The problem with solutions:

It is my belief that mankind survives on problems and solutions, certainly ideologies do, or political platforms, not to mention would-be experts, and in some cases, would-be dictators or authoritarians of any make or model. I am not known for offering solutions. I don't have my laundry list of what's wrong and how to fix it. To some that represents a failing: "If you're so smart, why don't you have a solution instead of just bitching from the sidelines?"

I think it is not so much a matter of what all the problems are as it is what is wrong with our perception of reality in general. I don't think we need to fix anything. I think we need to find a real reason for being here, and when we do, all the "problems," which are mostly a matter of conflict over how to run the system (which probably boils down to a primitive fight over goods and territory), will get lost to some real problems which have real solutions, and then maybe we'll make some headway.

I know it is not the custom to talk about ideas online, that most attempts give way to "stating of the facts only" at best (as opposed to dreaming out loud… or in print, as the case may be), to slogan-slinging, cliché exchanges, or name-calling at the worst… but I'd like to give it a try anyway. It has been my observation that most discussions involve existing circumstances with ideological conflicts, complete with competing personalities espousing those ideologies, and are, essentially, discussions or arguments about how to and who is going to run what has been, or will become, the status quo. Specifically, it is all about politics and politicians, all of which is equal to all other parts when it actually comes down to doing much of anything at all. What that means is that different people have slightly different ideas about how to contain and run the system; and that inevitably runs into long and ponderous solutions that amount to the enforcement of somebody's idea of right and wrong or good and evil. I do not see anyone's political platform as the destiny of mankind.

We need a purpose as a species, not a solution to what's wrong with us and how to control who we are. I doubt very few people will actually get beyond the assertion of enforcing their ideas of right and wrong as the ultimate solution, but maybe a few will. We'll see, I guess.

The meaning of a few key words… as I use them:

I should clarify a few words I use, define them in the way I use them, which is not necessarily the way they would be used in general, as "in general" frequently is ambiguous, at least subjective, to a lot of people. For one, I would make a distinction among goals and purpose and desirable conditions (meaning conditions in which one's purpose toward any number of goals can be practiced). My "purpose" in life, as far back as I can remember, was to be an artist and a writer. That's a motivation without any definition of goals or conditions. If I said I wanted to live in a big city and have a sufficient income to sustain my purpose and work toward any number of specific goals, that would be a desired "condition." Beyond that I would commence any number of projects which would each have a goal in keeping with my purpose. Speaking theatrically, I might say "the condition is an optimum setting in which to play out the scenario or a particular scene or series of scenes," meaning that in these conditions I can pursue my purpose and all its goals. (Personally, I find it easy to analogize all the aspects of theatre, art and writing to virtually every aspect of life, both individual and in general -- but that's just me. I hope everyone can appreciate that, even though I realize most people likely have their own analogies.)

Most concepts of what is presented as Utopia, or simply a better way to do what we're doing, I see as a condition, some better than others, perhaps, but it is not what I would classify as a goal, and most certainly not as a purpose. The way I see it, if a condition becomes the goal, once it is accomplished it will become necessary to maintain the goal. In other words, if you got there, the only order or purpose would be maintaining and containing the condition. That necessarily calls into the order a great deal of enforcement, with penalties for thinking or acting otherwise, for simply being someone unique, an individual… and is the problem I will never get over when anyone talks about "Utopia." What we have at present, even though few would call it Utopia, is the maintenance and containment of what people once conceived of as an operating condition. That condition as conceived by the Founders of this nation was a good one, but I believe they saw it as only that -- a condition in which to operate, not a goal in itself or purpose for being. What followed was a growing insistence that the system, or condition, was all that mattered, that it was so important that it needed to be imposed on other cultures or defended against from other cultures, and, consequently, the continuation of that system, in all its twists and turns and even perversions, has become the only thing that matters. That same phenomenon, I would say, is applicable to communism, capitalism, Catholicism, Islam, a feudal system or just about anything at all. It is not a goal -- or a purpose -- but a condition, which will eventually become the status quo, and the only game of those in charge (and they will always be there) will be to keep the system operating simply because it is the system.

