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    development, though too often we are not involved in them.

    The second, and perhaps more important advantage of following in the

    footsteps of Captain Kirk: man has as yet invented no way to prevent war.

    We have found no method for shaking the consequences of our biological

    curse, our animal brain's addiction to violence.  We cannot free ourselves

    from our nature as cells in a superorganismic beast constantly driven to

    pecking order tournaments with its neighbors.  We have found no technique

    for evading the fact that those competitions are all too often deadly.

    Carl Sagan, Werner Erhard and the followers of  Buckminster Fuller

    feel that the mere threat of nuclear annihilation will weld us together as one

    human race. If only the great communicators, they say, can shrill at us loudly

    enough about the threat of holocaust, all nations will see themselves as

    brothers, realizing their common stake in the survival of the species.

    Unfortunately, Sagan, Erhard and Fuller--much like you and me--have been

    known to quibble harshly with others who share their goals but differ in

    beliefs. Even the peace-makers cannot entirely restrain the urge for battle.

    Nor can human beings as a species stop their inexorable itch for war.

    We're like a teenager in the days before the sexual revolution who has been

    told that masturbation will drive him insane.  His guilt makes him feel nearly

    suicidal, but he still can't stop himself from the unspeakable act. We've found

    ways to halt illnesses, we've invented means to leapfrog continents in hours,

    and someday we will find a way to stop war. But only if we survive long

    enough.  Until then our task is to outlast our own impulses.  Our task is to

    outwit The Lucifer Principle.

    You could think of us as a species trapped in a car hurtling out of

    control toward a tree, the steering locked, the brakes frozen. We could sit

    behind the wheel and pretend that if we felt enough guilt the tree would

    disappear.  Or we could throw ourselves out of the auto's door and live. For

    us the equivalent of hurling ourselves to safety is moving a few humans off

    this planet, putting enough of our kind into colonies in space so that if the

    rest of us down here on earth disappear, those left in the rotating habitations

      a, Europe, and Japan.  Those partnerships are already under

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