[remarkEon]

I don't think it's actually a useful perspective at all. The poem is racial resentment repackaged as a means to guilt trip people into feeling bad about adventure, science, and exploration. Unless they were pretty well read at a young age, most millennials probably first experienced this poem in the film First Man, where it is read as a backdrop to Apollo 11 traveling to the moon. It's a great scene because the juxtaposition is stark. We can either hold ourselves back an an endless and futile journey on solving the human condition of poverty and inequality, or we can explore the stars. It's an easy choice.

[rybosome]

Is it meant to guilt trip people? Or is it an honest expression of the frustration (and yes, racial resentment) that the author feels?

This is why I consider it a useful perspective to hear. I read this as a human being simply saying “this is how I feel in these circumstances”.

It’s uncomfortable, and I don’t believe that space exploration should be gated on solving poverty and inequality, but it is important to understand that an intelligent, thoughtful human being arrived at this place.

In a sense I feel that this is actually an appeal to the same sense of curiosity that drives space exploration. Why do we explore space? To learn and understand. Why should we consider human perspectives we don’t agree with? To learn and understand.

[remarkEon]

You could plausibly argue that the poem, when it was written, was meant as an honest expression of frustration, but the context in which it was deployed makes whatever original intent of the author irrelevant. The whole point of the poem's deployment once it was published was to say "white people are wasting money on a moon rocket, they should be spending money on inner city black poverty". Otherwise I think you're reading a bit too much into it. There's nothing more to learn or understand from this poem. "Don't spend money on rockets and going to space, spend it on entitlements and 'fighting' poverty". We get it.

[xoac]

> We can either hold ourselves back an an endless and futile journey on solving the human condition of poverty and inequality, or we can explore the stars. It's an easy choice.

Wait... Are you suggesting that "exploring the stars" is less of an endless and futile journey than dealing with poverty and inequality?

[foxglacier]

Solving poverty and inequality is for the short term - they'll come back and need solving again no matter how many times you already solved them. But once the stars are explored, they stay explored forever. So yea, that's moving forwards and the other isn't.

[westmeal]

The closest stars are way too far to reach on any reasonable timescale. That's not even mentioning the fact that moving forwards is a vague goal. Moving forwards towards what exactly? And if the US government got off of it's ass to... Oh I don't know, maybe fix the bullshit healthcare system we have and help people with tax money instead of bombing people for Israel things would improve quite a bit in a very short time. That's assuming we don't bomb each other over terroritorial squabbles first. In any case I don't really understand your defeatism when it comes to inequality but when it's something as difficult as interstellar space travel you seem to be optimistic.

[foxglacier]

It's not optimism and defeatism, it's recognizing that one of them lasts and the other doesn't. Political changes like you listed can easily be reversed in future, but if we discover something in space, we'll keep that discovery forever even if we stop exploring.

[moogly]

> they'll come back and need solving again

So like "whitey going to the moon" again on Artemis II?

[Shocka1]

Only 75%

[remarkEon]

No, not at all.

I am saying that there we never be a world in which poverty and inequality do not exist, unless we are all dead. Maybe it's because I'm an American, but this perspective that grand adventure and exploration is pointless or not worth it is totally foreign to me.

[rexpop]

I'm an American, too, and justice-for-all is my watchword—not this "grand adventure" costume for self-aggrandizement.

[remarkEon]

Sorry, how is it a costume? It literally is a grand adventure.

[rexpop]

It's a disguise for self-aggrandizement.

"Grand" and "adventure" are subjective terms.

[b00ty4breakfast]

> We can either hold ourselves back an an endless and futile journey on solving the human condition of poverty and inequality, or we can explore the stars. It's an easy choice.

"Sorry, poor people; but I want to live on Jupiter so you're just gonna have to starve to death".

What a loser

[foxglacier]

Yea what other technological progress was only wanted by losers? Most of it, by your standard. Yet it's also technological progress that has reduced poverty. You don't care about the people of the future and want to keep them in poverty for the sake of the people of today. I wouldn't call you a loser for that but you do have bad morals.

[Fricken]

Technological progress had to invent poverty before it could reduce it.

[marxisttemp]

> an endless and futile journey on solving the human condition of poverty and inequality

It’s very telling that you think poverty can’t be solved.

—

I can't pay no doctor bills

But whitey's on the moon

Ten years from now I'll be payin' still

While whitey's on the moon

The man just upped my rent last night

Cause whitey's on the moon

No hot water, no toilets, no lights

But whitey's on the moon

I wonder why he's upping me?

Cause whitey's on the moon?

Well I was already giving him fifty a week

With whitey on the moon.

Rest in peace Gil-Scott Heron.