Pissing Away
What makes me wonder if I still belong in this century are two articles, just a couple of days apart, one about the 9-month old baby in Pakistan accused of manslaughter (with a picture showing him being fingerprinted by the police), and the other one the plan, by NASA, to redirect an asteroid (by means of a nuclear blast? by paddles?) into an orbit around the moon.
Generations differ by their understanding of the world, and the technologies they command. I remember taking super-eight movies of my mother in the backyard of our house. “My God,” she was saying into the camera, “how does it work? Is there a battery inside?”
Generations also differ in the values they attach to the foundations of their life. Sure, if we wait long enough, we’ll see another branch of Evolution taking hold, not necessarily human, but there will be something crawling, arguing, fucking. But few people seem to realize that we are pissing away a heritage so plentiful and rich and beautiful that it has been celebrated for millennia by the world’s — our world’s — most distinguished poets.
Re-reading what I wrote I don’t know how I got so agitated. The asteroid, I forgot to say, will be used as a launching platform to go somewhere else, out there. The fixed idea to populate other planets must come from the conviction that ours is about to be spoiled beyond repair.
Now I remember.
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