It's heartbreaking. The engineers and scientists actually working on space development operate on subsistence budgets that are just enough to keep the dream alive as a dream. In effect they serve as public relations, so that NASA can pretend it's the vanguard of human space exploration, rather than what it really is - a jobs program every bit as ideologically captured as every other large institution in the social order. I'm sure many of the scientists in NASA know that, too, and it must be depressing as all hell for them to understand that they're really not much better than science fiction writers.
Regarding the reproductive organs of Gaia, I strongly agree with this. The species can be seen as the fruiting bodies of the noosphere, tasked by evolution with spreading the biosphere to the solar system and beyond. A revealing trend within the woke discourse surrounding space development is the application of post-colonial theory to this subject. I've seen many people in the field write that no, humanity has no right to impose itself on the universe and 'destroy the environment' of extraterrestrial bodies by settling and industrializing them. Implicit in such critiques is a death impulse, the desire for the species to disappear from reality without making the slightest impact upon it. They seem to want to strangle our potential in the crib.
I don't think human colonisation, shaping and/or terraforming of barren and lifeless worlds presents any serious ethical problems, but there could be bodies that harbour alien life even within the solar system that I think would warrant protection.
I think you recently referenced that hideous strength elsewhere - space trilogy is like atlas shrugged as an interesting monocle through which to read the news.
Sep 13, 2022·edited Sep 13, 2022Liked by John Carter
It's possible that, if plant metaphors/analogies are appropriate, we are currently just a sprout, an early growth from a seed, ( planted here or not, the Ethical Sceptic has done an awesome analysis of DNA which suggests a certain combination the basic units simply not possible by accident because of the order it would have had to evolve in ), using up our "seed pod" as we grow, and that we may still have a way to go before we create enough of a flower/reproductive organ to attract a pollinating agent from anywhere which would lead to the production of fruit! :)
It may be that we are as far away from space travel as the Phoenicians were from crossing the Atlantic in 800BC, when it's possible that the greatest of Tyre ships may have made it as far as the Canary Islands from their base on the Iberian Peninsula but no further for another 2000+ years.
And in both plant and insect analogies neither the cells of the parent plant nor the bulk of the pre-pupate/larval insect stage actually "leave"/fly, only the new storage cells and seeds in the case of fruit, and the Imaginal Discs and entirely new cells covered in chitin etc in the adult insect.
ie : we might be left here on a hollowed out husk of a seed pod, or like a discarded chrysalis shell, watching weird/strange/unfamiliar kinds of "life" disappear into the stars.
PS. And maybe that's why the outward urge evaporated/collapsed over the last 50 years, as people realised this .... and maybe why transhumanism etc has become so "hot", because the only way that we are going to travel and live in space is if we transform.
And it seems to me that modern life feels more and more like living in a space ship, in smaller and smaller/more cramped surroundings, ( flats/homes, seats on buses and trains, offices etc ), more and more artificial/manmade environments, more and more dependent on technology that we don't understand, eating more and more processed/denatured food, more and more dependent on complex medical and/or pharmaceutical interventions, more and more immobile, spending more and more time concentrating on just one small object or two, tapping away with one hand.
The activities of the powerful global interest groups that I have been feeling so repelled or oppressed by, so critical of, which seem to treat most humans as if of no more value than lab rats/mice, virtually expendable in the pursuit of new technologies ( medical, information, "sustainability", etc ), are maybe not so different from those of the earliest long distance explorers, setting off with crews of dozens or hundreds of often press ganged sailors, porters, etc on unknown seas and into jungles, knowing that most of them won't survive.
Maybe the way that great exploration happened was ruthless, risk taking of others lives, unpleasant.
Maybe the work required for journeys into space is in fact ongoing, all around us, now. It just doesn't look quite the way we/I expected it to.
Yes, and after the last couple of years it think I can safely say that I wouldn't like space travel. I like to be able to breathe fresh air freely, ( I didn't wear a mask ), go outside into the sunshine/daylight, walk in the open, etc. I don't want to eat crickets/compacted mould/yeast or other "sustainable" style space foods, don't want to only see people on zoom calls and prefer using my own natural immune system etc. I'd rather stay in the Olde Worlde ... But revulsion at the kinds of lifestyle that space travel could nvolve might not be universal, judging from what many people seem prepared to put up with, if only out of fear/desperation or herd compliance instincts etc. ....On the other hand it may be that humans are the "cells" designed to make the flower that gets pollinated, and nothing else. .... Wondering what would qualify as the flower ... and whether it would look like "cleaning the room" or making a very big mess! ? :)
... and/or like spending what feels like a stupid/crazy amount of time, energy and money on something that seems completely and utterly useless ... to us.
