I’ve been taking a lengthy break from the news cycle — the first in a long while. Disappointment at Ted Cruz’ withdrawal from the presidential race was probably what prompted it more than any other single event, but it’s also been a long time coming. I’ve observed that constant engagement with the nonstop news machine tends to create a toxic, bogged-down perspective — one whose opportunity cost is difficulty thinking about the longer term and seeing the bigger picture. The day-to-day bad news is made worse by the fact that much of it is foreseeable — the result of decisions being made based on flawed theories whose siren song of wishful thinking garners steadfast devotion. Watching the results unfold wears on the spirit after a while; you get weary of playing Cassandra. The world we inhabit today has become profoundly disconnected from the culture I grew up in and fell in love with, and not for the better. The inconvenient terrible acts of some are excused, while others who espouse our most cherished foundational values are painted as the worst of villains, as befits the “narrative”, the demagoguery of the day. In this light, the 24/7 news cycle resembles more and more a play full of sound and fury, that in the end signifies very little about the long term. Reportage often tells one more about what bien pensants have decided we ought to think about a topic, than about what factually happened when and why. Like carbonated sugar water, it becomes easy to give up, once you realize how little you miss it and how well you can live without it. Disengaging for a while has enabled me to see a bigger picture that is too easily obscured by obsession with the tumultuous short-term. It seems to me that history is cyclical. A frontier culture founded on the ideal of freedom lasts only so long before we sabotage ourselves with self-doubt born of boredom and insufficient challenge, of removal from continuous salutary testing of our ideas and efforts against reality. Eventually the clock runs out on any given place, and the imperative presents itself: those who wish to rekindle the great experiment must find a way out to a new frontier. So I’ve come to realize that I can either curse my luck for what things have become, or choose to connect with a profound sense of gratitude for the time and place I grew up in — one that showed me something truly beautiful and precious that no slander can diminish, for I lived it and saw it with my own eyes. Knowing what is possible is a huge part of the battle to rekindle it. We have a recipe that is portable — one that can perform its miracles again elsewhere, if we only take care to understand what it’s taught us.
On Independence Day, it’s traditional to think of the events that impelled the American colonists to separation from England, of the hard-fought Revolutionary War that followed and the acts of courage and sacrifice to which we owe our precious Liberty. This year, I find myself thinking also of the individual assertions of independence that quietly preceded all of that, as royal subjects one by one decided they’d had enough, and chose to embrace great risk in trade for the mere opportunity to build new lives by their own hands in a far-off land — in a place across an ocean where they could live in true, untrammeled freedom. Today we find ourselves on the cusp of a similar juncture. When a suitable destination presents itself, what happens next will at first happen quietly, and will probably pass largely unnoticed. The wheels that will impel some to that journey are already in motion. For those few who heed the call, the results will be nothing short of transformative. The characteristically American reactor will know reignition in a new place. True freedom will yield its generous bounty unhindered, and courageous men and women will once again celebrate a hard-won and therefore precious life, forged of their own efforts, in Liberty.
For the short-term, I may yet feel gloom. For the long term, that gloom is far outshined by stirring beauty that impels me forward, my heart aglow with joy. I cannot wait to see what our tribe of restless wanderers creates next.
Speaking of Bill, Steve, and Scott: While gathering links to their latest work, I ran across this Trifecta gem I’d completely missed last year, that resonates uncannily with a thought I’ve been mulling over quite a bit lately: Maybe cities are a mistake. So many of the problems and vulnerabilities we face seem to result from the helplessness and dependency that dense urban centers engender. Cities insulate us from the realities of what is and isn’t essential for our survival. Urban living saps us of our self-reliance, and deprives us of the continual, salutary testing and re-testing against nature that would otherwise drive us to cultivate essential skills and build resilience. It’s anonymizing, and leaves us dependent on corruptible and inevitably corrupt, wasteful, and unreliable centralized institutions, where we might otherwise develop mutual reliance on our neighbors in a more resilient, decentralized, voluntary web of trust for mutual benefit. City life makes it too easy for us to disconnect from reality, in ways that jeopardize our ability to deal with said reality when it rears its ugly head. We become, in a real sense, victims of our own success. Furthermore, dense urban centers make our thusly-concentrated populations easy targets for Jihadi lunatics who are just dying to prove the extent of their depravity on a massive scale.
I say all of this as someone who loves many of the products of city life — from technological marvels to universities, museums, and cuisine from all over the world — and has experienced life in many U.S. cities — from Los Angeles, where I grew up, to Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose, San Francisco, and New York. It just seems that the negatives have come to outweigh the positives, and we may benefit from a change in direction. Dense urban centers of population may be largely an Industrial Age relic that we’d do well to re-assess look beyond. In a time when much of our activity now takes place in a knowledge and service economy, it may be entirely possible to de-centralize our populations without abandoning (and perhaps even better facilitating) the continued advancement of positive technological developments.
