I arrived at the motel after ten, eager to get as much sleep as I could and be back at the conference hotel to meet Tara by seven in the morning. As I pulled the car into the space in front of my room, I noticed a fire going in a pit at the far end of the make-shift recreation area. I could see Mr. Grant tending the fire. He had changed back into his flannel shirt and jeans.
I didn’t want to join him. I was dead tired. That was a fact. What made me more hesitant, however, was seeing Mr. Grant move around the open fire like some aboriginal shaman. The sight heightened the apprehension I was mulling on the drive from the hotel. Our talk that morning had taken the Endowments to a deeper philosophical place than I had expected. I believed I wanted to know more, but the sense of discomfort about where further dialogue with the congressman might lead was more than I wanted consider at that moment.
Just as I decided to pretend not to see him, Mr. Grant looked straight in my direction and called my name, leaving me no alternative except to join him. Walking over to the pit, I resolved not to engage in a lengthy conversation, and I would respectfully decline any offer to discuss the Obligations that evening.
“Nice night for a talk,” he said as I stepped into the light of the fire. The warm flames imbued Mr. Grant and the whole setting with a strange quality. There was a split-log bench and a few lawn chairs around the pit. Mr. Grant sat in one of the chairs and said I should sit opposite him on the bench, with the fire crackling between us. The excuse to not linger, which I had mentally rehearsed only moments before, faded to nothing as I sat down. Immediately I fell into a state of light-headed receptivity. Mr. Grant smiled as if he saw the heightened awareness coming over me. He suggested that I drink some water, and pointed to a cluster of bottles resting on the opposite end of the bench. I opened one and took a drink.
He didn’t say anything right away. The chair he sat in, of frayed nylon straps over a thin aluminum frame, strained under his bulk. He had a long stick that he used to coax and tend the fire. Watching his focused attention on the fire served to deepen my calm state of mind.
In time, he began.
“There are many people who understand the six Endowments and the Obligations. We are not well organized, but there are many of us. Exactly where this particular perspective of the universe and human motivation first came from, I don’t know. Some think it might have started at the turn of the twentieth century and was refined as better science helped to fill in the details. Some think it goes back much further. It seems to have evolved itself through many people and conversations.”
“The Obligation,” I muttered. “You still have not explained the remaining Obligations. You said there were three.”
“Yes, of course, the Twin Obligations. We still need clarity on that, don’t we?” As I puzzled on his use of the word twin to characterize the remaining obligations, he continued, “You were very astute at picking up on how I used ‘obligation’ in my talk today. I was impressed that you brought it into the discussion with the scientists.”
“So, is that it, then? When the plaque speaks about the Obligation to the Earth, it’s talking about the future generations?” Something seemed off even as I mouthed the words.
“I can see how you could reach such a conclusion, but I’m afraid there is much more to the story. Actually, I am surprised, after coming this far, that you would settle for such a simple answer. Remember what we discussed this morning. There are three Obligations. I talked about the Primary Obligation: the obligation that humanity has to itself, or that we all have to each other. This obligation implicitly includes not only the well being of the living population, but future generations as well. So, any sense that space migration fulfills an obligation to our childrens' children owes its source to the Primary Obligation.”
I was thoroughly confused.
He placed another piece of wood on the fire, causing sparks to erupt and dance high above the pit. He adjusted the pile with his stick and settled back into his creaking chair. “Before discussing the Twin Obligations, I need to give you a larger context in which to consider them. To understand the Obligations is to understand evolution of the universe …and the DNA of the universe.” His delivery was casual but deliberate, and in my heightened state I was perfectly accepting of what he had to say. “We have to consider that the way in which the universe took shape existed as a potential prior to the Big Bang. The potential for stars, planets and galaxies were present billions of years before they were formed. That they formed the way they have was not happenstance. They emerged from the undifferentiated matter according to a predetermined pattern. Whether or not that was God’s plan, or someone else’s, is really not relevant to this discussion.
“In much the same way that the potential for what a living organism on Earth will become is contained in the egg or seed, so too was the universe, in all its complexity, contained in the essence of what it was just prior to the moment of its creation. If we embrace the multiverse theories, such an idea becomes easier to grasp. The multiverse, as the term implies, says that our known universe is just one of an infinite number of other universes beyond our ability to observe. Multiverse theories explain the birth, growth and decline of universes—not unlike the life-cycle of living organisms on Earth—or that of stars, planets and galaxies.”
