People are idiots. Of this fact we can
be certain as history points to our crimes, both against the Earth
and each other. We can be genius, occasionally, briefly noted along
our mapping modernity, prolonged self-destruction. Affairs may have
gotten a bit more pressing recently, what with some of us stomping
around, ceaselessly devouring. Our attitudes will have to change. Or
many will have to die, maybe both. These things are inevitable. Thus,
we have to get off this planet.
It's the perfect task. It's the
correct goal. True we have made the aforementioned mistakes and some
of us continue to do so, but it cannot be said that there isn't a new
paradigm afoot. The human species, having been connected together by
technology, has decided change is required, hastily. The twenty-first
century promising a new enlightenment by way of a supreme arrogance.
Things as they are, we simply don't have time to fret over the past
when we're so amazing right now. Surely the baby cannot be blamed for
shitting in his diaper.
We don't need to feel guilty about the
mistakes of the past, we need to fix the future, oddly and simply by
thinking about it. Everybody is predominately concerned with making
money. This is an extremely present mindset and not conducive to
future planning. It's hard to find the time to daydream about space
travel when you forgot to pick up Timmy from soccer practice because
you're tired from working two jobs. We don't have to get rid of money, (although it would solve almost every problem,) or have
everyone start wearing white robes. We can't cease our efforts to
correct past mistakes, for we can't all leave. Cleaning up sounds
like a good start. Eventually we'll run out of dinosaur goo and
everything will have to change, preferences and profit be damned.
Still, no amount of work done by our lot will change the fact that
the Earth could shake us all off like fleas. The Sun could burp in
our direction and fry us in place, creating a planetary Pompeii.
Leaving the Earth is mandatory for human survival in the long run.
I'm asking just that we start thinking about that. Individually we
are a tiny sum of a magnificent existence, we can only be valuable
while thinking about the whole.
Every new tomorrow gets us one step
closer to being able, but the drive to imagine has been distracted
and corrupted. This has happened, is happening and will continue to
happen in the future because, as I said, people are idiots. Usually,
we get greedy, then we get lazy, then we get spoiled. It happened in
Rome, it happens elsewhere now. This sort of behaviour needs to be
corrected, for everyone's sake. Celebrate not celebrity, worship
wisdom and intelligence, favour reason over profit, cooperation over
competition. Ask not what is in this life for you, for you will have
it anyway and but what you leave for the future. We can be a planet
of philosophers, forcing the hands of non-philosopher Kings. We can
do it on our own because we must. Accept that as fact and begin.
"What are we all here for?
We're all here to go into space.
The Earth is going to be a space
station and we're all here to go into space.
But what are you and you and you here
for?"
-William Burroughs, Dead City Radio.
Well done Br. Taylor.
ReplyDelete"True we have made the aforementioned mistakes and some of us continue to do so, but it cannot be said that there isn't a new paradigm afoot."
“We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain.” - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism