We Can Be More

It is easy to be less. The easy path always lives up to its name. You have felt this in your life. Everyone has. The easy path is easier. Duh.

There are a couple of unquestionable truths in life. Death and taxes. But let’s focus on death for a moment. No one likes to focus on death. This is the one most central component of our human denial mechanism. Death is an evil. We won’t focus on it. We won’t think about it. We deny that it is going to happen to us.

What a ridiculous crock of shit. You don’t think you are going to die? Well, I have news for you. So, for once, let’s cut through the crap and get to the point. What are you going to do with the time you have left before you die? Hunh? Hello? How many times have you actually taken this question to heart? Because, with all honesty, it is the most essential question there is.

All our lives we live in the denial moment where we pretend the inevitable is not about to happen to us. All our lives we take the easy path, because it is easy, and all our lives we fail to address the real questions of pertinence, because like a coward we cannot bear to look with full and honest intent into the searing face of the sun. And yet the sun shines. Yes, even on cloudy days.

Do you not believe you are capable of more? Do you not in your heart believe you are capable of achieving more than what you have accomplished up to this moment in time?

What is it that constantly drags you down and holds you back? Is it the devil? Addiction? Were you abused as a child? Did your father pressure you too much? Was too much expected of you? Were you raped? Did you suffer hardship? Did soldiers kill your family? Did a hurricane wipe out everything you owned? Did God in his wrath look down upon you and find you wanting?

Well, tough shit.

Stand up and live, or fall down and die. Those are your two options. And you will fall down and die soon enough, anyway. So when, I ask you, is it going to be time for you to stand up and live?

We can be so much more. We as a people. We, as the people of the Planet Earth. We can be so much more. The only thing we lack is the will to be more. The only thing we lack is the moment of awakening that says, Yes, We Will Be More.

What mark are you going to leave before you die? We could be building spaceships that reach other stars, we could be pulling everyone out of poverty and ignorance, if only we had the collective will to do so. We could stop fighting each other, for a change. We could put petty ambition aside in exchange for something greater than our own self-aggrandizement. We could find diamonds in the sky, if only we could hold on to each other, and not let go.

Wake up! Wake from your somnolence, from your long slumber. The time you have been waiting for does not come from something external – it comes from you! You are the agent of change you have been seeking! Did you not know this? Well then, I’m telling you. The only obstacle that lies before you is you. And if you immediately point the finger at another … I am afraid you are mistaken. Which is easier? Pointing the finger at another, or at yourself? The easy path is always seductive.

Be mired in you own agony. I don’t care. Death will come for you in whatever state it finds you. I, for one, plan to meet my maker with my hands outstretched, the universe within my grasp.

While starlight falls upon my open eyes.

Here endeth the lesson.

Pale Blue Doomsday Machine

“And so – because of the automated and irrevocable decision making process which rules out human meddling, the doomsday machine is terrifying, simple to understand, and completely credible and convincing.”
–Dr. Strangelove, 1964


We take this pause in your blog surfing for a moment to consider the countdown clock to assured human destruction – which is different than the so-called Doomsday Clock, an instrument for measuring a set of presumed and hypothetical circumstances that could lead to a very un-hypothetical nuclear war.

Now, the current Doomsday Clock is set at something like five minutes to midnight, due to the fact that both North Korea and Iran are supposed to be actively seeking nuclear weapons. But the countdown clock to assured human destruction is currently set to midnight. That is, the planet is not about to explode any second now, but rather, the set of hypothetical circumstances that would lead to the complete annihilation of every human being is moving closer and closer to overlapping our actual set of circumstances. In other words, we are actively working to turn our own planet into a doomsday machine – virtually ensuring that humanity has no future beyond the next five to ten generations.

In fact we may soon reach a point where our ability to forestall our civilization’s doomsday scenario is effectively taken out of our hands.

Now, no one knows for sure what shape our assured destruction is going to take. But at the moment there are so many possible end-of-the-road scenarios without any possible solutions on the horizon, that we might conclude that humanity as a viable species is doomed. This presents a very interesting paradox:

We have become so technological and so successful that we are almost certainly going to destroy ourselves. At the same time, we have also become advanced enough so that we can see we are going to destroy ourselves. And yet we do not appear to be doing very much about it.

For most of us, this paradox apparently has very little meaning–which is probably the main reason we are in this mess. Our evolutionary path has not prepared us for this situation. We’re only wired to be forward-looking and forward-thinking for about one growing season. This means we’re wired more or less like squirrels. We can store enough food away to get us through another year, except we do this very well, so much so that just 1% of us feeds the other 99%.

Generally we only move beyond our basic squirrel-impulses (mating, territorialism, food storing) for three motive-driven reasons: great need, great profit, or great vision. In all of these cases we have shown a much better capacity to look many years into the future and prepare ourselves. Great need simply means threats to our survival, such as war. Great profit is self-explanatory. And great vision means every now and then we go beyond ourselves and do something truly extraordinary, such as embark upon an Antarctic expedition or a moon landing.

So the way we are going to save ourselves–if at all–will likely come from exploiting these tendencies. A few possibilities come to mind, in descending order…

• A 100% renewable energy economy. There is certainly great need for the implementation of this. Possible great profit could be involved. And it would require great vision to succeed.
  Giant solar farms are just the beginning.
  