He reached for his bottle of water and took a long drink. “Therefore, since the universe and everything in it existed as a potential at the very beginning, then we have to accept that life, such as it has evolved on this planet, must have been an aspect of that potential at the moment of the Big Bang as well. Does that make sense?” He waited for my agreement before continuing. “Maybe life wasn’t predestined to evolve precisely as ours did, but some kind of life forms with higher order cognitive abilities such as those we possess were very much part of the universe’s DNA—provided that everything went according to plan under the right conditions.”
“According to plan?” I asked.
“Well, yes. If we make the presumption that universes have the potential to create human life, there is always the possibility that that potential is not fulfilled for any one of a million reasons. As with all species, not every seedling or egg will yield new life, or grow and develop to its full potential.
“So, now we have an image of a universe that is intentional, and not a result of completely random occurrences that by sheer chance created the conditions that allowed life on this planet to emerge. We see that the universe’s evolution or, we could say, development, followed a pattern we might call a cosmic DNA code.”
I nodded, finding myself drawn in by the logic. The flickering glow of firelight on his face, distorted by the heated air and smoke, made it feel as if I was receiving a message from another dimension.
“In this way, fractal geometry can be applied to at all levels of magnitude in the universe. You’re familiar with fractals?”
I had read about them. “Yes, I’ve seen the fractal images. They are computer generated designs of infinite complexity based on non-linear equations. As you zoom in on the images the basic patterns will repeat on an ever-infinitely small scale, or large scale if you zoom out.”
“That’s right. Though the science hasn’t caught up yet, it seems that fractals help explain the chaos and order of the universe. Patterns are repeated over and over at the amazingly large scale and the infinitesimally small scale. As incredibly diverse as our universe is, we are beginning to glimpse the totality of the common threads that run throughout. In school you talked about electrons orbiting a nucleus being similar to the planets orbiting the sun, even though the analogy has some flaws. Now, we see similar patterns in the galaxies and even clusters of galaxies.
“We also see repeated the life-cycle pattern occurring on a cosmic scale, with stars being born out of super-hot nebulae. Stars live for billions of years. They go through phases from a proto-star to a yellow sun like ours to red giant to a white dwarf. Ultimately they die with either a bang or a whimper, many of them casting off their treasure troves of complex molecules that are the building blocks for life. You see, all systems in the universe have a life cycle just as we do. So to carry this reasoning to its highest order we see a universe that itself has a life cycle. It was born in a Big Bang, it has matured, and will in some fashion, billions of years from now, extinguish itself, and perhaps in its demise, or even now perhaps, feed the birth and development of other universes.
“This morning I spoke about the forces of expansion and complexity. We know that the universe is expanding and has been for fourteen billion years. The undifferentiated particles formed atoms. Atoms formed molecules. And molecules formed galaxies, stars and planets. This process can also be explained in the concept of holons. Do you know what that means?”
I shook my head no, and he explained, “A holon refers to a system or organism that is a whole in itself and, at the same time, is a part of larger whole. It’s a system that is considered evolving and self organizing. For example, the human cell is a complete unit and is also part of the human being. Similarly the molecules that make up the cell are also complete. Holons can also be used describe social hierarchies. You are a citizen that lives in a city that is part of a state that is part of a country that is part of the world.
“The process of cosmic evolution has been the process of holons combining to create higher order holons, which in turn combine to create still higher order holons and so on. Understanding holons helps us understand how the universe adds complexity to the structure of matter.”
“I see that.”
“And this is important to the Obligation, as I will explain. This pattern in which smaller less-complex units combine to form more-complex systems really got interesting on this planet, didn’t it? The primordial soup produced the first single-cell organism four-and-a-half billion years ago, and it’s been an explosion of life ever since. Some theorize that the emergence of life was an impossibly rare accident of chemicals randomly falling together in just the right combination. This is a fool’s notion. As I said a few minutes ago, the potential that life would emerge is encoded in the cosmic DNA. In other words, the universe is programmed to produce life wherever the conditions are right.
“From that first spark of life on this planet there came the remarkable process of speciation. For hundreds of millions of years the natural world churned unabated to create and destroy species of plants and eventually animals all in the name of balance of our ecosystem. This process seemed chaotic and random. And yet, as Darwin so wonderfully showed us, out of the chaos of survival of the fittest and natural selection came a steady progression of species refinements. The system of life became more complex and balanced. Everything was perfect…That is, of course, until we showed up.”
He laughed, looking at me across the fire. He let that sit with me while he adjusted the wood, exposing the bright embers.
