Karl asked Alan Moore:

Dear Mr Moore. As I am only allowed to ask you one question I am afraid that I am going to have to make it a big one… Do you believe that given our seemingly unique position in this world, that mankind as a whole, essentially has a duty to accomplish something during our tenure as a species, and if so, do you think there is any hope that at some point in the future we will actually manage it? Many thanks, K

Alan Moore While I’m not personally sure that there is any external authority or force making it our duty as a sapient species to accomplish something, I think that it is imperative that we behave as if that is the case. As for whether I believe the species will ever actually reach this transcendent goal, whatever it might be, I’m probably a lot more optimistic than my largely-diagnostic fiction might have led you to believe: for all we know, we may be the only tiny speck of advanced life anywhere in the universe; the only part of the universe that is sentient; the only part of the universe that can look at itself and marvel. If that were the case...and we might value ourselves more and look after ourselves and our environment more if we acted like that were the case...then you’d have to say that we’re accomplishing quite a significant thing already. We might be the very beginnings of the universe’s nervous system and sensory apparatus. And even if we wipe ourselves out tomorrow, or in a hundred, or in a million years time, in my view of a solid and eternal spacetime continuum that accomplishment is not negated. Whatever we do or do not accomplish in the future, every conscious moment of our here and now is a stunning and miraculous unlikelihood that is very possibly nowhere replicated throughout the length and breadth of our cosmos. As far as I understand it, gold can only be created by a collision of supernovae. That’s why there is only enough of it on our planet to make a cube with a base area roughly the size of a tennis court, and why in any gold ring there is a tiny but measurable amount of gold from Mayan temples or from the teeth-fillings of holocaust victims. It’s a safe bet that gold is generally as rare throughout our universe at it is her on Earth. And yet we, examples of intelligent life, are much, much, much rarer than gold, and it would be a good thing if we thought a little more upon our scarcity, and hence our preciousness.

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