By Samson Williams, Anthropologist-in-Residence, MilkyWayEconomy
TLDR; Maybe the distance between stars and people's 80 yearish lifespan is God's security feature for keeping his creatures in their zoo enclosures. So does that mean humans are dangerous or are God's other creations dangerous to humans?
The Stars as Bars
Imagine the night sky not as a canvas of infinite freedom but as the iron bars of a divine enclosure. Each star shines like a beacon, tempting us with the promise of freedom, yet the gulfs of light-years in between are the walls of a cage. And what is the lock on this prison? Time. The eighty-odd years we are allotted (if we’re fortunate) serve as God’s reset button, the mechanism that keeps His creatures bound within their terrestrial zoo.
Civilizations rise and fall within that lifespan, yet the prison holds. Even with technology, even with dreams of warp drives, there is no skipping the fundamental truth: one human body cannot outrun death to reach another sun. Mortality is the leash tethering us to Earth. Our bodies, fragile machines, wear down long before we might traverse the abyss. It’s not cruelty, but a kind of cosmic order. A security feature.
The Zoo Logic
Think of zoos. Fences don’t need to be cruel; they just need to be effective. For lions, bars. For fish, glass. For us, it is the architecture of physics and the ticking clock of biology. The barrier is built so seamlessly into the fabric of existence that most don’t even notice. It feels natural because it is.
The enclosure is scaled perfectly. Wide enough to explore continents, oceans, skies. Limited enough to remind us that we are not sovereign. That is the paradox: freedom inside captivity. God did not need to post guards at the stars. He set the distances, set the lifespan, and the system secures itself.
The Hunger Beyond the Bars
Yet what makes the zoo effective also makes it unbearable. Humanity is restless precisely because it can see the stars. The tiger in a cage that cannot glimpse the savanna paces differently than the one who can smell the wild just beyond the fence. Our hunger to escape is built into the design. The longing is the test.
So, the enclosure is not just physical. It is spiritual. Civilization itself is the story of creatures rattling their cage, mistaking local victories...fire, steam, silicon...for transcendence, when in truth, they remain within the same enclosure, merely decorating their cell.
The Point of the Prison
Why the cage at all? Perhaps to prevent self-destruction. If man could easily reach the stars, he would carry his violence, greed, and chaos across the galaxy unchecked. The enclosure forces us to evolve—not biologically, but morally, intellectually, spiritually—before we can earn the keys. It is less punishment than preparation.
The zoo is not permanent. A lock is not the same as a wall. Locks exist to be opened, but only when the creature is ready. The lifespan may be extended, the distances crossed, but only through collective effort and a shift of being. The lesson is clear: no individual escapes. Only a species can.
And to do that. To escape. We must first overcome humanity's greatest sin.
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Samson