|
hand, you had JFK, who refused to get sucked into invading Cuba, de-fused a nuclear war with Russia over Cuba, and signed an executive order withdrawing US military "advisers" from Vietnam just before he was assassinated. I think he was assassinated because of these things--too much of a tendency toward peace. Although the space program was begun in rivalry with Russia--and had patriotic and military overtones--when you hear JFK's speeches about it, you cannot help but notice that he was speaking as a visionary, not a chauvinistic militarist. Further, the PEOPLE who made it happen were, by and large, progressive free-thinkers, Caltech and MIT engineers, all raised on Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke and Ben Bova and Ted Sturgeon--youths filled with science fiction and its progressive values, astronomy and Star Trek. Visionaries, in their way--quite suspicious of the military and its top-down thinking and its parochial attitudes. They also tended to be free thinkers on religion. And the lot of them would just vomit at the Bush junta. I happen to know some of these engineer-types from the '60s era, and all were against the Vietnam war, and had no desire to militarize space, but rather to explore it with a sense of wonder and adventure.
The process of stepping out into outer space that they began has not stopped. It has suffered many setbacks, especially under Reagan and Bush II, but it is stumbling on, greatly augmented by items like the Hubble telescope, and the solar system explorations, flybys and landings (mostly on Mars).
Simultaneously, the advances in physics, astronomy and cosmology, and also biology (DNA research)--from a slightly different establishment, more academic, less beholden to Reagan-Bush type budgets (give all to the rich and to rich war profiteers; starve anything good our tax dollars might do)--have been advancing by leaps and bounds. In physics, it appears that the "speed of light" may fall, as the ultimate law that cannot be broken. The implications of that would be staggering. In theoretical physics, items like black holes have gone from theory to discovery rather quickly. Can parallel universes, wormholes and the independence of gravitons from the limitations of space-time be far behind? These are serious theories. What will the implications be, as to technology (if one can call it that, in connection to something like parallel universes), space or time travel, and life here and elsewhere? As for the mapping of human DNA--well, I think these and other advances may actually be RESPONSIBLE for a bit of a backlash (even if it is largely created by the corporate news monopolies) toward rightwing religion. It's a bit much for human beings to grasp all at once. Emotion and psychology come into it--especially in what may be hard economic times ahead, with an $8 trillion deficit due to Bush's horror in Iraq.
What I'm saying is that, "The rest is peanuts," is really not true. Some of this science and exploration may be underfunded, but it is still advancing human knowledge very quickly, to really amazing heights.
A more serious concern is how these great advances will be used--for instance, by a fascist junta like the Bush regime, and by our Corporate Rulers. There was already a fight about somebody wanting to patent human DNA. That unbelievably stupid effort failed, as I recall. But many other such questions arise. The Bushites using technological advances to spy on people, to torture people, to control behavior, and god knows what-all they might be up to. And corporations doing the same--monopolizing knowledge and information, for purposes of profiteering and political power. Who owns the planets? Who owns the stars? Who would own and control a "time machine"? Could someone hold onto the key to unlimited energy, or the key to reversing the aging process, or doubling the length of human life, and deny those capabilities to other human beings, or provide them only to the rich and the powerful?
Our crude system of capitalist predation is simply not suitable as the arbiter of vital human knowledge--especially of the kind that may be coming our way soon. And that is a very serious problem.
I do have a lot of faith in human beings, though, and our ability to get around systems of control. We are very clever that way. It is our greatest glory as a species.
It may even earn us membership in galactic civilization. (The rebels and visionaries will be invited--the controllers and powermongers will be consigned to the dustbin of history, left behind on earth to fight among themselves over the last green spots on a planet that they have destroyed with their greed--in my "apocalyptic" fantasy, anyway.)
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
