AugureyeExpress March 24 2014
As a child growing up in the southwest I spent many a summer night camping out in the back yard; laying on my back stargazing in awe and wonderment. I guess you could say I was just trying to get a sense of the room. The whole idea of endless space in this thing we call an unlimited universe had my rapt attention, and I absorbed every book on the subject I could find, becoming a fan of the science-fiction genre in the process. Naturally I followed our fledgling space program and the creation of NASA the National Aeronautical & Space Administration with a passionate excitement; knowing historic events were unfolding right before my eyes. I remember the feeling staring up into those summer night skies; of how small & insignificant we must be in the grand scheme of things. I think even more than the idea of mankind reaching for the stars, what enthralled me the most was the basic question of how life formed on this planet, and did it also form on other planets in this endless ocean of stars?
I think a great majority of us probably take being alive for granted without ever really spending much time wondering how life came to exist. For certain we spend some time wondering who am I, and what is the meaning of life, but mostly we tend to classify those questions as unknowable and file them away in long term storage. We shall leave thosequestions where they are, as today I am thinking more about howlife began here on Earth; and the critical path of events required for a single species to evolve sufficiently to dominate and possibly destroy the entire planet.
This critical path I refer to is what some historians call a sequence of Threshold Moments; which have been instrumental in the evolution of humanity upon this planet. These are the moments and events which occurred at a critical juncture of time to facilitate and shape the way of things to come. Historians have identified a total of eight of these threshold moments in time, and they deserve some attention if only in appreciation of the fact that if these eight events had happened differently our story might be very different, or not have happened at all. To qualify as a threshold moment; an event must alter things on a fundamental level, changing the world irreversibly for better or worse. These eight threshold moments are unique events in time, when the universe seems to defy its own natural law, and move from the simple to the complex, from chaos to order.