"He said this with his eyes shining with the beatific certainty of the true believer, radiating a religious bliss that annihilated any chance of fruitful contradiction."
Welcome to the party, pal!
The New Left (aka Year Zero Cult) did not fight to win the means of cultural production just to add some "diverse voices" to the literary canon or to sprinkle some color into our boardrooms. Their entire project is a 4 Olds Deconstruction machine with no brakes and no OFF switch.
They maintain and consolidate power now because in all our global institutions of media, cultural and learning they have installed their morality as the One True Law for those who want to be considered Good and Wise—disagreeing with them in public just puts the stink of bigot or heretic on you and then the digital mob moves in to escort you to the nearest lamppost.
I think these Reign of Terror/Cultural Revolutions usually burn themselves out in a decade or so, but hopefully in our time of accelerated history they will be completely discredited sooner.
I think the discrediting is already happening. The speed and ruthlessness with which they seized cultural ascendancy, and the calamitous results of their misrule, have generated a huge amount of resentment. We're already at the point where their every attempted movement is met with considerable friction.
I absolutely agree w you except my wife mentors many young people in arts/culture etc and i have yet to meet any who are not True Believers whose entire worldview and mental and emotional architecture are constructed from Crit Theory/Soc Just language.
(But I try not to extrapolate too much from my little corner of the world.)
My hope in this area though is that all these beliefs seem pretty skin deep (as does just about every belief in liquid modernity), so hopefully this will end up like the 70s and they'll move onto astrology and various diet/exercise fads.
I think in a lot of cases it's just the tendency for the great herd of the middle to just go in whatever direction seems socially easiest. Girls in particular are prone to that.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the kids have come up in a context where badthink is ruthlessly punished, so the ones who don't agree have learned to keep it to themselves. My experience is that in many cases, if implicit permission is given to be honest, simply by making a subtle comment indicating that you aren't woke yourself, the dissidents will start to speak up, at least one on one.
My experience is that in many cases, if implicit permission is given to be honest, simply by making a subtle comment indicating that you aren't woke yourself, the dissidents will start to speak up, at least one on one.
I work as a tutor, and I have also found this to be true. The resulting discussions aren't profound, but they're a start.
Eventually they'll come to understand they're only capable of clerking a book store or coffee shop, and decide to upgrade their skills set to something more useful. The only possible value for a national education bureaucracy would be to determine which skills society needs, now and the near future, and encourage support for programs and students for those skills. Unproductive training shouldn't be prohibited, but certainly should not receive public support. That failure of education systems is directly responsible for most of society's problems.
I don't even think they should be doing that. Most education should be done with apprenticeships. Let professionals practicing in the field regulate entry - no one knows better than them what actual market requirements are.
I wasn't suggesting they should, just that if they must maintain a bureaucracy, put them to work. But guilds aren't the answer either. Medical guilds control who becomes doctors and how they should practice, and look where that has gotten us. Everyone should pursue any career they want, and as long as they don't fraudulently misstate their qualifications, markets are the best judge of occupational quality.
I'm guessing your PhD clerk was subsidized by the government. That wastes valuable resources and skews the markets. That's where the government bureaucracies really go off the rails.
Age is a major factor. Most students are young and most young people have been trained for dependence. Until they get out on their own, they assume that being cared for by others is natural. The problem with exclusive immersion in either liberal or practical arts is that it only partially develops the student, leaving them stunted or crippled.
It has long been said that if you're not liberal when you're young, you have no heart. And if you're not conservative when you're older, you have no brain. A functional person, and society, needs both.
With our standard education system, the young HAVE to be dependent for too long. The system in general defers being a capable adult long past puberty. This is the ultimate source for our decline in sexual morals.
Our combination of idiotic egalitarianism coupled with attempting liberal arts for everyone sets the true academic types back several years from what used to be the norm. Less than a century ago, a high school education was sufficient to be a newspaper reporter.
Someone who is grad school bound should be a couple years into college level for his/her specialty before leaving high school. The future carpenter should be honing his skills with hand tools well before high school.
Forcing everyone onto the same schedule holds everyone back. The incredible stories you hear about home schoolers comes from the fact that many/most kids naturally dive into a subject for a time -- if you let them. And yes, they sometimes get years behind in other subjects temporarily. My homeschooled child was five years late in learning the state capitals or mastering spelling compared to my school career, but has written close to a quarter million words of fiction and read more highbrow literature than I will ever read -- before high school.
There are those of us who love the earth and will seek to live here, restore and nurture her, there are others who will look to the stars. Just like long ago some chose the land, while others chose the sea. I am confused by anyone who thinks humanity must choose one path. Why should my love of home repress another's call to adventure?
