Important Or Not?

Starfarers, 42.

Dayan:

"'I would say we need to keep a sense of proportion and not get above ourselves, but we'd do wrong to feel humble. The holonts want discourse with us. I don't think that's purely from curiosity. I think that, somehow, we're important to more than ourselves.'" (p. 399)

Are Earth and humanity important or unimportant cosmically? Sf can show us as either or even as both together. In The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Earth is so unimportant that it can be demolished to make way for a hyper-spatial bypass but is also important because it is the computer that will answer the Question about Life, the Universe and Everything.

Human beings can rule an interstellar empire in one novel but can be very junior members of a galactic federation in another. Children experience this dichotomy. They are the centre of attention on their birthday but are back to being just one in a playground the following day.

As conscious, intelligent organisms, we are very important even if superior aliens think otherwise.