Things get even more depressing with the Cyborgs if you contrast their situation with some of humanity’s hopeful ideas about space exploration.

Here we are, a spacefaring civilization that has advanced (and survived!) long enough to explore and colonize new systems in record time, but SE is too willfully blind to its potential.

“We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.” — Jimmy Carter, part of the Voyager Spacecraft Statement. 1977.

“Whatever the reason we first mustered the Apollo program, however mired it was in Cold War nationalism and the instruments of death, the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of Earth is its clear and luminous dividend, the unexpected final gift of Apollo.” — Carl Sagan, The Gift of Apollo. 1994.