Purpose, not just goals:

What we need, in my opinion, is a well defined purpose as a species, and beyond that there will be a series of necessarily unending goals which one could look at as points which lie along that line I just called "purpose." I'll also add to that that the line, or purpose, should be infinite -- if not, we will end up spinning our wheels and getting deeper and deeper into the mud as we are now. That one system or condition in which to operate may seem better than another is not that important. The condition only becomes important when one mistakes it for purpose or a goal in itself. That some conditions may be better than others is no doubt true. I for one do not know what the best condition would be, but I do believe that our country probably has the best at present, and if we can keep those in charge from turning it into a police state with draconian forms of enforcing their ideas of good and evil, we could easily progress to a reality yet unimagined.

I will argue, however, that any condition, as good as it may be at some time, will be far less than optimum, even counter-productive, if maintaining the condition becomes the only game in town. That is what we are doing now, and it is the problem. We should be working together toward common goals along an agreed upon purpose line, not enforcing the system, whether that system is capitalism, socialism, a religious structure, a feudal system or anything else at all. We need to get beyond the setting and start playing out the scenario, scene by scene. Anything else is a struggle for conflicting forms of totalitarianism and authoritarianism. Our only purpose now, if you want to call it that, is a struggle of ideologies and nothing more. Is anyone ready to give up their political identity, give up their insistence of enforcing that ideology on others, and become a unique individual and a member of the human race, allowing the same of others? That would be a good start, in my not too humble opinion.

Mankind needs to find a bonding purpose as a species or we will simply remain animals fighting over territory, food, or whatever it is we're doing now. When we have production for consumption with no other purpose, it is an ideology existing for its own sake, and any opposing ideology, including those yet untried, will be seen as a threat to the system, and combat, locking horns till someone backs down or dies, will be the only game. I do not think it speaks well of any system that the biggest expense in time, labor, finance and human life is war. We have to do better than that.

I'm as guilty as anyone when it comes to the unlimited and unending discussion of our frailties and failures as a species. For the most part it is, or can be, a worthwhile discussion among intelligent and earnest people, but there should be a point that goes beyond all that. We have some with their charts and statistics, and we have others with our anecdotes, observations and impressions; and in either case what all bring to the discussion is as legitimate, certainly as well-meaning, as anyone else. Other than that, there is a large number of philosophical, political, or other ideological clones who have nothing new to submit, nothing original, nothing outside of their droning voices issuing forth as a looped recorded message implanted by an indoctrination of dogmatic, unventuring methodology of solutions and recourses as expressed in some book, long since encased between two covers, the last page written, and the back cover closed. They will join this discussion, no doubt, as they do most discussions. With a little determination, perhaps, we can work around them anyway. Despite the worthwhileness of discussing our frailties and failures, which is, at least, a good starting point, I think it would be productive to initiate a discussion on the potential of our species. I would like to begin that discussion by making the paradoxical observation that I personally believe that our potential is both stated at the heart of every major philosophy, religion and science known to man, primitive and modern, and at the same time evaded and distracted, sometimes crushed, by those same institutions, probably because they have become institutionalized.

