If you pay attention to the news, you can see that the world is virtually in flames with suffering. This includes human beings along with plants and animals. In fact, did you know that along with our own human troubles, we are at the beginning of the sixth mass extinction event on planet Earth? (The last one was the dinosaurs.)

Perhaps positive thinking dictates that we don’t ponder such obvious atrocities. Yet those of us on this planet who are better off than most have a moral obligation to do so.

The majority of people on this planet may be experiencing too much suffering to have the luxury of contemplating human and planetary evolution. But there are a great many of us who can certainly afford to do so.