| They awe us, these strange stars, so cold, so clear. We are as children whose small feet have strayed into some dim-lit temple of the god they have been taught to worship but know not; and, standing where the echoing dome spans the long vista of the shadowy light, glance up, half hoping, half afraid to see some awful vision hovering there. And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the night. In its great presence, our small sorrows creep away, ashamed. | |
| -- JKJ/3MiaB/1889 | |
It is an inevitability that any species wishing to survive indefinitely must leave its homeworld and travel to the stars. Having developed a suitable method of transport (the grav-engine), humans moved out into the Milky Way, searching out planets that might sustain them. The progress was slow, but hundreds of worlds became colony-homes to the human race. Barely connected by communication at the speed of light, the worlds all evolved different societies, marked across the board by a fierce individualism and self-dependence. Some colonies died out, while others fell away from contact. Humanity found itself scattered throughout isolated, diverse pockets of civilization, relating ever-decreasingly to each other ... but still, a thin web of commerce and migration and communication thrives, moving at 99.9c between worlds thousands of light years apart.
The Governing of the Masses
Throughout human history, one situation has never changed: a small percentage of any population holds the majority of wealth and power, and the rest simply abide. At no time have humans ever achieved "harmonism," the state of all people living equally, sharing resources and burdens alike. In the late 2nd millennium, an attempt called "communism" failed miserably; in the 5th millenium, the Solar System Colliance embraced a similar philosophy called "fratocracy," which led to the fall of the Colliance and the destruction of four nations on Venus. Few other notable attempts are known, and humans have resolved themselves to the unalterable fact that some must lead, and most must follow.
The manifestation of rule-by-some takes many different forms. Kingdoms prosper among many human worlds, with power handed down by heredity. Nominal "representative" governments (senates, parliaments, councils) are known on many others, but only as a technicality, an illusion blanketing the hard fact that powerful magnates pull strings behind the scenes. In every circumstances, the Socio-Ecomonic Exponentiality has never proven false.
Racism to the nth Degree, and the "Common Parley"
As HyperHumanity stretched the Original Human Form into a thousand different shapes, the core mistrust of "others" that lives deep in the heart of the human collective consciousness grew to immense proportions. As easy as it is to feel wary or hateful of a person who differs only in skin color or gender or age or social status, mankind finds it far easier to despise a "human" whose skin is scaled or furred, whose five platter-sized eyes wrap around his skull, who breathes methane at -20°F, or who is one of seven incomprehensible sub-genders.
These differences, compounded by the separation of the worlds, threatened to make communication between different humans completely impossible, until Saint Terreck Irio, a philosopher of the 37th Century, developed a set of protocols titled the "Common Parley." Under these regulations, different races can meet on a neutral ground, assume that the other side knows nothing of their ways (thereby forgiving transgressions), converse in a universal language ("Common"), and successfully negotiate transactions of all kinds. The Common Parley is honored in nearly all humans societies.
God
One amazing aspect of humanity is its tendancy to believe that one single super-celestial entity created mankind and continues to guide human history. The first encounters with alien species put a great strain on many religions, but organized faith lives on. The concept of God as a being of the Original Human Form ("in His image") has been abandoned by many humans of different form; some redefine God in their own shapes; others claim God to be ethereal and intangible. Most, however, retain the belief of a Final Reward, an afterlife in another state of existence.
The Catholic Church is still the most powerful and successful religious organization known to humanity, despite the splinters of Protestantism in the 2nd millenium and the Pretendrance in the 6th millennium (both of which still thrive), and the disastrous Veritadeo movement, which led to the Galactic War in the 71st and 72nd centuries. Pope Harro I, when Rome was destroyed in 7111 A.D., moved the seat of the Papacy to the Neva Vateca on World-0, a city of immense wealth and oppulence (and extremely effective security); Catholicism has survived undisturbed since then. Forced early on to embrace HyperHumanity, rather than condemn it as an abomination of God's Will, the Church has taken the stance that all living beings are Children of God, whatever their form, and only their actions earn them Heaven or condemn them to Hell. Thereby the Popes won influence among dozens of alien societies as well as bolstering their power among the ever-diversifying human race.
Prophecies of doom still come and go regularly, promising an intervention of some sort by God (the Rapture, the Second Coming, the Secret Coming, Armageddon, the Forced Abidance, the Laav [Cleansing], the Re-Creation, etc). So far, none of them have come true.