher.

Please accept my highest regards,

V.F.