Our cosmic beginnings:

Whether man was a divinely created intelligence or the product of a random configuration of mingling amino acids in a primordial tide pool is beside the point, and needn't be part of the discussion even though I will make an assumption of the latter even though it may be wrong. God by that name may be a Creator, Mother Nature, or simply that part of ourselves in touch with a cosmic scheme. That we are intelligent, self-aware, evolving, and destined beings (if only by our concept of "destiny") is all that really matters. What that destiny may be, however, is the unwritten part of all those philosophies and ideologies; and the reason that one's book on the subject should not become an authority on the subject is because the book has been written and is now closed. I think down through the ages we have had prophets, wise men and occasional women, philosophers and scientists, writers and artists who have had an inkling of what it was all about, our worth as a life form and our potential, but it probably came as a very personal cognition, not easily, if at all, communicated to others. Then came disciples who tried to understand, put it all in allegory or spelled it out as a methodology for living, a code book of moral behavior or, at best, an attempt at ethical reasoning defined; but at that point the whole of that personal cognition was lost and we ended up with more of the same old crap -- religion and politics. From there we descended into the unholy act of enforcing righteousness on others in the form of holy wars and the muck and mire of political bickering. I do not believe this is mankind at its best... not even close.

I have no doubt that the holy soldiers and the bickering politicians will always dominate the human scene; but along the way there will also be more prophets, wise men and probably more women, philosophers and scientists, writers and artists who will have another inkling of what it's all about; and maybe some of us will listen and even comprehend, maybe even do the right thing at the right time, and if we come together again in the right configuration, like those amino acids in the primordial pool, maybe we'll evolve a little more. It could happen. Time will tell.

The heroes of evolution:

What that means is that I do not look to the politicians or the warriors of righteous ideologies to forward the evolution of mankind. That they may be incidental from time to time is only incidental. They are the protectors of the status quo, the guardians of the past, and the enforcers of all which would stifle the expansion of the human spirit: they are the counter-evolutionaries. They are also the worshipped and adored among us (not the prophets of old), standing instead of the prophets of old, defending the system built upon the misinterpretations of the prophets of old, and the first to demand the crucifixion of any new prophet to come along just as their ancestral counterparts crucified the prophets of old.

The wisdom of the prophets, usually in metaphor applicable to their age, is passed on, taken literally with no interpretation of its meaning, and consequently precipitates a phenomenon known as faith -- a belief in the unbelievable, which we call religion; or, in other cases, the gift of the prophet becomes a fad, a college course for all ages, modern art or maybe even political science, but by whatever means, a limitation to personal freedom and growth by any name. The wisdom of the prophets, some of whom we may have known as statesmen or poets, painters or composers, maybe even mathematicians or scientists, were unique in that they broke some bond being enforced by the powers-that-were. Somehow, against great odds, they uncovered a truth, in some cases, maybe even the truth. When their time had passed, such as the cultural lag between the ridicule of Schubert and Beethoven or Lister and Pasture, and their acceptance by the guardians of the old truths, that truth which was newly uncovered became the new law instead, defying the next event of the next uncovering of the next truth.

It is my theory that the truth is simple, not complex; it is obvious, not impossible to see; that it is present in everyone; that it is undeniable; and, most of all, it need not be forced upon anyone. On that premise, I would say the truth is buried beneath complexities which are anything from a naturally occurring illusion to deliberate deception; that when the illusion evaporates or the deception is removed, the truth is simply there; and that to the extent that anything calling itself the truth must be enforced on anyone, it is, to that extent, removed in truthfulness from the truth. In other words, when a religion or ideology needs great force, a standing army, an invading army, a police state to keep enforced what they have established for all time to be the truth of the matter, or when artists discover the next evolutionary step in their art, or scientists discover the next assault on disease (such as bacteria), but they are generally brow-beaten to death by the defenders of the "modern concepts" of such things, and are frequently only acknowledged after we have crucified them like all the other prophets of old, then we are talking about a great deal of enforcement, not to protect the truth, but to protect us from the truth.

Assuming the phenomenon to be true, just for the sake of an example, I would say that the first amino acids to come together to form the first life on the planet happened in a very -- extremely limited way, perhaps a one time event; but at the same time these amino acids were doing something incredibly unique, there were, I would guess, billions upon billions of amino acids all over the planet doing nothing new at all... just continuing to be just plain old amino acids. I would also guess that when the first ameba did whatever it took to take the first step toward becoming our first ancestor, there were, likewise, billions upon billions of ameba all over the planet not doing anything new, just being plain old ameba, and, no doubt, their descendants are still around not doing much of anything new either.

