Thank you Convivium for (several years of) prompting me to link up bits remembered, bits recently discovered, bits that belong together, and random bits that have crawled out of their holes to bask and dance in the Sun's rays...

Case-in-point of the moment comes from this morning's ruminations on Destiny, probably something that only humans invest mental energy upon, and (most probably) invented in the first place.

We humans range over the whole Earth, think of it as OURS, and of ourselves as the dominant species, by right and thanks to our brains. Our specialty and key characteristic in all things seems to be HUBRIS <== the conviction of our own importance and centrality in the Grand Scheme. The embodiment of Destiny? The Crown of Creation? As inventors of Destiny, we ought to have an Anthem, and I suggest this from Jefferson Airplane:

Lyrics by Paul Kantner:

You are the crown of creation
You are the crown of creation
And you've got no place to go

Soon you'll attain the stability you strive for
In the only way that it's granted
In a place among the fossils of our time

In loyalty to their kind
They cannot tolerate our minds
In loyalty to our kind
We cannot tolerate their obstruction!

Life is change
How it differs from the rocks
I've seen their ways too often for my liking
New worlds to gain
My life is to survive
And be alive for you

And as with all Stories, there are backstories. Kantner scooped the succulent bits of text from John Wyndham's The Chrysalids:

They are the crown of creation, they are ambition fulfilled - they have nowhere more to go. But life is change, that is how it differs from rocks, change is its very nature.

And the personal backstory and geographic connection has to do with the wherewhen of Stanford 1967-1972: the people we knew, the ideas we encountered, the things we learned, and all the ways in which that physical and mental Geography was formative. I rejoice in two degrees of separation from the Airplane, because our close friend Kent was close friends with Petey Kaukonen, brother of lead guitar Jorma Kaukonen. I bought the Airplane's albums as an essential part of figuring out the bizarre world of late-60s Amerika, White Rabbits and Embryonic Journeys and all that.