Sep 11, 2022·edited Sep 11, 2022Liked by John Carter
I've been comparing the lockdowns etc of the last 2++ years to the pupation stage of insects, during which most of the internal organs, etc of the caterpillar/maggot, essentially a machine for finding, consuming and absorbing resources, are broken down into a sort of soup and are rebuilt according to the dictates of "imaginal discs", ( small structures previously dormant and/or nearly invisible ), to form the adult insect, butterfly/fly etc; the organs of flight and reproduction ... Apparently pupation is triggered by the experience of imminent shortage/of exhausting the local/accessible supplies. ... I have been wondering if the massive transfer and concentration of wealth, the crushing of small businesses, of many previous structures, might represent a similar development in the global human "entity", preparation ( after the initial tentative research/exploration of the costs and challenges involved during the 60-70s ) for the hugely energy intensive requirements of space travel. ... I agree with you completely that spreading into space is probably the only thing that makes sense of our existence thus far, gives it continuing purpose.
That's an interesting take. Certainly there's no indication that those orchestrating the lockdowns and concomitant centralization of wealth have any such intentions, but then it's possible they're being used by the superorganism for its own teleological goals.
I always thought the purpose of the fossil fuel dividend was to get to the next phase in human evolution at whatever pace that meant burning. Wasting it any section of society whether it’s social justice or keeping the elite in the standard to which they’ve become accustomed is a waste of time. That’s why it annoys me to see AI being used to construct a control grid instead of more fundamental research into AGI and engineering/biological applications of AI.
"only the state is capable of marshalling the resources over the length of time required for such a grand project to bear fruit"
Have to figure out a way to do it without the state. The state can't be trusted to do anything positive, and the likely reason the space program worked when it did is because it was in America and the right people with real American values were in the right place at the right time. I don't expect this short comment to be persuasive, just wanted to proclaim my position is that if not for the state asserting itself as the source of scientific process in America, we would already be in space doing all the awesome stuff you envision.
Maybe. Key thing is you need large resources, harnessed to a single will over a considerable period of time.
Note that when I say state, that it isn't to be interpreted to mean the contemporary western state ... I don't think that's capable of it at all (which I know isn't your critique, just wanted that out there).
The exploration and colonization will happen. If the West options out, the Chinese will fill the void. Your friend was in some ways preemptively preparing, justifying that path or outcome. He was also I think seeking his place as a minor priest with high ambitions in what he believes will be the new socio-economic status quo: the Diversity Inclusion Equity caste system as/and the Biosecurity Administrative State. (The DIE caste, for short).
Space colonization would prove profoundly disruptive to our emerging Neo-feudalism. Those committed to DIE caste rightly fear that disruption. Hat tip here to Lawrence Lessig, who correctly sources Machiavelli:
*blockquote on*
Old versus new. That battle is nothing new. As Machiavelli wrote in The Prince:
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is indifferent partly from fear and partly because they are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they have tested them by experience.
*blockquote off*
So only lukewarm support from the people who would benefit; and animosity from those who would be challenged. The emergent regime will not tolerate any disruption but their own -- which involves if not requires the destruction of human freedom and dignity.
Data Humanist, you nailed it. Any attempt to develop human capital on the scale necessary for space exploration would explode the current social system.
Our education system might as well have ben inspired by Martin Bormann when he said of Slavs: "Education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up to one hundred. At best an education which produces useful coolies for us is admissible. Every educated person is a future enemy."
The restriction of educational opportunity and the mismanagement of mass education are central for regime stability. They (our elites) understand this perfectly.
Thank you John for putting thoughts to paper in a way not many of us are capable (or courageous enough).
The main issue with our species is that we tend to forget we need a frontier to avoid the stagnation brought on by comfort and the proliferation of parasites such as your buddy the librarian. Let's not forget the letter signed by so called NASA scientists warning against letting Elon Musk to colonize Mars - "we do not need another white imperialist". Let's stay here on this rock forever waiting for the unavoidable end.
Without the cleansing fire of Genghis, Asia and Europe would have continued down the path of stagnation and decay.
Let's remember that we are better off as pirates and conquerors than perfume-clad heralds of impossible things.
Unfortunately, I believe things have gone too far and the social inertia will not be defeated without a great deal of grief and suffering.
💬 the imaginations of young men and poets alike are set afire
Which taps into almost boundless potential of human ingenuity, otherwise sleeping soundly locked away, buried below layers upon layers of mundane humdrum. You’ll never know what bounties await on the road not taken 😟
Or look through agriculture lens: banishing your future steak from grazing on hill slopes doesn’t make extra room for replacement gmo soy. A food resource abandoned.
