I’d Love to Chat
…but I’m heading out the door to check out those meteor showers again tonight.
I’m such a sucker for celestial events. Which also reminds me: recently we celebrated the 50thanniversary of the moon landing. I’ve been meaning to watch the footage of that again, maybe even watch it with our kids (who are not ‘kids,’ I hasten to add). In fact, there are quite a variety of programs being offered this month to celebrate the technological innovation and tremendous bravery we witnessed all those years ago.
NASA and the Apollo Program were such huge parts of my childhood. It’s shocking, really, to consider how much promise there was when we landed on the moon in 1969 and how few dramatic accomplishments we’ve actually made since then.
I guess we got distracted.
A Lack of Will
I don’t think I’m alone in feeling a deep sense of disappointment at the lack of will our country has shown to continuing our efforts in space exploration. When I think about what we accomplished in 42 years, I am stunned at the apparent lack of comparative progress.
What 42 years, you might ask? The 42 years between when Charles Lindbergh made the first transatlantic flight and when we landed men on the moon. The reason why I speak of this span in terms of 42 years is because my mother was very fond of recalling how she was ten years old when ‘Lindy’ made that incredible, groundbreaking flight. As you can probably guess, since I was ten years old when Neil Armstrong took his famous first step onto the surface of the moon, she was 42 when she had me.
Quite honestly, I always expected at least one of my children to be witness, when they were ten years old, to some scientific achievement that rivaled that enormous leap in technological capability and vision. But it didn’t happen. Again, it seems we got distracted.
We Got Distracted
Probably the greatest disappointment to humanity resulting from this failure to keep the technological research and momentum going is the grievous situation we find ourselves in right now: the climate crisis. So many incredible breakthroughs and inventions were discovered in the process of meeting the challenge posed by President Kennedy all those years ago. We can only wonder what could have been discovered had we continued the quest.
All of which makes me yearn for an about face to the head-in-the-sand, intelligence and education-bashing, and steadfast aggrandizing of ignorance over scientific inquiry that we’re witnessing in our country. The ‘dumbing down’ of America has been tremendously successful – to our great peril.
We Need a Grand Challenge
We need brilliance, innovation, and creativity to be valued and funded. This starts with us collectively making education a priority for all our children, from pre-school on up. And for sure it demands respect for science and the cessation of the bald-faced censorship of scientific inquiry and the result of it.
We need to be challenged; we need our scientists to be believed; we need to want to save our Earth for the good of all – not just for those who hold all the power (and all the money).
We need a Grand Challenge, an audacious goal that flies in the face of what the naysayers would have us believe. We need to turn the Climate Catastrophe into a rallying cry for discovering the best, brightest, more brilliant among us who can turn everything around exponentially faster than ‘they’ say is possible.
Worth Saving: Tohickon Creek in July – Photo: L. Weikel
A Strong Dose of Idealism
Everywhere we look right now, there’s misery and unbelievable cruelty, there’s slavery and corruption, there’s deliberate exploitation of the Earth’s resources to make a few already obscenely rich people even richer – and damn the impact upon the rest of us, not to mention the Earth herself.
It’s no wonder so many are so miserable.
Yet we can turn this around immediately. We need to believe in ourselves; we need to believe we can do it. We need a person at the helm who has vision, who gives us hope in the future and in ourselves. We need some leaders to step up who are not solely out for themselves, but who truly know that as the least among us are made better, we’re all lifted.
I know, I sound naïve. But I tell you this: we cannot lose our hope. We cannot give up on ourselves, on humanity’s ability to bring brilliance to the fore. We cannot give in to the distraction any longer.
We have to take a stand, and we have to do it now.
Excuse me while I go outside to stare at the cosmos and dream.
Galaxy – Photo: Pixabay
(T-851)
