"We're not outside the world, yoz. You know? We are the world. We're its language. So we live and it lives… — Ursula K. Le Guin

She had come to Aka to learn how to sing this world's tune, to dance its dance; and at last, she thought, away from the city's endless noise, she was beginning to hear the music and to learn how to move to it.

She was not so naive as to think there was any necessary relation between religion and morality, or that if there was a relation it was likely to be a benevolent one.

Most civilisations, perhaps, look shinier in general terms and from several light-years away.