Re: Space as mankind's last Window of Opportunity?

Michael Turner <leap@xxxxxxx> wrote:

If you have a moment or two:

http://transcendentalbloviation.blogspot.com/2007/04/space-final-window-of-opportunity.html

Try parsing it into four distinct memes, three of them independen of
space. In sequence,

1) Noah's Ark, Deucalion, Lot's family leaving the Cities of the
Plain, Mormons, When Worlds Collide, etc.: the fortunate, virtuous few
leaving corruption to its doom

2) New World-ism plus American exceptionalism -- the belief that all
of the good things that grew out of Renaissance Europe c. 1500 can be
identified with Anglo-colonial and US history, so that "a fresh start"
is valorized in and of itself

3) "We are in a race between education and disaster" (H.G. Wells,
rephrased after Da Bomb by Einstein and many others) -- IOW, "the
species had better grow up faster if it's going to play with these
levels of power."

I think all three were prerequisites for the Pournelle version, with
its very specific features:

4a) Ehrlichian population boom/resource bust
4b) "the long Luddite night is about to descend"
4c) Conflation of "those who disagree with me about terrestrial
politics" and "those who took away my Ever-Expanding Space Program"

I find it quaintly redolent of the 1960s and 1970s. But some space
enthusiasts seem to have freeze-dried them, bringing them out every
few years to rehydrate them with "just you wait 'til the killer
asteroid comes," "just you wait 'til the grey nano-goo starts to
spread," "just you wait until Islamofascism proves a bigger threat
than anarchists, Reds and Nazis combined," or whatever.



Monte Davis
http://montedavis.livejournal.com
.