-Larry Niven, Protector (London, 1974), p. 213.
We do not become protectors. However, we learn, mature and continue to learn - by study, training, experience and, possibly, meditation. We can look back and see that we were stupid. We might even realize that we are still stupid much of the time, a problem not experienced by protectors.
The men who become protectors on the colony planet, Home, cooperate to control the planet and to create more protectors for the coming conflict with the attacking Pak. Similarly, in the world reflected by fiction, those who reach a common understanding of Terrestrial problems cooperate with each other - though not with those of different understandings.
We lack the common purpose of a group of species protectors.
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