Sorry. Just paralyzed by the indescribable beauty of the cosmos. We'll get to work. - Daniel Suarez

Yes, space will challenge us, have no doubt, but this is the very challenge humanity needs to cure us of our propensity for bullshit — because space is where bullshit goes to die. Out there only facts and competence keep you alive. Superstition, uneducated guesses, and comforting lies are what must go extinct. Not us.

Humanity had always trafficked in oppression. Before the corporate marketing department got ahold of it, it was called conquest. Now it was regional development. Vikings and Mongols were big on revenue targets, too — but Leland had dispensed with all the tedious invading, and had taken a page out of the Roman playbook by hiring the locals to enslave each other as franchisees.

The people behind the modern global economy will prevent any meaningful change until it's too late.

But the question that needs to be answered is whether civilization's inability to adapt is a failure of leadership — or an unwillingness in humanity itself.