or listen to the audiobook here
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?" (click here)
I am trying to pique your appetite for wonder with these words written by the visionary and often controversial (which is the social fate of every visionary) British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Hate him or love him, he's got a strong point of view and is not afraid to voice it.
It's not an easy read but nothing important ever is. Try and stay with it for the first dozen pages. If you're not totally hooked by then, you can always go back to your favourite comic book. WOW! OH! ... BAM!
