A New Hope From an Old Source

To know now what we could never have know before 1969 — that we now have an option for all humanity to “make it” successfully on this planet in this lifetime — is not to be optimistic. It is only a validation of hope, a hope that had no operationally forseeable validity before 1969. Whether it is to be Utopian or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. The race is between a better-informed, hopefully inspired young world versus a running-scared, misinformed brain-conditioned, older world. Humanity is in “final exam” as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe as mind, with the latter’s access to the design laws — called by science “the generalized priniciples” — governing eternally regenerative Universe.

R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path