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"You are dreaming, Peter," said Antonovna and began to laugh.
"Maybe I am dreaming," I said, "but everything that I said is possible. Our humanity as human beings gives us that capability. All we need to do is to develop the technology of grace. That's all we need to do. The humanist energy to carry the project forward will unfold from that grace. The implementation falls into place as a secondary effect. Can you imagine how America would change once we stopped wasting our human potential that we throw away with homelessness, slum living, unemployment, and waging war all over the world? We are throwing away our humanity. I am saying we need to rebuild what we have already lost. I would say that that the first step would have to be to build those millions of quality houses for the whole of society so that the human potential can become developed, which we now throw away."
"You want America to be a welfare state?" said Anton. "We tried it in Russia. It doesn't work."
"I'm not talking about the kind of welfare state where the poor remain poor and are being fed with crumbs. I am talking about the well being of society as a whole. I am talking about developing our humanity as a key foundation for civilization. I'm not dreaming, Anton. Those who think that we can survive without that are the ones who are dreaming. So, why shouldn't we do what needs to be done? We have the physical resources in abundance. We can build those top-quality houses by the millions - not tarpaper shacks - and we can give them away. I am talking about houses that can be set up in Siberia as readily as they would fit into Equatorial Africa. The world probably needs several hundred million of these new houses immediately. China probably needs a hundred million all by itself, and India too. That's how we can upgrade our humanity and establish peace. To sing that song, and to do it, is saying grace."
"Still, I think you are dreaming," Anton interrupted. "There aren't enough trees left in America to build a million new houses, let alone the hundreds of millions that you say India needs, and China, and Africa."
"I'm not proposing to build wood shacks," I interrupted Anton. "Building with wood is archaic. I'm proposing that we build with basalt. Basalt is a finely grained stone that is extremely dense and strong, that melts at 1,200 degrees Celsius and once melted can be processed like glass. It can be cast into molds of any shape, reinforced with fiberglass if need be. Basalt can be foamed for insulation, or be extruded into anything you can think of, even into micro fibers that can be woven like fabric. Basalt fibers are a three-times-better insulator than asbestos. Basalt reinforcement bars are also a far stronger reinforcement agent for concrete than steel is. A ton of basalt reinforcement can provide the equivalent strength of nine tons of steel. And there is plenty of basalt in the world. Nor does it have to be dug out of the ground. The USA has 170,000 cubic kilometers sitting on the surface, enough to cover the entire country with it deeper than a man stands tall. India has almost four times as much. This high-grade building material lays around unused at the moment, because we haven't bothered to develop the process heat yet to melt it. For this task we can utilize nuclear power, such as the High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor. We can utilize the high temperature gases from these reactors and pump up their heat to the needed 1,400 degrees, or utilize nuclear mad hydrogen fuel. The point is, the realization of what we need to do to build a bright human world is only a technical step away. It's a matter of utilizing our inner resources, our grace as human beings. If we utilize our grace we can build anything that we can imagine, and do the building in largely automated processes. It appears that basalt micro-fibers might even be usable for weaving textiles. We can revolutionize the planet with this one single technology. That's only the beginning of our reflecting what I call grace. And we mustn't just say it only at the dinner table on special occasions, but live it and make it a daily occasion. In fact, we have to develop these kinds of potentials in a hurry, because the return of the Ice Age might hit us within the next hundred years. We have to have indoor agriculture established by then. Our present agriculture is totally dependent on the warm climate of the current Holocene interglacial period that will end soon. The very existence of mankind literally depends on the development of the technology of our grace that unlocks mankind's humanist power to transform the world. That's what creating indoor agriculture means. That grace is also the key element of what our civilization already reflects to some degree, so far as we still have a civilization."
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