For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we havent forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful gamenone of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your bands, or even your species might be owed to a restless fewdrawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seasMaybe its a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds promising untold opportunitiesbeckon.Silently, they orbit the Sun, waiting.
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About Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan was a 20th-century American scientist and science communicator. Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. Initially an assistant professor at Harvard, Sagan later moved to Cornell, where he was the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. Read more on Wikipedia →