Next Year, On Mare Tranquillitatis

Yesterday was the 49^th 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.