Or consider a pet peeve of mine, the ‘global war’ on fireworks: utter waste of money in the starry (ha ha) eyes of the righteous. Elevates myriads of spirits? Can’t measure, hence doesn’t exist. Seeing like a state. Bastards 😠
Dear John, what a shopping bag! 👏 I liked Kim's premise, that we are OF Earth, made from Earth bugs & that an entirely separate world ecology would be INNATELY hostile because it is OTHER.
I've always thought Interstellar terraforming beyond our scope exactly because of this. Not to say sterile worlds aren't doable!
Now OUR solar system is something else, as you write, Up There is a plateau with lots and lots of gravity gradients, no pollutants on Earth and hey! Let's build a Ringworld!!! 🙃 Or a Dyson Sphere! Wadevs. I liked also Old Man's War, that Earth's mankind stay put but Travellers never return or mayhap I could be a Hobart Flynt. That story has a senescent Earth World Gov & is a backwater planet. But first we have to deal with proto pharaonic Billionaires who forget they are supposed to be working for Us. Let's deal with The Morlocks first... 807201.
The song ''whitey on the moon'' elicits a very particular type of anger in me.It's the most perfect representation of racial envy. ''My people cannot so your people must not'' is the whole of the meaning,couched in platitudes of inequality and appeals to fairness.
Since you shared your passion i'll share mine.A piece of fiction that captivated me and something I haven't been able to let go of is the game Bioshock from 2007.It's a piece of fiction that elicited my interest in biology and physics (im a layman).But more than that the Galtian idea of a city state that functions completely differently from the modern world with it's own culture,rules,technology and social mores.This idea hasn't left my head in 15 years.It actually spurred me to try to find out how much of that tech is possible (quite a bit actually,the fundaments are already there) and how one could build something like a self sustaining city state,but because the social will is lacking and the state of decay is so advanced there's absolutely no possibility of anything like that in the mainstream.The idea of supermen -that is something above-men - above the mediocre norm is so frightening to equity obsessed academics that i've actually read one of them bragging about us being closer to Nietzche's Last Men than those evil nazi Supermen.In these people there is no desire to scale a mountain just to look from the top,to partake of the heroic and daring not for profit but for it's own sake.This brainrot is so widespread that a book dedicated to superpolyglots I read had a chapter on the inequality of the indian caste system and how it disproportionately affects women.I just wanted to read about people who know many languages.
You might say i got the wrong message from bioshock,I'd say you're goddamn right I did fuck these parasites.
I almost included a mention of Whitey on the Moon. That song, and the Poor People's Crusade that it accompanied, is highly subjunctive l symbolic of the antiheroic politics of resentment that have shackled the space program.
This is the most inspiring thing I have read in awhile. Thank you. More of that please. I would rather feel inspired than constantly dragged down.
I remember a speech from Bush the Lesser early on, about tasking NASA and challenging America to go to Mars. I said at the time, it would be nice if we could all agree to do that, to believe in something. I wanted to believe. But then it was just a slogan, the media wasn't interested, and then if was all about the War on Terror.
You challenge my thinking and presumptions like no other on Substack.
The new religion has given up on the old religion's Faustian vision of 'frontier without end' for precisely the reason that it would actually solve problems here.
Sep 11, 2022·edited Sep 11, 2022Liked by John Carter
Believing that extraterrestrial civilizations exist and communication is possible, I'd like to see more SETI, especially in the optical domain. JWST is a serious advance in that direction. Photons are a lot easier to send than people.
Optical beams can focus more tightly than radio waves, leading to reduced energy per bit of information. For signals that travel many many lightyears, that quantity is the limiting factor. All of the radio frequency SETI work makes the contradictory assumption that extraterrestrials have highly advanced technology but communicate inefficiently. Meanwhile, optical SETI is still in its infancy, looking for huge light pulses that would be wasteful to generate. Efficient signals are likely to exploit very-narrow-band lasers, a technology which humans are still developing have not yet combined with large telescopes.
It's heartbreaking. The engineers and scientists actually working on space development operate on subsistence budgets that are just enough to keep the dream alive as a dream. In effect they serve as public relations, so that NASA can pretend it's the vanguard of human space exploration, rather than what it really is - a jobs program every bit as ideologically captured as every other large institution in the social order. I'm sure many of the scientists in NASA know that, too, and it must be depressing as all hell for them to understand that they're really not much better than science fiction writers.
