I'm reminded of a quote attributed to Carl Sagan who said something along the lines of the arrogance of the West, believing they have nothing at all to learn from anyone else. So evident in some of the replies to this thread.

Aries54

If your following the path of the high priest of Scientific mambo jumbo Carl Sagan, and towards the ultimate end of creation, integration into the Cosmos, the path is already mapped.
I think he’s around four thousand years behind the times, depending on your cultural view.

Dan.

This reads to me like the musings of someone who has spent too much time meditating on their navel, after indulging in some of the more interesting products of the third world.

"These challenges are 'existential' in that they both materially and physically threaten human existence, and also undermine people's sense of confidence and certainty about life."

Excuse me, Richard: What is the difference between 'materially' and 'physically'?

Human existence cannot be threatened because there are no doubts over its future - extinction!

Once you think clearly about it, confidence and certainty about life will be firmly established.

Anyway, not only will humanity's future be determined by invisible cultures - humanity's PRESENT is already largely determined by a particular invisible culture: SARS-COV-2. Surely other bacterial and viral cultures will follow in determining humanity's future!

Sagan's obviously a half educated nil well read, half dumb-a... academic. He epitomises modern 'academics'.

To me, he's spent too much time in the sun and not enough in the real hall of academia, the library.

Yuyutsu, he's spent too much time in doomed cultures and hasn't spent anytime discovering what makes cultures survive. A Written history ... of ideas that can grow and develop, through revision and reassessment, over time. That is what the common people and well read intelligensia have in common, accept and LIVE. ie their culture, the culture of the WEST.

To you all, the author does not understand why Western Culture leads and will survive. His ilk are intent on undermining and destroying that because of ignorance and ideological stupidity.