They could see the enormous power of the planet and the virtual irrelevancy of the human lives on its surface.
“And yet we’re not irrelevant,” said Issib. “Because we are the ones who see the changes, and know them, and understand that they are changes, that once things were different. Everything else in the universe, every living and non-living thing, lives in the infinite now, which never changes, which always is exactly as it is. Only we know the passage of time, that one thing causes another and that we are changed by the past and will change the future.”