Regarding the reproductive organs of Gaia, I strongly agree with this. The species can be seen as the fruiting bodies of the noosphere, tasked by evolution with spreading the biosphere to the solar system and beyond. A revealing trend within the woke discourse surrounding space development is the application of post-colonial theory to this subject. I've seen many people in the field write that no, humanity has no right to impose itself on the universe and 'destroy the environment' of extraterrestrial bodies by settling and industrializing them. Implicit in such critiques is a death impulse, the desire for the species to disappear from reality without making the slightest impact upon it. They seem to want to strangle our potential in the crib.
I don't think human colonisation, shaping and/or terraforming of barren and lifeless worlds presents any serious ethical problems, but there could be bodies that harbour alien life even within the solar system that I think would warrant protection.
I think you recently referenced that hideous strength elsewhere - space trilogy is like atlas shrugged as an interesting monocle through which to read the news.
It's possible that, if plant metaphors/analogies are appropriate, we are currently just a sprout, an early growth from a seed, ( planted here or not, the Ethical Sceptic has done an awesome analysis of DNA which suggests a certain combination the basic units simply not possible by accident because of the order it would have had to evolve in ), using up our "seed pod" as we grow, and that we may still have a way to go before we create enough of a flower/reproductive organ to attract a pollinating agent from anywhere which would lead to the production of fruit! :)
It may be that we are as far away from space travel as the Phoenicians were from crossing the Atlantic in 800BC, when it's possible that the greatest of Tyre ships may have made it as far as the Canary Islands from their base on the Iberian Peninsula but no further for another 2000+ years.
And in both plant and insect analogies neither the cells of the parent plant nor the bulk of the pre-pupate/larval insect stage actually "leave"/fly, only the new storage cells and seeds in the case of fruit, and the Imaginal Discs and entirely new cells covered in chitin etc in the adult insect.
ie : we might be left here on a hollowed out husk of a seed pod, or like a discarded chrysalis shell, watching weird/strange/unfamiliar kinds of "life" disappear into the stars.
PS. And maybe that's why the outward urge evaporated/collapsed over the last 50 years, as people realised this .... and maybe why transhumanism etc has become so "hot", because the only way that we are going to travel and live in space is if we transform.
...and that's something that certain powerful global powers/interest groups do seem to be very interested in/experimenting with.
And it seems to me that modern life feels more and more like living in a space ship, in smaller and smaller/more cramped surroundings, ( flats/homes, seats on buses and trains, offices etc ), more and more artificial/manmade environments, more and more dependent on technology that we don't understand, eating more and more processed/denatured food, more and more dependent on complex medical and/or pharmaceutical interventions, more and more immobile, spending more and more time concentrating on just one small object or two, tapping away with one hand.
The activities of the powerful global interest groups that I have been feeling so repelled or oppressed by, so critical of, which seem to treat most humans as if of no more value than lab rats/mice, virtually expendable in the pursuit of new technologies ( medical, information, "sustainability", etc ), are maybe not so different from those of the earliest long distance explorers, setting off with crews of dozens or hundreds of often press ganged sailors, porters, etc on unknown seas and into jungles, knowing that most of them won't survive.
Maybe the way that great exploration happened was ruthless, risk taking of others lives, unpleasant.
Maybe the work required for journeys into space is in fact ongoing, all around us, now. It just doesn't look quite the way we/I expected it to.
Yes, and after the last couple of years it think I can safely say that I wouldn't like space travel. I like to be able to breathe fresh air freely, ( I didn't wear a mask ), go outside into the sunshine/daylight, walk in the open, etc. I don't want to eat crickets/compacted mould/yeast or other "sustainable" style space foods, don't want to only see people on zoom calls and prefer using my own natural immune system etc. I'd rather stay in the Olde Worlde ... But revulsion at the kinds of lifestyle that space travel could nvolve might not be universal, judging from what many people seem prepared to put up with, if only out of fear/desperation or herd compliance instincts etc. ....On the other hand it may be that humans are the "cells" designed to make the flower that gets pollinated, and nothing else. .... Wondering what would qualify as the flower ... and whether it would look like "cleaning the room" or making a very big mess! ? :)
... and/or like spending what feels like a stupid/crazy amount of time, energy and money on something that seems completely and utterly useless ... to us.
"He said this with his eyes shining with the beatific certainty of the true believer, radiating a religious bliss that annihilated any chance of fruitful contradiction."
Welcome to the party, pal!
The New Left (aka Year Zero Cult) did not fight to win the means of cultural production just to add some "diverse voices" to the literary canon or to sprinkle some color into our boardrooms. Their entire project is a 4 Olds Deconstruction machine with no brakes and no OFF switch.
They maintain and consolidate power now because in all our global institutions of media, cultural and learning they have installed their morality as the One True Law for those who want to be considered Good and Wise—disagreeing with them in public just puts the stink of bigot or heretic on you and then the digital mob moves in to escort you to the nearest lamppost.
