Excalibur and Us

Since watching Star Wars, I had always dreamed of being the chosen one. drawing Excalibur from the stone, inheriting my father's lightsaber, I always hoped to be heir to some ancient lineage some destiny to carry on.

Richard Dawkins said that we are lucky because we will die. He said that most people will never die because most people will never be born. He pointed out that the number of possible humans outnumbers all the grains of sand on all the beaches on all the possible worlds. and then he said that amongst all those are poets greater than Keats and scientists created Newton, and yet here in our ordinariness are we.

And yet we are the chosen ones. We are heir to a great lineage. We are heir to 6 million generations of heroes and warriors- across two million years of human evolution. Little self programming informational algorithms running in the computers using chemical fire, wearing bodies forged in the hearts of dying stars. This is who we are. Star children. Heirs to all of human history. The chosen ones amongst near-infinite possible humans. We've already drawn Excalibur.

As Warren Ellis argues through Axel Brass in the graphic novel Planetary, that if you save the world then it will repay you a million times over. And as Morgan Freeman's character points out to Lucy in the movie by the same name. "The point to life is to pass it on."