Bruce Damer shows the audience at SAND18 the very first photo of RNA formed spontaneously from samples he collected from a hot spring. From this, in a wide-ranging talk which draws from our understanding of early human ancestry and some of our modern creation myths, including Star Wars, he speculates about the nature of human life and the stories we have created to live by.
A four-billion-year-old cycling evolutionary engine of creation lifted us improbable and beautiful human beings into existence. The very process by which we were made is driven by the dual nature of night and day, death and reproduction, despair and hope. The dark and light parts of our nature now starkly face each other in a high stakes planetary stand-off which will determine our very survival. The secret to our future may be to invoke Jedi-like transformative powers into the midst of the stand-off. To paraphrase Master Yoda… “Jedi need the dark force of the Empire to grow skills stronger… to answer power with power, the Jedi way this is not… so you must face the truth, and choose to give off light, for Luminous beings we are, Padawan.”
