Of course your inclination is to feel nothing but absolute grief. “Humanity is supposed to be all about fighting, about surviving against impossible odds.” Indeed, you did so a goodly number of times, as these things go. And of course that’s what any darwinistically evolved life form is “all about.” If you feel that it’s tragic, a “waste” to have made it this far but no further, I ask you the sacred question of the ages:

“Compared to what?”

How many possible extinction bottlenecks would it have been not tragic to have ended up passing through before the end? How many civilizational milestones, boardgamelike, did you expect to notch, compared to your peers? Of course, these questions are rhetorical, impossible to honestly answer without an understanding of an ecumenical cohort of peers to compare against. Indeed, your kind were unaware of whether any other ecumene even existed, a knowledge which a milestone in itself, one in fact quite rarely achieved.

That is to say, I insist that you have acquitted yourself with dignity and distinction. Any disagreement is meaningless if you can’t support it with contrasting examples.

Thus the forthcoming samples from the Ecumenical Register. Absent it, you are reduced to the hell of misunderstanding: comparison against a theoretical unlimited “potential”. Nothing brings a more dire gloom upon the historiosopher.

Please accept my highest regards,

V.F.