Wilson invoked the words of French writer Jean Bruller (Vercors), who made this observation during the dark days of the 1930s, to frame the three great unanswered questions of religion, philosophy, and science: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Wilson argued that these questions remain largely unanswered and that our best thinkers are still confounded by them. He connected this existential uncertainty to the environmental crisis, insisting that humanity urgently needs to decide what it is, what it wishes to become, and how it relates to the rest of life on Earth. The quote served as both diagnosis and challenge — if we cannot understand ourselves, how can we possibly safeguard the biosphere that has taken three-and-a-half billion years to emerge?