In 1968 Stewart Brand said, “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”

A year later we stepped onto the moon.

I thought this line was outright arrogant, but the more I sit with it the more I hear humility, a moral warning, and a sense that civilization is now our responsibility.

It’s 2025. We’ve built reusable rockets, reasoning models smarter than 99% of people, and pushed average life expectancy from the medieval 30s to seventy‑plus years.

AI has tripled my productivity. With the right tools I can work like an entire team, and for a few cents an API hands me technology that would have looked like magic a decade ago. It listens, executes, and builds beside me like a partner. Prometheus once carried fire to humans; now that same spark shows up on my command line. I never asked for it, but the era still placed it in my hands.

Yet our instincts remain primitive - violent, greedy, cruel. We hold the tech to catapult civilization forward and the tech to erase it with a snap. We sit in positions where we can tilt the world, while our mindsets, ethics, learning habits, and ability to collaborate lag far behind.

So when I look back at that line “We are as gods and might as well get good at it,” I am finally realizing that Stewart wasn’t being arrogant at all, he was experiencing enlightenment.

If we truly possess godlike leverage, we need to toughen up and be like an actual god, a responsible, mature and competent one.

I can’t act casually because every line of code, every agent I build, every essay I publish could butterfly into consequences that outlive me.

I can write software with my own hands that serves people no company bothered to reach.

I can build agents and robots that takes over jobs humans shouldn’t have to risk their lives doing.

I can publish content that finds anyone with a screen - and if it spreads, I’ve influenced millions before lunch.

This leverage is new. The responsibility is permanent.

If I’m already sitting in a god’s seat, I shouldn’t be a lousy god.

That’s what Brand meant, and what Peter Parker keeps telling us: with great power comes great responsibility.

This is the best era to start a venture, create, build, and venture out of our zone. There are just problems everywhere, asking us to turn our tools into products and services that actually help people and stretch civilization forward.

Let’s build.