Yesterday
was the 49th anniversary of a unique event in human history. On July 20, 1969, men set foot on a new world
for the first—and so far, only—time. And
here, sadly, “men” does mean males exclusively (and—*sigh*—American males at
that), a by-product, at least partly, of the same 1960’s chauvinism that had
earlier rejected Majel Barett as Number One, First Officer of the USS Enterprise. After that first small step for man, there
were six more missions that landed on lunar soil, giving us a total of twelve
humans who have ever walked under extra-terrestrial skies. That day was indeed unique, for that first
step into a larger world was never repeated elsewhere. All Translunar space still awaits the
footprints of man.
And nearly half a century after that
grand event, where are we? We have a
growing gap between a very few very rich people, and a large mass of people
rather-to-very poor. We have experienced
much technological advancement in the last half century, but now, rather than
helping society as a whole, it is increasingly aiding the disemployment and
disenfranchisement of the masses, and the general upward movement of all wealth
to the wealthiest. Meanwhile, changes in
the legal landscape are shredding bankruptcy and other protections for the poor
and the unfortunate, leaving too many buried under now-indestructible debt,
often because they were short-sighted enough to get an education without first
being born rich, or even foolish enough to become sick and need medical treatment. In some cases, we are even seeing the return
of some form of debtors prison.
Ain’t the future wonderful?
On a cheerier note, global warming,
now next-to-impossible for even the stupidest and most unempirical to ignore,
will probably kill off a lot of those annoying poor people—especially the older
ones (and there are entirely too many of them anyway. Who needs experience and wisdom when you’ve
got an iPhone?). As our summers get
longer (and hotter), our winters shorter, and our springs increasingly
nonexistent, there may come a time when
we have to explain to students of late second-millennium literature (assuming
there are any in this future of pseudo-literate epsilon-level drones) that
“spring” was once a season between winter and summer. On the upside, no one
will have to explain how it is that a play called “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
is set in late April-early May. Spring,
at that time, had not really become a thing yet; at the rate we are going, it may not be a
thing much longer.
And still, we have no lunar
colonies, nor even lunar mines. We don’t
even have a way to get our astronauts from surface to orbit without a lift
(shades of Kirk and Spock in Star Trek IV—but
don’t get me started.) It is starting to
look like manned missions to Mars (much less other worlds) will have to be
confined to the realm of fiction for the foreseeable future.
How very disappointing. Majel Barett Rodenberry would not approve;
much less her husband.
We have very advanced medicine in
this country—the most advanced on the planet, as we are often reminded by
wealthy conservative pundits like Sean Hannity—but you probably can’t afford
it, and the insurance the government forced you to buy won’t cover it, and you
will probably need it soon, given what the industrialized food you have to eat
does to your body. We have fast
airplanes, but you likely can’t board one without getting groped or publicly humiliated
by some government employee, and you can forget rushing to catch your flight
out of Chicago at the last minute like they did in Home Alone back in the halcyon year of 1990 (however impossible
that might have actually been at the time, we are all now too disillusioned
about air travel for such a scene to be even plausible).
This is not the future they promised
us.
Every year, as they celebrate the
Passover, Jews around the world end the Seder with the words “Next year, in
Jerusalem.” It is a way of ending on a
hopeful and future-oriented note, whatever other mysteries it may contain. And so I end this bit of reflection where its
title began: Next year, on the Sea of Tranquility…
But don’t count on it.