What that all boils down to is that I think Mankind will evolve, probably must evolve, but that it will be against great and overwhelming odds, despite tremendous powers-that-be and their multitude of followers protecting the status quo, and that it will be a long way from en mass, but, instead, only a few... a relatively very few.

No knuckle prints on the Moon:

If someone doesn't take the metaphors of our religious concepts of our origin too literally, if the "Creation," as we call it, or if one's concept of "Then God created Man" can go beyond the Bronze Age ignorance of discoveries yet to come, someone might consider an event, probably millions of years ago, when a family of apes swung from limb to limb till they reached the edge of the primordial forest and wondered about the plain that lie beyond it. Maybe one of our ancestors, a nameless primate we remember in our collective unconscious and recite in our collective consciousness in myth, with his mate, dropped to the ground on both feet and the knuckles of their hands and ventured forth, out of the trees. Perhaps a few awe struck lookers-on separated themselves from the chattering and nattering of wordless fear and mindless apprehension, daring each other, scaring each other, encouraging each other with little tugs and pushes, until a small colony of pioneers left behind the great multitude of gibbons, chimps and orangutans who are still gibbons, chimps and orangutans swinging in the trees. Perhaps some of us, by chance, on purpose, or simply because of destiny by any definition, may venture forth from the edge of our present primordial forest, leaving behind the mass of humanity still chattering and nattering in fearful speech and mindless apprehension and swinging from their sociological, religious, political and ideological trees.

One can only speculate on what will be the next major evolutionary step for Mankind, or what will be the outcome, where it will take us, or some of us, or where it may lead after it's taken us there. But I really do believe it will happen... or, if not, that we will probably perish as a species. It's my own belief, not necessarily unique, but nothing I've read anywhere that I can recall, that Mother Nature has a whole lot more to say about things, including Humankind, than we give Her credit for. Who's to say, for instance, that when we killed off the passenger pigeon or nearly did so with the buffalo, that it wasn't that Nature found those species to be too plentiful, a bit too obnoxious, and simply used Man to do the job she felt needed being done? In all our glory, and we do have a bit of it, we sometimes get rather arrogant both about our righteousness and our faults. If it weren't for human considerations about such things, there would be no good or bad to any of it, only what Nature saw fit to allow to happen, thrown in with a bunch of random cosmic happenings.

In contradiction to everything I'll say or seem to say here, I think thinking about our future is not necessarily the key to it. That is to say I think there will be a natural chain of events (and has been a natural chain of events) which will give us the direction, and for all the social planning, wars of righteousness, political scheming and good guesses at what we ought to do next, it -- our real evolution won't come from any of those sources. At the same time, paradoxically, I think the fact that we can think, and can record that thinking, will be an element of change which is, at least, a significant part of that evolution. In other words, we will not think our way into our next evolutionary step, but thinking will be a factor in it... at least our ability to think and record outside of our genetic identity that which we have thought about.

What I am talking about is my own personal belief. I am not asserting a theory based on any particular facts that I intend to argue with anyone. It may not be unique or original, but these are, to me, my own concepts, maybe little more than feelings about it all, based, of course, on all I've seen and heard and read and thought about an awful lot.

The day the stars beckoned:

From what I know of history, philosophy, virtually all of the sciences, even the act of exploration itself, I would guess that the one phenomenon that set us off from all the other animals, even most distinctly separated us from the other primates, maybe even our knuckle-walking cousins who have since become extinct, is the fact that one day one of us looked up from the ground in his search for goose berries or goose eggs, and discovered the sun, the moon and all those stars. Since that point we have developed our growing seasons, our navigation of the seas, mathematics, prophesy and all the wonders of all the sciences and the occult (which is as much a part of us as anything), because we knew there was an order in the universe; it was apparent and undeniable that there was something out there which was real and predictable; it foretold the future, when spring would come, to some much more than that; it told us where we stood on the planet, and, in fact, told us it was a planet upon which we stood; and more than anything it beckoned to Mankind as a mystery to be solved and an ever promising frontier to be explored. Space has always been our destiny.