I think these Reign of Terror/Cultural Revolutions usually burn themselves out in a decade or so, but hopefully in our time of accelerated history they will be completely discredited sooner.
Thanks for another great post!
I think the discrediting is already happening. The speed and ruthlessness with which they seized cultural ascendancy, and the calamitous results of their misrule, have generated a huge amount of resentment. We're already at the point where their every attempted movement is met with considerable friction.
I absolutely agree w you except my wife mentors many young people in arts/culture etc and i have yet to meet any who are not True Believers whose entire worldview and mental and emotional architecture are constructed from Crit Theory/Soc Just language.
(But I try not to extrapolate too much from my little corner of the world.)
My hope in this area though is that all these beliefs seem pretty skin deep (as does just about every belief in liquid modernity), so hopefully this will end up like the 70s and they'll move onto astrology and various diet/exercise fads.
I think in a lot of cases it's just the tendency for the great herd of the middle to just go in whatever direction seems socially easiest. Girls in particular are prone to that.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the kids have come up in a context where badthink is ruthlessly punished, so the ones who don't agree have learned to keep it to themselves. My experience is that in many cases, if implicit permission is given to be honest, simply by making a subtle comment indicating that you aren't woke yourself, the dissidents will start to speak up, at least one on one.
My experience is that in many cases, if implicit permission is given to be honest, simply by making a subtle comment indicating that you aren't woke yourself, the dissidents will start to speak up, at least one on one.
I work as a tutor, and I have also found this to be true. The resulting discussions aren't profound, but they're a start.
Eventually they'll come to understand they're only capable of clerking a book store or coffee shop, and decide to upgrade their skills set to something more useful. The only possible value for a national education bureaucracy would be to determine which skills society needs, now and the near future, and encourage support for programs and students for those skills. Unproductive training shouldn't be prohibited, but certainly should not receive public support. That failure of education systems is directly responsible for most of society's problems.
I don't even think they should be doing that. Most education should be done with apprenticeships. Let professionals practicing in the field regulate entry - no one knows better than them what actual market requirements are.
I wasn't suggesting they should, just that if they must maintain a bureaucracy, put them to work. But guilds aren't the answer either. Medical guilds control who becomes doctors and how they should practice, and look where that has gotten us. Everyone should pursue any career they want, and as long as they don't fraudulently misstate their qualifications, markets are the best judge of occupational quality.
I'm guessing your PhD clerk was subsidized by the government. That wastes valuable resources and skews the markets. That's where the government bureaucracies really go off the rails.
Liberal arts education produces liberals.
https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/rule-5-teach-more-practical-arts
Practical arts instruction should begin much sooner for most students. Stop tethering students to a standardized schedule.
Age is a major factor. Most students are young and most young people have been trained for dependence. Until they get out on their own, they assume that being cared for by others is natural. The problem with exclusive immersion in either liberal or practical arts is that it only partially develops the student, leaving them stunted or crippled.
It has long been said that if you're not liberal when you're young, you have no heart. And if you're not conservative when you're older, you have no brain. A functional person, and society, needs both.
With our standard education system, the young HAVE to be dependent for too long. The system in general defers being a capable adult long past puberty. This is the ultimate source for our decline in sexual morals.
Our combination of idiotic egalitarianism coupled with attempting liberal arts for everyone sets the true academic types back several years from what used to be the norm. Less than a century ago, a high school education was sufficient to be a newspaper reporter.
Someone who is grad school bound should be a couple years into college level for his/her specialty before leaving high school. The future carpenter should be honing his skills with hand tools well before high school.
Forcing everyone onto the same schedule holds everyone back. The incredible stories you hear about home schoolers comes from the fact that many/most kids naturally dive into a subject for a time -- if you let them. And yes, they sometimes get years behind in other subjects temporarily. My homeschooled child was five years late in learning the state capitals or mastering spelling compared to my school career, but has written close to a quarter million words of fiction and read more highbrow literature than I will ever read -- before high school.
See the article I linked to.
There are those of us who love the earth and will seek to live here, restore and nurture her, there are others who will look to the stars. Just like long ago some chose the land, while others chose the sea. I am confused by anyone who thinks humanity must choose one path. Why should my love of home repress another's call to adventure?
