What an amazing series! I just watched all the episodes of The Noosphere, thanks to you.

The point you make about the inner skeptic is well-taken. Our current economic system (and the inexorable undermining of trust embedded into its design) makes us more than skeptical; it can turn us into cynics. Oscar Wilde perhaps put it best when he defined a cynic as someone "who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing." The economics of supply and demand (not to mention the commodification of everything) teach us to live in that place of scarcity and domination of which you speak.

As regards being part of something greater than ourselves, I would offer that we already are, and that that is the emergence to which Dr. Swimme is referring in the series. As a way to soften any fear of annihilation, we might consider ourselves as cells in the greater body of an interconnected humanity; each of us is unique, each of us has a particular function and lifecycle, and all of us are absolutely essential to the whole.

As The Noosphere makes clear, our species' history and experience have taught us how to survive; the question we face now is: will we allow our future to call us forward, and teach us how to thrive?