Selfish quest
One of the greatest values in advanced cultures is that it allows some people to take time on things beyond mere survival that increase our knowledge and understanding of the nature of our world and universe: scientists and naturalists can tell us stories that we'd never see otherwise.
The hardest thing for me to abandon in a fallen culture is the support of such explorations. Sure, some of them have economic benefits, but many are just a chance to stand back and wonder at the vastness of time and space and our place.
Such thoughts came to me seeing the APOD today, a high resolution HST image of a galaxy. You can see not only individual stars in this distant galaxy, but if you look at the blackness around it, you'll see many many smaller galaxies, much farther way, many visibly red shifted by the doppler effect of their high velocities away from us. Just a tiny area of the sky shows so much.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0505/ngc3370_hst_full.jpg
What are we to do? I hope they keep the Hubble Telescope going. And this is just one little thing.
And perhaps for all this wonder of the "dead" universe of physics, there's much greater wonder in life itself and the cycles of interdependency on earth.
Places like the dead worlds of the moon, Mars and Venus are perhaps most valuable to humanity in teaching us of the rarity of life in the universe. We may not be able to destroy the web of life completely, but we can reduce it immeasurable and our effect are perhaps ultimately no worse than nature has to put up with over a billion years of stresses. Still, our consciousness is something and we "know better".
It is hard to let go of ambition and power. We are a fortunate generation to see so far in so many directions. It's sad it must end.
In the future science (and art) may be more luxury than we can spare. People now make few sacrifices for science. I wonder how we can keep such roles elevated in times of hardship? I wonder how people can take such privleged roles without guilt, knowing they stand on the work of others.
It's all hard to take - our vast wastefulness - our unsustainable success - our collective dreams of godhood. So sad to let go of the dreams.
Star Trek will have to wait for now. We've a long way to travel yet - in inner directions.
The hardest thing for me to abandon in a fallen culture is the support of such explorations. Sure, some of them have economic benefits, but many are just a chance to stand back and wonder at the vastness of time and space and our place.
Such thoughts came to me seeing the APOD today, a high resolution HST image of a galaxy. You can see not only individual stars in this distant galaxy, but if you look at the blackness around it, you'll see many many smaller galaxies, much farther way, many visibly red shifted by the doppler effect of their high velocities away from us. Just a tiny area of the sky shows so much.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0505/ngc3370_hst_full.jpg
What are we to do? I hope they keep the Hubble Telescope going. And this is just one little thing.
And perhaps for all this wonder of the "dead" universe of physics, there's much greater wonder in life itself and the cycles of interdependency on earth.
Places like the dead worlds of the moon, Mars and Venus are perhaps most valuable to humanity in teaching us of the rarity of life in the universe. We may not be able to destroy the web of life completely, but we can reduce it immeasurable and our effect are perhaps ultimately no worse than nature has to put up with over a billion years of stresses. Still, our consciousness is something and we "know better".
It is hard to let go of ambition and power. We are a fortunate generation to see so far in so many directions. It's sad it must end.
In the future science (and art) may be more luxury than we can spare. People now make few sacrifices for science. I wonder how we can keep such roles elevated in times of hardship? I wonder how people can take such privleged roles without guilt, knowing they stand on the work of others.
It's all hard to take - our vast wastefulness - our unsustainable success - our collective dreams of godhood. So sad to let go of the dreams.
Star Trek will have to wait for now. We've a long way to travel yet - in inner directions.
posted by Ares Olympus at 1:55 AM
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