The first 3000 word’s of Chapter 10 in Erich von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods stand as reflectively poetic today as they were prophetic when written in 1968. von Daniken boldly challenges the reader to consider the ‘future’ of major culturally significant events and evolutions – including the topics of overpopulation, world hunger, alternative and sustainable energies, and investment into innovation – within the context of justifying the spirit of exploration, and the act itself.

The problem that became evident with this realization is that measuring progress as a civilization paints the picture of a losing battle; as the escalating scale of the problems will forever exceed the rate of solutions given that we continue to operate under the modern ‘rules of civility’. That is, the progress that is much needed at higher levels than the majority of us operate at day to day, is grossly suppressed by expectations placed on all of us by the powers that be.

In the context of exploration, von Daniken’s Chapter 10 pleads the case better than anywhere else I have read on the subject. Whereas, beyond the simple satisfaction of curiosities that are inherent in human nature, exploration (both the act of exploring a ‘space’, and the intellectual pursuit), lies at the fundamental root of our current state of being, and is the enabler of gaining ever closer insight to solving the numerous very big picture problems that we face here on Earth. Quite simply, we’ll never find the solution if we stop looking, and there are no hard and fast rules to live by for wherever and whenever the search may take us.

The balance of Von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods is no less intriguing from a deeply philosophical perspective, nor from a creative perspective in considering whether have we in fact been visited by extraterrestrials in our antiquity, and possibly a more recent past.

By way of a book review – for both skeptics and believers – Chariots of the Gods is a timeless classic. Two-thumbs up. A must read.

Have an open mind, and consider a very different tomorrow.

In close, in von Daniken’s own words,

“We must bequeath our grandchildren a chance to survive.”