Having moved to an 1880s farmhouse in northern New Jersey two years ago, I feel like I have one foot already in a more rural world, and the sense of well-being I’ve gained has led me to wonder what else I’ve been missing. I haven’t worried much about imminent Apocalypse since growing up in the 1980s under fear of a Soviet ICBM attack. But the direction things seem to be going in is awakening dormant prepper/survivalist instincts in me. If the center will not hold, how will the remnant of what we are keep the flame of civilization lit until we can make a way to piece things together again? It’s been decades since this old place was worked as a farm (with the benefit of surrounding acreage that’s since been sliced up and sold to home builders). But I find myself thinking: even if the results don’t make much of a dent in our weekly dependence on grocery stores, learning some basic skill with growing a few small crops might be a good and useful thing. (Stay tuned; maybe I’ll have some Spring planting news soon.)
This is the kind of stuff that’s been on my mind as I contemplate the short-term mitigation of circumstances we need before we’ll be able to achieve a longer-term way out to the next place. Bill, Steve, and Scott bring some interesting perspectives to the table in this Trifecta — and the Green Acres theme is a nice touch. I remember watching the show at my aunt’s house growing up. Maybe that was a foreshadowing of my life to come?
Crabapples are all we’re growing right now, by the way. Feeding the deer, and leading my 3-year-old son to ask with concern whether they contain tiny crabs, seem to be about all they’re good for. But the trees do give us some very nice flowers:
Just a couple of decades ago, one noted, the only people who firmly believed that there were planets circling other stars were science fiction fans. Now we’re discovering new planets all the time, and some estimates suggest that there may be billions of these exoplanets throughout our galaxy. So that’s one reason to be talking about interstellar travel: Now there’s somewhere to go.
Another reason is that while talk is no substitute for action, it can be a pretty important precursor. Much of our progress in space to date has been achieved because of people (usually science fiction fans) who wanted to explore places where no human had ever gone. As physicist and science fiction writer Greg Benford remarked, ultimately, we can do this, “but you can’t do it if you stop thinking about it.” Science fiction keeps people thinking about it, and that’s good.
In case you missed it: Be sure to catch the final part of Tim Urban’s aforementioned series on Elon Musk and SpaceX.
(Tim also has a post about December 21st’s SpaceX launch and historic first-stage landing success — which I didn’t realize he’d helped host the webcast for. Nice to see him expanding to other media; I wish him much well-earned success!)
It happened while I was packing for a far less ambitious trip last night. As soon as I saw the news on my Twitter feed, I found the video and watched it again and again on my iPhone — beaming with elated joy.
At 32 minutes, 25 seconds into this SpaceX webcast, you can see their Falcon 9 first stage descend under control and land vertically, after successfully boosting its satellite delivery vehicle to an altitude of about 72km. The spectacular landing of the first stage is truly science fiction made reality, by dedicated and tireless effort and discipline of execution:
Tremendous congratulations are due to those at SpaceX who made this happen — made it look deceptively easy, even. The opening of a new frontier, with possibilities we can only as yet dimly imagine, will be made possible by advances such as this.
Here’s a low-altitude aerial view of just the first-stage landing:
I mentioned the idea of an “escape sequence”, that in a theorized historic cycle might characterize the series of developments and preparations that lead to the pursuit and fulfillment of a new frontier. Sketching out an imagining of what such a thing might look like, here’s the rough framework of six sequence stages that I’ve come up with so far:
Activation: Long-term observation persuades a sufficient number that their free society’s foundations are damaged beyond likely repair. Individuals begin to decide that escape to a new frontier is or will soon be necessary, activating a sort of failsafe protocol built into our human nature that has, time and again, kept the spark of our pioneering spirit alive. These individuals begin to find one another, form alliances, and devote their efforts to the next stage, with their goals and priorities adjusted accordingly.
Logistics: Identification and assessment of suitable candidate frontiers. Methodical first-stage planning of possible transit mechanics, provisioning, necessary seed tech and hardware, resource availability and manufacturing and resource extraction/refinement potential at destination. Self-selection, networking, and training of first-wave pioneer crew. Development by same of colony’s charter, with careful safeguards designed to maximize the time before next sunset.
Construction: Vehicle assembly, systems testing, launch site preparation, vehicle loading.
Exodus: Liftoff, ascent, and transit.
Settlement: Landing, temporary first-wave shelter. Construction of resilient permanent shelter. Resource surveys and first extraction and processing operations.
Ignition: Productivity growth passes a key inflection point. Innovation and trade thrive freely in an unencumbered environment.
Where I see us right now is somewhere that spans Activation and Logistics. The ultimate goal is Ignition, with every preceding stage dedicated to its eventual achievement.
It’s a very bare-bones outline, to be sure. The last few stages in particular elide a tremendous amount of challenge and complexity. But it seems to be providing a useful framework for me to hang my thinking on, as I walk through what needs to happen to bring the next frontier within reach, and to ensure the greatest possibility of success. I’ll have refining and possibly rethinking this model in mind as I proceed with my search for answers.
Freedom is a tremendous and precious inheritance. To develop our potential, thrive in it, and pass it along to each successive generation is our highest calling. I write here to give my thanks, and to seek ways we can cultivate the resilience, independence, courage, and indomitable spirit necessary to sustain a culture that cherishes liberty.