I realize that I cannot direct the discussion which may or may not follow. I've made basic assumptions about evolution which will probably be disputed, but that is not where it should go. That space travel wasn't mentioned in "The Word of God" as it was perceived two thousand and more years ago shouldn't be an argument. Of course, one might take a quote of Jesus Christ from the New Testament wherein he said, "I will give you the morning star," (which is the planet Venus), and speculate that he forgot to mention we may have to terraform it first (just kidding... maybe). But I think it will be more productive to leave the Bible out of it. NASA and other national or international agencies or proposals will probably enter into the discussion, and then the old and really tired argument about government sponsored exploration versus privatization. Such might be more pertinent, even necessary, but I would like to get beyond that also. In short, the great mass of people will probably cling to the primordial trees with all their reasons for doing so, and very few will tap the imagination needed to contemplate what it will take to break away.

I've attempted to create a picture, a simile of our simian ancestor who first ventured out of the forest onto the plain, how it looked to those who remained behind, and what little potential there may have seemed to be in that act. Let's say, perhaps, that he returned to the forest the first few times, maybe brought back a rock. The rock probably was very similar to rocks in the forest, like the rocks of the moon aren't really all that exciting, other than having come from someplace else. Perhaps none of the monkeys dangling from the trees happened to notice that at one point the venturing ape just happened to stand upright and walk on his feet, freeing his hands for aptitudes and talents, like making tools and writing, yet to be evolved. When our first men went to the moon it was probably a novelty to see them float in space aboard the vessel or, once on the surface of another planet, hop like wallabies, virtually immediately, an instantaneous transformation from the millions of years of learning how to walk like human beings. Where those changes might lead are probably as incomprehensible to those who have never left our one G world as making tools and writing were incomprehensible to a gibbon.

I probably could have opened this discussion like a dozen or so I've seen go before it by simply asking, "Space exploration -- should we or shouldn't we?" Then with a total disregard for the real subject matter, but stuck in all the non-fluid, carved-in-stone, dogmatic, true-to-the-faith political worship, the first response would probably be from a conservative, "Not with my tax dollars," followed by a liberal, "We have too many problems here on Earth to solve first," followed by your basic libertarian, "Privatize it!" Then people would say all the same old things, and in a few weeks the discussion would evaporate into the cyber-ether. I may be firing up brain cells for no particular reason, but I really do hope it goes beyond that. I think "our tax dollars," or, "problems here on Earth," or, "privatization" are simply tree limbs in a primordial forest. I just hope there is someone out there who can find something else to talk about.

The kid with an imagination that won't quit:

When I talked about prophets or those unique individuals who have that unique cognition somewhere along the way, let me illustrate with a fanciful example of what I meant: Somewhere in this country there is a fourteen year old kid who is playing space-jockey in an interplanetary war game on video; but someday this kid is going to wake up, feel what it is like to be a galactic fighter pilot, or captain of a starship, or maybe the chief engineer, and all of a sudden it's going to come to him -- that unique cognition, the step that is missing, the thing we've overlooked all this time, the very thing that it will take to make space exploration possible. What that is, I have no idea -- but he will (maybe she, but we'll say he anyway). Maybe the kid will grow up to work for NASA, or maybe he'll become a programmer of kids' video games for a young but extremely wealthy multibillionaire industrialist who listens to his employees who have imagination. Who knows? Personally, I hope he ends up with the billionaire industrialist who doesn't have to fight appropriations for food stamps and unemployment insurance or the latest death and destruction delivery system to move onto our next evolutionary step. But maybe it doesn't matter where he ends up. Maybe all that matters is that he exists somewhere. I think he does. For all we know he may have been that fourteen year old kid seven or eight years ago and is already in place, about to make his move. Who knows? We'll see.