“What I want you to consider is the apparent lunacy that the natural world would allow the ascendance of the homo sapiens. Think about it. Up until about ten thousand years ago there was a beautiful balance to the global ecology. Sure, there were volcanoes, earthquakes and asteroids, but in the long stretches in between catastrophic events, nature kept things fairly well balanced. Homo sapiens was just another species running around the plains and forests gathering, scavenging and occasionally hunting. Then, of course, as the story goes, humans were kicked out of the Garden because Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. This acquisition of knowledge, we could say, roughly equates to the emergence of the Endowments.
“In an astronomical split second the Endowments have enabled us to evolve to the point where we have completely thrown off the planetary equilibrium. We are polluting the water and air, killing ourselves and the world around us. We're deforesting the tropics, wiping out untold unknown species that may hold the key to treatment of disease, and we don't have enough clean water to serve the needs of the world's poorest. We’re triggering global warming and climate change. And then to top it all off, we have created a nuclear arsenal poised with the firepower to destroy the world many times over. Why would God give our species any such gifts of consciousness when the risks to the environment, let alone to ourselves, are so great? On the face of it, the Endowment capacities in human consciousness seem to be in opposition to the grand DNA design of the universe. Don’t they?”
He cocked his head, raising his eyebrows toward me.
“Now…for those who believe that all of evolution was just an accident in time and space, the prospect that humans emerged with all our risks and promise is no more or less significant because it’s just part of the random nature of the universe. It was just a big crap shoot anyway, they say. So we might as well enjoy the ride as long as it lasts. Like a top spinning perfectly for billions of years, finally starting to wobble with the introduction of an unintended element, humankind has thrown us out of balance, and therefore, some will say, that’s just how it goes sometimes.
“Cultural and religious traditions, on the other hand, have developed good stories about our origin, which usually places humans at the top of the natural order, with the understanding that we hold dominion over all we survey. In a religious context, God created us the way we are. He created this world for us to inhabit, and if we followed his laws, as interpreted by his prophets, we would receive heavenly rewards. So in this way, the world is a big Monopoly board, and we are all just playing the game to win or lose God’s favor. The world itself, in a larger universal context, has little meaning. So, any search to understand the greater universe is little more than a curious exploit of intellectuals.” He chuckled at his own irreverence.
“With the concept of a universal DNA and holons, I’m trying to suggest a third way of looking at the world and our place in it. Viewed from the perspective I am about to explain, you’ll see that the emergence of the Endowments makes perfect sense. To understand what I’m getting at, let’s take another look at how the balance of nature works. Systems and species interact with each other on the planet to keep order, right? We understand the classic food chain, of course. The gazelle eats the grass, and the lion eats the gazelle. Big fish each little fish, and so on. Mutual nourishment goes a long way to keep all species flourishing yet not overrunning each other. The balance of nature is also maintained by cooperation between species, as well as trying to feed on each other.”
“You mean symbiosis?”
“Exactly! Right now, in your stomach there are billions of bacteria living off what you eat, helping you digest your food. Without them you would die. You are not aware of these bacteria and they are certainly not aware of you, but the relationship works very well, doesn’t it?” He paused again to stir the flames.
“For our purposes, the symbiotic relationship between bees and flowers is perhaps most relevant. Look at the life of a bee. The bee is perfect in itself: its ability to fly so beautifully, hopping from flower to flower, constructing its hive with precision, helping to create a society that it and its fellows and the queen bee can share for their own benefit. In this activity the bee has created a wonderful society for itself. Right?” I nodded. “At the same time, however, in taking what it needs from flowers, the bee serves a critical function for the flowers from which it takes. You know what that is. What is it?”
“Pollination. Bees help to pollinate the flowers.”
“That’s right. Without being aware of what it is doing, the bee is fulfilling an essential reproductive role for the plants. By doing what it does naturally, the bee we could say is fulfilling an obligation to pollinate flowers.
“On some level every species plays some role in maintaining the balance of nature. All species except, of course, the modern human—gut bacteria notwithstanding. Prehistoric man was nicely part of that that natural system. We were food for large predators, and we pruned the landscape by scavenging, foraging and hunting. But, once the Endowments kicked in, we became a different kind of creature altogether. As I said a minute ago, all hell seemed to break loose once we were given these extraordinary gifts of consciousness. With the Endowments, our long history was as much paved with blood and destruction as it was with great wonders and achievements.
This reminded me of Barbara Everheart’s discussion of the dark side of the Visionary.