I've been comparing the lockdowns etc of the last 2++ years to the pupation stage of insects, during which most of the internal organs, etc of the caterpillar/maggot, essentially a machine for finding, consuming and absorbing resources, are broken down into a sort of soup and are rebuilt according to the dictates of "imaginal discs", ( small structures previously dormant and/or nearly invisible ), to form the adult insect, butterfly/fly etc; the organs of flight and reproduction ... Apparently pupation is triggered by the experience of imminent shortage/of exhausting the local/accessible supplies. ... I have been wondering if the massive transfer and concentration of wealth, the crushing of small businesses, of many previous structures, might represent a similar development in the global human "entity", preparation ( after the initial tentative research/exploration of the costs and challenges involved during the 60-70s ) for the hugely energy intensive requirements of space travel. ... I agree with you completely that spreading into space is probably the only thing that makes sense of our existence thus far, gives it continuing purpose.
That's an interesting take. Certainly there's no indication that those orchestrating the lockdowns and concomitant centralization of wealth have any such intentions, but then it's possible they're being used by the superorganism for its own teleological goals.
Yes, they don't need to "know what they're doing" in order to do what is required.
"the lowest-hanging fruit, the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu1, is estimated to be capable of yielding a profit of over $30 billion."
Why do that when you can force people to take a jab after scarring the living daylights out of em and make the same amount?
Indeed, the US government has already given away more than that to Ukraine for... you know, the thing...
I always thought the purpose of the fossil fuel dividend was to get to the next phase in human evolution at whatever pace that meant burning. Wasting it any section of society whether it’s social justice or keeping the elite in the standard to which they’ve become accustomed is a waste of time. That’s why it annoys me to see AI being used to construct a control grid instead of more fundamental research into AGI and engineering/biological applications of AI.
Bingo.
Space chicks are hot. Of course, I don't have to tell YOU that, John. I clearly remember reading about you and Thuvia.
Your drinking buddy's comment (Social Justice is ... technology) is reminiscent of how some secular humanists believe EVERYTHING IS INFRASTRUCTURE.
We live in a world populated by idiots hypnotized by trends and fads. It's best not to think too much.
Indeed. It's the safety first mindset, which I had a go at here:
https://barsoom.substack.com/p/safety-last
NASA bureaucrats are extremely risk averse, which is one of the reasons nothing ever gets done.
"only the state is capable of marshalling the resources over the length of time required for such a grand project to bear fruit"
Have to figure out a way to do it without the state. The state can't be trusted to do anything positive, and the likely reason the space program worked when it did is because it was in America and the right people with real American values were in the right place at the right time. I don't expect this short comment to be persuasive, just wanted to proclaim my position is that if not for the state asserting itself as the source of scientific process in America, we would already be in space doing all the awesome stuff you envision.
Maybe. Key thing is you need large resources, harnessed to a single will over a considerable period of time.
Note that when I say state, that it isn't to be interpreted to mean the contemporary western state ... I don't think that's capable of it at all (which I know isn't your critique, just wanted that out there).
"harnessed to a single will over a considerable period of time"
Perhaps the Paulos Great House model?
YES.
I’ve often pointed to the petroleum industry - research, exploration, development, transport, production, market development...
All done by private enterprise.
The exploration and colonization will happen. If the West options out, the Chinese will fill the void. Your friend was in some ways preemptively preparing, justifying that path or outcome. He was also I think seeking his place as a minor priest with high ambitions in what he believes will be the new socio-economic status quo: the Diversity Inclusion Equity caste system as/and the Biosecurity Administrative State. (The DIE caste, for short).
Space colonization would prove profoundly disruptive to our emerging Neo-feudalism. Those committed to DIE caste rightly fear that disruption. Hat tip here to Lawrence Lessig, who correctly sources Machiavelli:
*blockquote on*
Old versus new. That battle is nothing new. As Machiavelli wrote in The Prince:
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is indifferent partly from fear and partly because they are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they have tested them by experience.
*blockquote off*
So only lukewarm support from the people who would benefit; and animosity from those who would be challenged. The emergent regime will not tolerate any disruption but their own -- which involves if not requires the destruction of human freedom and dignity.
Spot on.
I loled at DIEcaste.
Data Humanist, you nailed it. Any attempt to develop human capital on the scale necessary for space exploration would explode the current social system.
Our education system might as well have ben inspired by Martin Bormann when he said of Slavs: "Education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up to one hundred. At best an education which produces useful coolies for us is admissible. Every educated person is a future enemy."
The restriction of educational opportunity and the mismanagement of mass education are central for regime stability. They (our elites) understand this perfectly.
Thank you John for putting thoughts to paper in a way not many of us are capable (or courageous enough).
The main issue with our species is that we tend to forget we need a frontier to avoid the stagnation brought on by comfort and the proliferation of parasites such as your buddy the librarian. Let's not forget the letter signed by so called NASA scientists warning against letting Elon Musk to colonize Mars - "we do not need another white imperialist". Let's stay here on this rock forever waiting for the unavoidable end.
