The reason that is rarely articulated, for obvious reasons, but which is nonetheless true: for many this fills a void of meaning. They get be one of the decisive few at the decisive moment in the history of life. Very similar to the emotions that motivated many revolutionaries of days past. All of the sudden the small things one does—the books one reads, one’s office set up, one’s bedtime routine—take on an awful cosmic significance. The whole history of carbon life is culminating with *me* — and what I do, and the few elect here with me, matters, and matters immensely. We are the agents of history, the only people in the world doing something that truly, deeply matters. And if we all die? Well we were all going to die anyway. But this is the one way we might *not* all die. And I get to be a part of it.