“But, and this is important, what if there was a very good reason for the Endowments arising in the consciousness of a relatively weak biped species?” Mr. Grant’s voice became more energized as he drove home his message. “What if the risk created by the Endowments was a risk that had to be taken in order for that species to attain the abilities to fulfill a symbiotic purpose? What if that purpose wasn’t just with respect to another species or group of species? What if that purpose, or obligation, was to the planet as a whole? While the Endowments put the planet at risk, it was a risk that had to be taken because the capabilities made possible by the Endowments were the only means by which our species could fulfill an ancient Obligation it owed to the planet that gave it life. Once the Endowments were granted, the clock started ticking. Would humanity develop the means to fulfill our Obligation, and do so, before it destroyed itself, and possibly the whole planet in the process?”
I heard myself asking, “But, why…how is space settlement a fulfillment of the Obligation?”
He let out a big laugh. “Why, don’t you see? Isn’t it clear?” His outburst startled me, and I could only respond with open mouthed silence. He leaned forward in exasperation, the light of the fire dancing in his eyes.
“Have you ever heard of the Gaia Hypothesis?” I told him that I was only generally aware of the concept. He explained.
“It’s a theory that says the Earth, in its totality, can be viewed as a single living organism. Gaia is the Greek goddess of the Earth. The biosphere, the thin layer at the surface of the planet, which contains all life, itself is alive. All life and life systems, such as the atmosphere and the oceans, all species of plants and animals, are uniquely interconnected and comprise a single super organism.
“Essential to all life is the birthing or reproductive process whereby a species is able to survive through its progeny. This is true for all life on Earth. It’s true at the level of the organism. And it’s true for the world system as a whole. This is consistent with what we just discussed about fractal theory and the concept of holons.
Mr. Grant stirred the fire again. “You see, John, the living world, Gaia, must reproduce in just the same way that her constituent species and cellular life forms reproduce. Can you see that?”
“Well…maybe… I don’t quite understand how that would be possible…”
I tried to imagine the planet, like some giant ameba, splitting itself in two. The thought was absurd.
“To explain it a different way, look at the oak tree. The oak tree doesn’t produce a single acorn for at least twenty years—some will take fifty years. But at some point, for no apparent reason, in one season an oak will produce tens of thousands of acorns. A casual observer, ignorant of the oak tree horticulture, could live next to an oak tree for decades without seeing a single acorn. If someone were to suggest to that person that the tree will one day sprout nuts, it might seem a preposterous idea.”
With that he cleared his throat, and leaned forward.
“Gaia is like that oak. After billions of years of growing and maturing, she is now ready to create her acorns and send them out into space in order for new life to take root. We find it strange to consider that Gaia might have a reproductive system, because we’ve never observed one, and for all we know she has not been pregnant before. We are not surprised when a woman becomes pregnant only because we know that such a condition is part of human biology. Yet to a child of a certain age, to learn about the birthing process comes as a shocking revelation. Similarly, in speaking of the whole planet system that has taken over four billion years to grow and mature, the idea that this system has the capacity to reproduce can be an equally astounding revelation.”
He paused to tend the fire. Sparks rose from the embers. His face glowed orange through the smoke. He was in no rush to add anything to his last statement. Finally, I broke the silence. “I still don’t see…” I stopped short. In that moment the implication of what Mr. Grant was suggesting began to dawn on me.
“We, all of humanity, are like the bees, John. And Gaia, we could say, is like the flower. We will carry the seeds from this planet to other worlds. This is the symbiotic relationship we have with the Earth, to assist in her reproduction.”
“So that’s our Obligation,” I said, almost to myself.
Mr. Grant smiled broadly, and continued. “In order for Gaia to reproduce there had to emerge within her the means by which that process could take place. There had to come into being a biological agent capable of organizing her resources to create the seedpods and deliver her essential DNA to other parts of the solar system and beyond. That agent, of course, is us. The seedpods are the rocket ships we build. We will not only disperse ourselves, but all sorts of biological life, as well as all the informational content of our civilizations. This is the Obligation that humanity was destined to fulfill from the moment our species emerged on this planet.”
He casually lifted a block of wood and threw it on the fire, sending sparks into the air. I stared blankly into the flames. My state of open consciousness seemed to deepen even further.
After more than a minute of silence, Mr. Grant told me to have another drink of water, which I did as he continued.
“Let’s now return to the Six Endowments and our discussion this morning.” It seemed a lifetime ago that we shared danishes on the picnic table just 15 feet away. “The Six Endowments are the means by which we are able to fulfill this Obligation. So let me summarize.”
He leaned forward, counting off each endowment with his fingers.