• A gradual phase-out of the use of plastics, except for essential technologies. (Many plastics are critical to things like medical devices, synthetic medical membranes and the like, not to motion contact lenses. We ought to be conserving this precious resource for plastics-critical applications. And no, bubble-wrap is not one of these.)
• Protecting carbon sinks (i.e. rainforests). Okay, we’re failing miserably here. The chainsaws are cutting, and the forest are burning. If you want to hold up one pitiful example to show how our situation is growing sketchier by the day, this is it. Ahem, how long have we been aware of this problem?
• Protecting ourselves against civilization-ending events. Okay, this one is a bit of a catch all, but it points to a solution that could be our next Apollo Program. And no, we’re not talking Mars.

Thinking about our future is no longer just thinking about what comes next, but what comes after. Think beyond Mars. Great need, great profit, great vision. It is time. The clock is ticking.

Spaz Angle

Hit Me part 2

Hit Me

What We're Not Doing About Asteroids

If you are of a certain age, you can clearly recall the stunning images of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet fragments slamming into Jupiter, wreaking such havoc the after-effects were plainly visible more than a year after the event.

If you are of another certain age, you can recall wasting several afternoons playing the arcade game Asteroids. And if you are of yet another certain age, you are dead, or so close to it that any asteroid impacts shouldn’t bother you. Although they might bother your grandkids.

But right now I am now speaking to you Asteroid players. We don’t have that. We don’t have a nimble little ship that can send streams of asteroid-fragmenting projectiles into meandering asteroids. Big surprise! What we do have are satellite-killing missiles. These aren't actually all that useful for breaking up asteroids. Satellites, as you know, go around and around, whereas an asteroid that is coming to waste your planet is coming directly at you, and from far away. Now if only we could convince the asteroids to go around and around in a nice, geosynchrous orbit...

The point is, if a Shoemaker-Levy 9 type nasty is coming our way anytime soon, we’ve got squat. Nada. Now you might think we have the capacity to go out and land astronauts on that incoming behemoth and set off a megaton type explosion, but that idea is theoretical, at best, and it is based on the assumption that we would have a lot of time in advance to see the killer rock coming before it arrives.

Wait, we can see them before they arrive … you ask? The fact is, we are not all that good at that, either. Yes, astronomers saw SL-9 coming way before it hit Jupiter, and they are pretty decent at estimating the future paths of known space objects. But asteroids on a certain trajectory, namely, coming from the sun, are often impossible to detect. This is the universe’s version of the kamikaze attack. We routinely fail to detect asteroids arriving on this kind of track until three or four days after they have passed us by.

So basically a civilization-killing asteroid could be heading towards us as we speak, and we wouldn’t know it. And if we did know it, there is very little we could do about it. Yet we’re not worried. So why aren’t we worried?

Here is former astronaut and current NASA rocket scientist Franklin Chang-Diaz:

“I am concerned enough to think that we need to not waste time arguing about it, as to whether [the threat] is real or not … because even if this is a threat which has a very low probability, all it takes is one and we are history.”

The US and China have spent billions on satellite-killing technology, an inordinately complex and apparently effective surface-to-space weapon. Wouldn’t it be worth devoting just a fraction of that funding to an asteroid-defense program? As idiotic as it can be, at times, I have to confess I am kinda fond of this civilization. Isn't it worth defending?

Mind Control Freedom

As an alien visitor to your world, I am curious as to why you, the American People, do not make the following demands of those who now strive to be your President.

My lifespan can be measured in terms of what you call centuries, and I have been observing this country called the United States since its inception. Surely the founding members of this nation, the authors of its constitution, would have made the same or similar demands were they still alive?

Hence, I can only assume that your powers of free will and independent thought have be stolen from you. Nonetheless, I humbly submit these demands for you to ponder.

TO OUR NEXT PRESIDENT, we THE PEOPLE, list the following DEMANDS:

RESTORE OUR RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS

1. Restore Habeas Corpus for EVERYONE
2. Restore our freedom from search & seizure
3. Strengthen the Freedom of Information Act
   
   

NO WIRETAPPING such as INTERNET SURVEILLANCE, PHONE MONITORING or otherwise SPYING ON CITIZENS WITHOUT A WARRANT

ABOLISH the unconstitutional PATRIOT ACT

The PRESIDENT and WHITE HOUSE SHALL OBEY CONGRESS WHEN CALLED TO TESTIFY

The PRESIDENT AND HIS OFFICE SHALL NOT CLAIM EXECUTIVE POWERS ABOVE THE LAW

OPEN AND FUND an INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION INTO 9/11!

HOLD HIGH-LEVEL OFFICIALS RESPONSIBLE for the TORTURE AND ABUSE of the ABU GHRAIB PRISONERS.

Either RELEASE or CHARGE the GUANTÁNAMO BAY detainees.

The PRESIDENT shall pledge to UPHOLD the GENEVA CONVENTIONS now, and in the future, for all time to come.

That is all, humans. If my scans reveal the source of your mind control difficulties, I shall contact you again. Farewell.