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To fully appreciate what it means to live on earth one must removes oneself from that very label. Go outside of our own small sphere of experience and into a greater, wider universe of possibility, because it is only by being observed form the outside by such things as to make us look at ourselves seem as we are that we will see who we are. It is as this. Should the fish, trapped by our standards in his watery prison, think himself less an example of perfect existence merely because to us, on being observed from outside his element, he is inferior? Unable to leave that which gives his finned shape life, and above all remaining wholly content in this situation? No, the fish odes not regret his existence nor think it nay less consummate because he knows nothing else. The air above the water is as far from him as the void above the air is to us.

Maybe, trapped here in our own blue bowl gliding through space, we are as fish, wholly content that where we exist is the only place possible for intelligent life to exist. The function of this belief, which takes form more of animal instinct rather than any sentient choice, is to promote us to a place in the universe much like the shark of the seas. In our element the ultimate evolution for survival and moreover the lord of all which is surveyed. But just as man has not conquered shark, and the shark has not seen fit to do more than defend any encroachments on his territory, so man has not spread beyond the air filled ball which has housed and trapped the species.

That one small step for man flung humans down from the perch of power they had occupied in arrogant self-assurance for as long a time as can be remembered. But Rome was once capital of the known world, and yet beyond the knowledge of those inside the marble halls who made such grandiose claims there were civilisations greater and more complex than Rome itself, no further away than beyond the horizon. Should a man have asked of the Mayans where the centre of the world is, no mention would have been made of Caesar’s Palace. No, because importance is relative, and so it is folly to assume greatness when no man knows what lies beyond the horizon, or is in fact the horizon is nothing but a confabulation of beliefs created to cast a glamour over the desire to explore those bounds. An impassable wall, no higher or more challenging than that which is merely beyond reach. But as these examples show man is bound to expand beyond those horizons in search of others. The human race, on the whole, can accept what is believed by virtue of unquestioning minds and the desire to continue with little trouble, but some men choose to push the bounds of what is known in order to set new bounds for future generations.

The insectiod speed of the expansion is lost in the void, when the blue speck spins without so much as a glimmer for the empires falling and rising on the surface. For the outside it seems that nothing is happening inside the fishbowl. This holds little meaning, since man from the outside is far removed from man, or each person, on the inside. People consider themselves unique, but in all but the mind we are identical, and even the mind, when judged beyond the bounds of convention, seem to be nothing in the main more than factories of instinct. How can it be that some men choose to dig and some choose to climb? In the magnified vision of the glass bowl all mountains are no more or less for having been climbed, and holes are filled by earth faster than that earth, through no more desperate desire than to have done so, can be moved away once more. So it is that men are content with their lot and are content that in being content they are doing there utmost to be decisive. And still the blue speck, viewed but once from that ancient satellite which inspired the minds of men three thousands years ago more than it does now, still this tiny blue speck in the vastness spins through space, a small drop of water in a vast expanse of air.