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We are pretty isolated. Had we belonged to a cluster of stars our chances of finding life would have been greater.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_cluster

Globular clusters, or GC, are roughly spherical groupings of from 10,000 to several million stars packed into regions of from 10 to 30 light years across.

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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globular_cluster :

"However, they are not thought to be favorable locations for the survival of planetary systems. Planetary orbits are dynamically unstable within the cores of dense clusters because of the perturbations of passing stars."

Some have theorized that the reason we are even talking about this is because we are _not_ in a cluster. We are pretty isolated, life ending events are pretty rare, every 60 million years?

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