The Audience
By assigning man the role of audience, I mean to draw a distinction between the acts of the human animal, wholly in concert with the demands of Gaia or the family of living things, and conscious awareness which does not operate on this level. Consciousness is capable of killing, but this is a modest act in comparison with procreation. Procreation entails the devising of the genetic code. Conscious awareness (the ego) seems to act out great dramas, like WWII for instance, but the lowly virus accomplishes the same thing. A nuclear war would, no doubt, be a great event, especially if it were capable of extinguishing life on the planet. But, probably it could in no way accomplish anything so grand. Probably it would only do what was done by an asteroid a few million years ago. And, beyond that, it isn’t clear that man could create WWIII anyway. The opportunity has been here for fifty years and it hasn’t happened yet.
The issue, regarding the power of humans, comes down to feelings. To what extent is man capable of acting against his feelings? To a very limited extent I would say. And, which man is capable of controlling his feelings? None that I have seen. So, we can suppose that Gaia is responsible for our feelings and therefor controls our actions. I could point to many current examples of mankind acting without understanding and therefor in accord with his feelings.
On the other hand, man alone seems capable of observing objectively. If it is actually true that we are the lone possessors of this capability, then that is our distinction and we are forced to draw the conclusion that God wishes an audience and that is our unique function. When we are in the subjective state, we are no different than any other living thing on the planet. We seek to aid Gaia in her quest for immortality.
If this is a fair representation of our role, then we can draw some conclusions regarding our proper goals. We can, for instance, aid Gaia in her goal. It is, no doubt, already true that Gaia has achieved space flight. From the discovery of Martian rocks on Earth, we can surmise that Earth rocks can likely be found elsewhere, or will be at some future time. If these earth rocks contained a form of life capable of surviving space flight encased in a rock, then Gaia would have successfully transported herself to another heavenly body. If that body ever became capable of supporting life, it would likely spring forth from that rock and set about the job of terraforming (transforming the atmosphere to that required for abundent life) its new home. In fact, we might be the result of just such an event.
It is a rather hit and miss system, though. We have the capability now, of doing the job in a controlled way on nearby solar system objects. It would only amount to identifying rocks containing dormant bacteria and transporting them to every other planet having the appearance of supporting life either now or at some time in the future. Mars, Venus, and some of the moons are the most likely objects. The fruition of this sort of seeding would not be expected in any sort of near term. Probably not until after our species has passed from the scene. Perhaps not until Earth has lost its capacity to support life. But, eventually, Gaia would reappear, should suitable conditions ever arise.
If we last long enough, one way missions carrying seeds could be launched to other star systems. This seems to me a worthy goal.