The one thing that is different in our evolution, the way I see it, compared to all the organic changes we've gone through since the amino acid routine, is that the changes taking place are no longer recorded only in our genetic code; they have also expanded to an auxiliary, man-made apparatus, namely books, and more recently, computer data banks. In other words, that kid to make the next step doesn't have to have it all in his genes (although that too will probably come after the next big step); he has, literally at his finger tips, virtually the sum total of all the thinking and postulating of our species which has gone before him. That is now part of what this kid is. It was also one of the unknown, in fact, unknowable consequences of what would come of the first ape to step out of the forest. Once we step out of our present forest, no one knows, probably cannot even imagine, what will evolve from that point forward. But it has to happen.

What I'm looking for, at least hoping for, is a discussion that can go beyond the politics of the cost of school lunches or the profit margin of an asteroid on the open market. One similar discussion on an AOL message board had a short but excited, sometimes almost exciting discussion of privatization. Another pulled in one of our liberal, free verse types who went on about feeding our children, educating our children, protecting our children because our children are our future, not space (or something like that). I thought it was a typically liberal sort of thing to talk about in free verse. (The next time someone starts talking about solving all our problems here at home first, ask them if they really believe Europe would have solved all its problems if they had not gone exploring the rest of the world.) The other folder, discussing the potential of profit from exploiting the asteroid belt, with everyone showing off their knowledge of the market value of the table of elements relative to their atomic weight and consumer demand, was interesting, but pointless... in a libertarian sort of way. Then there's the conservatives who have reservations based on everything from the graduated income tax scale to national defense (Against what? We haven't had to defend this country since Pearl Harbor… Poncho Villa before that) to the word of God and what He might think about it all. I just want to talk about it happening. I don't feel a need to determine how, just an acknowledgment that it should and must happen. Why it should, might make a good discussion for starters. Who knows that someone, somewhere, at some time, just might make the right comment which is all that is needed to inspire that fourteen year old kid playing interplanetary video games but who also tracks discussions like this one. Who knows? It certainly can't hurt to let him know some of us are counting on him.

Places to take one's education:

As for the liberal free verse about the future of our children (which really offended me), I'd like to start by asking, "What future?" With a little luck the kid may grow up to manage a McDonalds or maybe be another social worker to "encourage and support" all those other kids who don't grow up to manage a McDonalds. What a great future. Granted, there's more to life on planet Earth than that, but it sure does have its limitation, especially when the optimum in educational achievement might give someone a masters degree in business management (what business, not necessarily a consideration) or a degree in law (as if we need another lawyer). "Don't get into aerospace because it's a dying business." If our liberal free verse commentator had half the imagination she thinks she has, she'd see that what a kid needs to get an education is the excitement of where that education might take him or her. What could be more exciting to a kid then the final frontier? She's the same type who supports legislation to kill the Super Collider and abort in pieces the Space Station because we have to feed all these kids at school who don't want to be in school because they see no future in what they're learning. Tell the kid that an "A" in math may buy him a trip to Mars and beyond, he just might get interested in math. But no....

When I am dead and gone, I will likely leave the rest of humanity wrestling in the mud, but I would rather leave behind something a bit nobler than that. Space exploration is a vast, virtually infinite purpose with a series of unending, real goals which can be accomplished along the way. It will be hard science with hard rewards which will be irreversible and will forward both our understanding of the universe we live in and, at the same time, the human condition. It would accelerate both technology and human history alike. Anything else will stall if not reverse it all. It could be a bigger and better enterprise than war and politics, certainly much nobler.

Sic itur ad astra. I'm not a Latin scholar, but I read that somewhere and it seems to fit. Literally, I'm told, it is, "Thus one goes to the stars." It is meant to say, "Such is the way to immortality."