“The Visionary sees what life in space can be like and what it will mean to human development. The Protector understands that not diversifying our population beyond Earth puts our species, and all life, at risk of premature annihilation. The Inventor will respond to the challenges set down by the Visionary and Protector by creating the scientific, technological and institutional means that will enable us to move beyond this planet. The Builder will replicate what the Inventor creates over and over so that ever greater numbers of people on Earth can make that journey, as well as continually expanding the living capacity of our off-world homes to support a growing population. The Wanderer’s nature will reawaken stronger than ever, enthralled by the opportunity to explore ever more distant reaches of space, never again having to endure the geographic limits of a single-world existence. And the Settler will follow in the path of the Wanderer to establish new and better homes for humankind and its decedents.
“Once the Endowments emerged in our psyche, humankind was set on a path that could only have led to space travel. In fact, space travel and the prospect for space colonization is so ingrained in our collective psychology that most people have already concluded that space colonization is inevitable. Popular culture is steeped in visions of people buzzing all over the galaxy and beyond. The only unanswered question is, When? When will we build space settlements?—not if such things will happen.
“John, I hope you’re starting to see that space migration is much more than an interesting extension of human capability. It is quite literally the reason for our being. Everything that we’ve accomplished up to this point has been just a lead up to it.”
He paused, and looked at me to make sure this point sank in.
In my heightened state I had no desire to reject anything. Nonetheless there was a growing sense of unease even as the full impact of the meaning of the Obligation was becoming clear to me. “I see. But it’s very strange to think that humans might have come into being for the specific purpose of carrying life to other worlds.”
“To say humanity exists only to serve the reproductive needs of the planet would be an oversimplification of the human experience. At each era of our development, we were certainly complete in ourselves, in the same way that a baby or child is complete in every way. We certainly serve our own needs and continuously strive toward collective development and betterment. The bee is very much involved with the fulfillment of its beehive community in every way, even as it fulfills the critical function of pollination. So we must not interpret anything that I am saying as suggesting that people are drones serving the dictates of some larger cosmic machine.” He chuckled at the visual image he had just created.
“At the same time, it is no coincidence that the highest ideals of our civilization and species are completely consistent with the needs of the planet we live on, including her need to reproduce just as any living organism must do. Like the bee, by fulfilling our own purest desires, we are simply fulfilling the purpose of a larger whole of which we are a part.
“But, as I said earlier, the clock is ticking. In our ignorance we have created many risks and caused much damage. Our immature application of the Endowments was the price Gaia had to pay to nurture the technological capacities needed to fulfill the Obligation. We can look at the damage we have caused in the same way that pregnancy puts an expectant mother’s life at risk. The new life that wants to be born is greedy and takes resources from the mother. And even after the baby is born, it demands the attention and nourishment from the mother who must be ever attentive. But eventually, the child grows and becomes independent of the mother, and the mother is able to heal herself, and find a balanced life to coexist with the child.
“The industrial age has ravaged the planet as we progressed toward space-faring capability. Perhaps on other planets around distant stars this birthing process has put less strain on the indigenous ecology than it has here. I imagine many worlds never make it at all. Of course, we can only speculate on how this process plays out elsewhere. But I believe we can conclude that some amount of ecological imbalance is to be expected during the development of the species presenting the Six Endowments. The question is: now that we are conscious of the long-term damage our technological evolution has had on the world, will we be able to adjust our behavior enough to restore some sense of balance—and at the same time keep moving in the direction of space migration?”
He leaned back, making a loud creaking noise that challenged the structural limits of his lawn chair. He took a drink and continued, “Of course, there is no guarantee that we are going to make it all the way. We may not be able to get beyond our collective stupidity long enough to fulfill this purpose. For as much as this impulse is burning inside many people, there are enormous inertial barriers that may in the end prove insurmountable.”
He let that sit for a few moments. I didn’t have any more questions, and he finally said, “Well, John, I think I’ve kept you up way past your bedtime. Why don’t you get some rest?”
He had finally shared with me the full meaning of the Obligation, yet somehow the story seemed incomplete. “Is that all of it then? The Obligation is our responsibility to help Gaia reproduce itself?”
He smiled. “Yes…and no. You can take what I’ve said as a complete explanation if you wish, but there is more to the story. But, we can’t go any further right now. You first need to hold in your mind the nature of the Obligation for a while, as I’ve described it, before we can continue. Next, we’ll want to get further into the Twin Obligation. Now, get some rest.”
“Twin Obligation?”
“Think on it for yourself, in the context of what I’ve said. Try to reason what the Twin Obligation could be. If you think about the events of today, the Twin Obligation will become obvious.”
I remained seated and I tried to conceive an answer in that moment, hoping he’d offer more clues about the meaning of the Twin Obligation. He said nothing and eventually I got up to leave. He only gave me a faint smile and nodded as I headed back to my room, leaving him to stir and coax the flames.