Is it just me, or have we gotten stagnant? As a society, I mean. I feel like we're just treading water.
Like the whole world (or at least the whole developed, Western, rich world) is devoted to accumulating personal wealth and satisfying individual desires. We want to make lots of money, we want to sleep with lots of people, and that's pretty much it.
Maybe it's just that I've been watching a lot of Star Trek lately, but I really feel like we were meant to be explorers and that we've lost our way. We should be putting our money towards being out there exploring, not towards expanding our DVD collections.
It was 46 years ago that we walked on the moon, the single greatest feat of exploration in human history, and what have we done since then?
Sure, we can't go very fast right now, so exploring beyond the solar system is out of the question, but we could be building settlements on Mars and orbiting the four gas giants – which collectively have hundreds of moons – and we could be out there studying them, mining them and building colonies. And then eventually we will learn how to go fast, and when we do, we'll be ready.
Is this just crazy talk or does anyone else think we should be out there too?
I know I for one will put my money where my mouth is. As soon as SpaceX has an IPO, I'm buying in.
