"The other kind sees 100 billion stars in the galaxy and 100 billion galaxies in the Hubble volume and wonders why we are still sitting here playing king of the sandpile with each other."
Because liberals have convinced too many of our brothers and sisters to only think small thoughts.
Then there was Sagan with his enhanced revelation of wasted space. If there is somebody out there, fine, the space is being utilized; if there is nobody but us, we have a lot of work to do. Right now it appears it is just us. We should proceed on that basis until we do in fact run into the others if they are out there.