it's an entirely appropriate dream for a child. for a society with enormous intractable problems such as global warming, income inequality, and fascism, it's pretty lame.
It's lame to dream of space until utopia is achieved? Until life is perfect, NASA should be shut down? Do all 7.5b people on earth need to dream of solving the same problems? Is eliminating diversity of dreams constructive? If your teenage daughter told you she wanted to go to school to be an astronaut, would you tell her that was lame?
Well, I’d say that few things are likely to really drive home to people how insignificant the little power struggles we spend so much of our life obsessing about as going up into space and looking down on everything, and then looking out into the infinite void.
If it makes everyone who can afford to go more circumspect about that, I think it’ll have been completely worth it, even ignoring all the useful stuff that’ll come out of it.
Also, off topic, but thanks very much for all the things you make, they’re wonderful.
It is a quirk of evolution that this kind of thinking is around. This defeatist unwillingnes to do.
Imagine if man had never ventured from Africa, or from the trees to the savannah - I bet even back then there were those who chose to stay behind. Where are they now?
There is something so unimaginative about this kind of thinking it's really off putting.
As a society one should always strive to do better in all areas, not only in the areas you deem worthy.