I live in the edgelands for grizzly bears, an agricultural mosaic betweeen what was wilderness and the full-on agricultural wastelands of the interior. They are now resorting to this edge country in part on account of the fact that these private lands are quieter than some of their preferred habitats in the front ranges, what with all the recreationists. At any rate, there is never going to be "a multiplanetary society." It is only the most extreme subscribers to the progress myth - our favorite mythology that humankind will forever be advancing to somewhere more exalted with each passing generation - who believe such lunacy. Musk is a lunatic for a lunatic human model. An idiot-savant. The reality is, and the evidence is now vast, that we are in fact firmly into our decline and fall now. The first moonlanding coming precisely at our zenith by the measures that drive this civilization. That's over a half-century in the rearview now. This is a good thing, that our model is winding down regardless of how we feel about this.
Astronauts are prone to speak of how it took journeying into space to teach them how beautiful planet Earth is. They must be a profoundly dense race of people, these astronauts. I had learned the same thing by age three witnessing an Indigo bunting in a patch of trees behind our home. Fueled by some peanutbutter on a slice of toast. An astronaut, conversely, requires the explosive force approaching that of the Hiroshima bomb (according to one Santa Fe Institute physicist) to get where they are going to learn the same thing. Yet who today reveres the "Bush Indian" for instance (assuming you can find one anymore) over the astronaut? Me, for one. I do.
The entire space program has been a vastly hubristic masturbation, and it is going away in this century. We'll simply run out of the resources to drive it, and much else.
Re your piece about "Edgelands" (a fascinating concept). I think the term was out there at least a year or two before Marion Shoard and Christopher Brown - I have a copy of Edgelands: Journey into England's True Wilderness by Michael Symmons Roberts and Paul Farley published in 2011 ... if you have not read it may I recommend it to you. It's a good read, about the Edgelands in England.
Great to see you here, and loved reading this!
Welcome, Michelle, it's good to see you here.
I live in the edgelands for grizzly bears, an agricultural mosaic betweeen what was wilderness and the full-on agricultural wastelands of the interior. They are now resorting to this edge country in part on account of the fact that these private lands are quieter than some of their preferred habitats in the front ranges, what with all the recreationists. At any rate, there is never going to be "a multiplanetary society." It is only the most extreme subscribers to the progress myth - our favorite mythology that humankind will forever be advancing to somewhere more exalted with each passing generation - who believe such lunacy. Musk is a lunatic for a lunatic human model. An idiot-savant. The reality is, and the evidence is now vast, that we are in fact firmly into our decline and fall now. The first moonlanding coming precisely at our zenith by the measures that drive this civilization. That's over a half-century in the rearview now. This is a good thing, that our model is winding down regardless of how we feel about this.
Astronauts are prone to speak of how it took journeying into space to teach them how beautiful planet Earth is. They must be a profoundly dense race of people, these astronauts. I had learned the same thing by age three witnessing an Indigo bunting in a patch of trees behind our home. Fueled by some peanutbutter on a slice of toast. An astronaut, conversely, requires the explosive force approaching that of the Hiroshima bomb (according to one Santa Fe Institute physicist) to get where they are going to learn the same thing. Yet who today reveres the "Bush Indian" for instance (assuming you can find one anymore) over the astronaut? Me, for one. I do.
The entire space program has been a vastly hubristic masturbation, and it is going away in this century. We'll simply run out of the resources to drive it, and much else.
Re your piece about "Edgelands" (a fascinating concept). I think the term was out there at least a year or two before Marion Shoard and Christopher Brown - I have a copy of Edgelands: Journey into England's True Wilderness by Michael Symmons Roberts and Paul Farley published in 2011 ... if you have not read it may I recommend it to you. It's a good read, about the Edgelands in England.
Thanks Richard — I'll look for the Roberts and Farley book, and pass this on to Christopher!