Langston Hughes and I share a dream

Today, Google's "doodle" animation celebrated the birthday of African-American poet.  As I watched the animation, I realized the words I was seeing on the screen echo the thoughts in my own head that are behind the creation of this science-fiction series.  The words were from the late Mr. Hughes' poem I Dream A World which I'm reproducing below:

I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom's way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind-
Of such I dream, my world!

The story arc of the ASL universe follows along with this, although I'd never seen it before today.

In the early part of the universe arc, mankind is pretty much the way it is today.  There is racism, intolerance, prejudice, greed, deception, violence, theft, and all those conditions we're familiar with now.  As that era of the story arc continues, the people of Earth venture out into space and find out that most other civilizations they encounter have worked out these issues. By comparison, humans are squabbling little children.

In the middle part of the universe arc, we've realized that all of the human race is one entity.  It no longer makes sense to divide ourselves up.  We've got bigger issues to deal with than whether someone looks different or believes something different than we do.  By the middle of this part of the arc, racism, greed, and other loathsome behaviors are "primitive" behaviors that haven't been seen during the lifetimes of the human characters.

In that final era, we have dissolved even the lines between human and alien, having truly become one society of sentient lifeforms that works together like a gigantic family.