Without the cleansing fire of Genghis, Asia and Europe would have continued down the path of stagnation and decay.
Let's remember that we are better off as pirates and conquerors than perfume-clad heralds of impossible things.
Unfortunately, I believe things have gone too far and the social inertia will not be defeated without a great deal of grief and suffering.
Well said. The frontier is necessary to maintain fresh air for the collective soul. Without it we choke on our own fumes.
💬 the imaginations of young men and poets alike are set afire
Which taps into almost boundless potential of human ingenuity, otherwise sleeping soundly locked away, buried below layers upon layers of mundane humdrum. You’ll never know what bounties await on the road not taken 😟
Or look through agriculture lens: banishing your future steak from grazing on hill slopes doesn’t make extra room for replacement gmo soy. A food resource abandoned.
Or consider a pet peeve of mine, the ‘global war’ on fireworks: utter waste of money in the starry (ha ha) eyes of the righteous. Elevates myriads of spirits? Can’t measure, hence doesn’t exist. Seeing like a state. Bastards 😠
Dear John, what a shopping bag! 👏 I liked Kim's premise, that we are OF Earth, made from Earth bugs & that an entirely separate world ecology would be INNATELY hostile because it is OTHER.
I've always thought Interstellar terraforming beyond our scope exactly because of this. Not to say sterile worlds aren't doable!
Now OUR solar system is something else, as you write, Up There is a plateau with lots and lots of gravity gradients, no pollutants on Earth and hey! Let's build a Ringworld!!! 🙃 Or a Dyson Sphere! Wadevs. I liked also Old Man's War, that Earth's mankind stay put but Travellers never return or mayhap I could be a Hobart Flynt. That story has a senescent Earth World Gov & is a backwater planet. But first we have to deal with proto pharaonic Billionaires who forget they are supposed to be working for Us. Let's deal with The Morlocks first... 807201.
The song ''whitey on the moon'' elicits a very particular type of anger in me.It's the most perfect representation of racial envy. ''My people cannot so your people must not'' is the whole of the meaning,couched in platitudes of inequality and appeals to fairness.
Since you shared your passion i'll share mine.A piece of fiction that captivated me and something I haven't been able to let go of is the game Bioshock from 2007.It's a piece of fiction that elicited my interest in biology and physics (im a layman).But more than that the Galtian idea of a city state that functions completely differently from the modern world with it's own culture,rules,technology and social mores.This idea hasn't left my head in 15 years.It actually spurred me to try to find out how much of that tech is possible (quite a bit actually,the fundaments are already there) and how one could build something like a self sustaining city state,but because the social will is lacking and the state of decay is so advanced there's absolutely no possibility of anything like that in the mainstream.The idea of supermen -that is something above-men - above the mediocre norm is so frightening to equity obsessed academics that i've actually read one of them bragging about us being closer to Nietzche's Last Men than those evil nazi Supermen.In these people there is no desire to scale a mountain just to look from the top,to partake of the heroic and daring not for profit but for it's own sake.This brainrot is so widespread that a book dedicated to superpolyglots I read had a chapter on the inequality of the indian caste system and how it disproportionately affects women.I just wanted to read about people who know many languages.
You might say i got the wrong message from bioshock,I'd say you're goddamn right I did fuck these parasites.
I almost included a mention of Whitey on the Moon. That song, and the Poor People's Crusade that it accompanied, is highly subjunctive l symbolic of the antiheroic politics of resentment that have shackled the space program.
This is the most inspiring thing I have read in awhile. Thank you. More of that please. I would rather feel inspired than constantly dragged down.
I remember a speech from Bush the Lesser early on, about tasking NASA and challenging America to go to Mars. I said at the time, it would be nice if we could all agree to do that, to believe in something. I wanted to believe. But then it was just a slogan, the media wasn't interested, and then if was all about the War on Terror.
You challenge my thinking and presumptions like no other on Substack.
The new religion has given up on the old religion's Faustian vision of 'frontier without end' for precisely the reason that it would actually solve problems here.
Believing that extraterrestrial civilizations exist and communication is possible, I'd like to see more SETI, especially in the optical domain. JWST is a serious advance in that direction. Photons are a lot easier to send than people.
Optical beams can focus more tightly than radio waves, leading to reduced energy per bit of information. For signals that travel many many lightyears, that quantity is the limiting factor. All of the radio frequency SETI work makes the contradictory assumption that extraterrestrials have highly advanced technology but communicate inefficiently. Meanwhile, optical SETI is still in its infancy, looking for huge light pulses that would be wasteful to generate. Efficient signals are likely to exploit very-narrow-band lasers, a technology which humans are still developing have not yet combined with large telescopes.