(Yesterday Was) Yuri Gagarin Day
Two Steps Forward
One Giant Step Back
It's pretty amazing how adaptable and creative our silly yet sublime species can be. We have the ability to open nature's secrets to discover truths we'd never even imagined.
To look into the future and pull ourselves, hand over fist and tooth and nail into the most spectacular and fundamentally generative escapades.
To conquer our fears, of both simpler failure and utter annihilation, and propel ourselves into the unknown.
To be truly the most remarkable species to yet inhabit this pale blue dot amidst the cosmos.
And still do we cling to our past. To the dreams and delusions of our ancestors. Those who lacked the most basic bits of information to explain what we are and how we came to be.
As the legacy of George W Bush has been established, some of the more reactionary and paranoid of homo's visions have taken on new life; life which many of us had hoped to have seen the last of when the Soviet Empire dismantled itself in the inevitable fashion all such Top-down political structures must. Humans evolve as a species and over enormous lengths of time. Our silly thoughts and ideas can only maintain their existence for as long as we as a whole benefit from them.
It is certainly important to remember our history, and to embrace the good which has arisen from even some of the most horrifyingly naive and egotistical atrocities we once considered rationally based. Who we are is in great part the accumulation of thoughts we've had and acts we've performed.
But to go back, to idle, to rely upon concepts and beliefs which once had no empirical evidence visible to deny them; this is cowardice. This is foolishness of the most extreme nature.
It can only exist where people fear their own responsibilities will be too much for them to meet in achieving their goals.
It can only happen when people allow others to gain power over the expression of truth and the apparency of empirical reality. When people give in to fear of the responsibility we each have for our lives, regardless of whether or not we acknowledge those nearly discovered truths about reality and the universe in which we've evolved.
Today is also the anniversary of the first NASA Shuttle launch. A good idea which has stagnated and decayed rather than being expanded upon and transformed into new and better ways of explorer the Space around our planet. I love the Shuttle program for the still embryonic idea it so readily espoused that we could have simple and effective means of traveling beyond our own gravity well and out into the vast and often completely incredible expanses of space.
But it is time for something new. Again.
Patience and diligence against the reactionary politics of culture are needed now, as ever...
Patience is so hard to do these days. I want it cleaned up yesterday, but as we all know, it takes time to move a mountain.
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me is that Bush is not a scientist. Why is he responsible for stem cells. Why then does he and the Supreme Ct. get involved with stem cells and abortion.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I feel he tries to practice medicine without a license when he tackles these issues. And that is a crime.
So is lying to the American public and anything else Bush Co. does.
Is too true, Mary. Too freakin' true indeed. And then there's that damned canard which seems to hold true so often: be careful when asking for patience, as you just may need it more than ever.
ReplyDeleteSo is . . . anything else Bush Co. does.
LMAO!!! That's why you be so 'dorable, AG. ;-}
Ah, we not only abandoned our space program, it wa shorrible mismanaged.
ReplyDeleteAs were most things in this presidency.
You've nailed it spot on, this obsession with turning away from knowledge and responsibility. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, folks look to an invisible friend in the sky to handle their problems, rely on the positions of the stars at our birth to determine their mates, think we're cool to wear this symbol or that. All the while we treat our enormous scientific advances as the hobby.
ReplyDeleteHow we cling to what we cannot prove, in order to avoid what we don't want to know.
Sad thing is, the Dems dismantled it back in the '70s. Carter's priorities, while incredibly humane, sane and otherwise unpopular, didn't give enough energy to the more creative or sustainable elements of NASA.
ReplyDeleteAnd Congress... (&)@$^ (@)holes...
When they aren't being parochially self-involved they're pushing BS versions of Federal responsibility which do naught much but cushion their campaign coffers.
Space exploration nearly died with the advent of the Shuttle program; a development which was far from inevitable if not for lack of popular support and an incredibly strong champion. Reagan killed any plans we may have been able to realize for peaceful goals in orbit, and the pathetic Dems went along for the ride.
As usual, we all paid their tickets. Far too many with smiles on their weary faces...
How we cling to what we cannot prove, in order to avoid what we don't want to know.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!
I promise, honestly, I will stop whinin' 'bout it. I will.
I just can't right yet . .
:-|