Read a critique of the Destiny here.

The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars. This is the third tenet of Earthseed.

The Destiny of Earthseed
Is to take root among the stars.
It is to live and to thrive
On new earths.
It is to become new beings
And to consider new questions.
It is to leap into the heavens
Again and again.
It is to explore the vastness
Of heaven.
It is to explore the vastness
Of ourselves.

The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars. Thatʼs the ultimate Earthseed aim, and the ultimate human change short of death. Itʼs a destiny weʼd better pursue if we hope to be anything other than smooth-skinned dinosaurs—here today, gone tomorrow, our bones mixed with the bones and ashes of our cities.

It wonʼt be possible for a long time. Now is a time for building foundations—Earthseed communities—focused on the Destiny. After all, heaven really exists, but you donʼt have to die to reach it.

The Destiny is important for the lessons it forces us to learn while we’re here on Earth, for the people it encourages us to become. It is important for the unity and purpose that it gives us here on Earth. And in the future, it offers us a kind of species adulthood and species immortality when we scatter to the stars.

Why do some people find it so easy to believe we go to heaven after we die, but so hard to believe we can go into the heavens while we’re alive? Following the Earthseed Destiny is difficult. Massively difficult. That’s the challenge. But if we want to do it, someday we’ll do it. It’s not impossible

The Destiny helps us to understand what we can be, what we can do. It gives us a focus, a goal, something big enough, complex enough, difficult enough, and in the end, radical enough to make us become more than we ever have been. We keep falling into the same ditches. We learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.”

But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on buildings and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves. We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfill the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become. Our new worlds will remake us as we remake them.

We are Earthseed.
We are flesh—self aware, questing, problem-solving flesh.
We are that aspect of Earthlife best able to shape God knowingly.
We are Earthlife maturing,
Earthlife preparing to fall away from the parent world.
We are Earthlife preparing to take root in new ground,
Earthlife fulfilling its purpose, its promise, its Destiny.

∞ = Δ