It’s been the main question on my mind, and the central question of my life for a while now: If, as I’ve supposed, there’s a historic cycle wherein freedom-loving civilizations eventually succumb to rust, and those few who hold the population’s remnant of pioneer spirit must periodically seek a way out to a new frontier, and if the chain of developments and preparations leading up to the next exodus can be characterized as a sort of “escape sequence”, then what are the implications for those who seek a new frontier that is not yet within reach, and will likely not be within their own lifetimes? What does it mean to “be” escape sequence? What can individuals like us, who share a preference for the wide-open freedom of the frontier life, contribute to bringing the next frontier within reach for our posterity?
For me, it means I’ve got a job to do, and it’s been urgently important to me to figure out what that job is while there is still time for me to do it.
If I want to help realize the potential of a future frontier, and make movement to that frontier eventually possible, how will my efforts be most effectively spent? What field should I be working in? Aerospace engineering, perhaps? Any field of technology that might be relevant? What projects should I be working on? What’s not already being done that should be? What hasn’t even been thought of yet?
As part of this, I wonder: What kinds of preparations for exodus to a new frontier can even be usefully made or anticipated at this early stage? Speculative engineering? Supply logistics? Acquiring skills and assembling knowledge? What can we do today that will help things along years from now, and bring that future closer? Given the great difficulty of predicting the future, how much can we be reasonably sure of, or hope to influence by our actions now? Helping the next generation learn useful skills? By and large, the answers may be things we should be doing and will be doing anyway. But there must also be pieces of the puzzle unique to this calling and endeavor, that have to be identified and figured out. I’m in the process of finding those, in a search that has very much preoccupied my thoughts. As new possibilities and lines of thinking occur to me, and as I find new resources and work by others that sheds light on possible answers, I’ll be sure to post about those discoveries here.
Glenn Reynolds quotes Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus:
…a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: “A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.”
Reading this, I wonder whether the opening of another new frontier would (or will) have a similar effect on us today. I know better than to underestimate the forces of gloom and rust and the West’s painstakingly cultivated suicide wish. For those — probably few — who heed the call of new places and go, however, I think the revelation of a way out will be nothing short of transformative.
“Peak Guardian Reached,” muses Ed Driscoll over at Instapundit, in response to this:
What if the mega-rich just want rocket ships to escape the Earth they destroy?
Hey, geniuses:
- When you insist on leaving no avenue of escape from Progressivism / “social democracy” on Earth, you guarantee that people will seek another way out.
- Shouldn’t you rejoice to see those ruinous capitalists leave? At long last, you can have your Progressive paradise! Then we can see how the world ends up. Because apparently the Soviet and Chinese environmental records haven’t established a clear enough precedent.
Fourteen years later, I have nothing fundamentally new to add.
The horror of that day has long since been eclipsed in my mind by the consequent exposure of our own weakness, and our determined unwillingness to squarely confront the enemy that brought such horror to us, in the years since. Our appetite for self-deception and willfully naïve thinking far exceeds anything I’d have imagined. Our foundational institutions, from academia to journalism to entertainment and the arts to government and even our military, have been extensively compromised beyond likely repair by determined ideological termites whose goal of an ever-weaker America is now at hand. The realities of the day did not shake their belief systems, as I had once supposed an attack on our nation would. Nor has the steady litany of attacks in the years since — from London, to Madrid, to Beslan, to Bali, to Mumbai, to Kenya, to Paris, to Moscow, to the Fort Hood shooter, to the Beltway Snipers … the list goes on and on. Nor has the rise of ISIS, with all its attendant barbarity plainly on display for the whole world to see. ISIS operates with free reign because we — The United States in particular, and the West in general — lack the resolve and moral conviction to do anything substantial to stop them. We are now led by people deluded enough to believe that weakness is somehow strength, and that our implacable and barbaric enemies can be persuaded by olive branches and “Coexist” bumper-sticker platitudes. These are people who led us to abandon all gains in Iraq, with our intentions and timetable so clearly advertised that we might as well have hung out a “This territory up for grabs” sign. ISIS is expanding its reach virtually unchecked, and is successfully recruiting from Western populations, for God’s sake — because unlike us, they actually believe in themselves and what they are doing.
Soon, Iran — whose political and spiritual leaders have been unambiguous about their intentions toward Israel, the United States, and the West — will have nukes. They’ll have them because, gullible fools that we’ve become, we’ve effectively surrendered on that front too.
I’ve pleaded. I’ve striven to educate. As have many others, with much greater dedication and skill. At this point, those who can be awakened have been. Those who do not wish to see, won’t.
I’m weary of seeing things I don’t want to see, that few others are willing to see and acknowledge. I have no patience to stand by and watch a slow cultural suicide, nor do I especially want to spend years studying the mechanics of self-inflicted civilizational decline when there are far higher aspirations for this civilization of ours to reach. I have zero respect or patience for PC scolds and their demonstrably flawed multicultural platitudes, whose net effect ends up somewhere between naïve ignorance and willful sabotage. We, who have managed to welcome and happily “Coexist” with people of just about every other belief system in the world, have encountered an enemy that has been pretty clear about its lack of interest in “Coexist”-ing with us, and with our cultural foundations now compromised due to the willful actions of some among us, we are under-equipped to confront that reality and deal with it. We’re in grave danger of losing everything that matters, not because a handful of Jihadist scumbags attacked us on 9/11/2001, but because far too many among us are willing and eager to choose cultural surrender as an alternative to fighting and decisively defeating those rotten bastards.
It seems maybe, remotely possible that in the final, twilight years of this once great Civilization of ours, the lunatics who labored to institute such weakness might, as they finally start to notice things crumbling around them, look back and wonder whether they’d perhaps made a mistake or two — long, long after it’s far too late to do anything to turn the tide. I’m not holding my breath.
We’re a culture in serious need of a reboot, and I’ve turned my efforts to finding a way for that to happen — for some remnant of our indomitable spirit to have a chance to thrive again unhindered. Because in the end, mere physical survival and avoiding playing a part in the fulfillment of a Jihadi death wish for another day isn’t what it’s about. It’s the long-term survival of the essence of who we are that matters. And how that goes … is entirely up to us.
My Previous Years’ 9/11 Posts
2014: 9/11, Thirteen Years On
2013: 9/11, Twelve Years On
2012: 9/11, Eleven Years On
2011: A Plea, Ten Years After: Please, Open Your Eyes ~ Ten Years Later: 9/11 Links
2010: 9/11: Two Songs
2009: Tomorrow is 9/11 ~ My Experience of September 11, 2001 ~ 9/11 Quotes
2008: 9/11, Seven Years On ~ 9/11, Seven Years On, Part 2 ~ 102 Minutes that Changed America
2007: 9/11, Six Years On
2006: Soon, Time Again to Reflect ~ 9/11 Observances ~ 9/11 Observances, Part 2
2005: I Remember
2004: Remembering and Rebuilding (republished here September 12th, 2014)
Occasional insomnia is a nemesis I’d rather not have to deal with. But once in a while it yields worthwhile fruits. Had I not been suddenly awake for no good reason and restlessly browsing my incoming Twitter timeline a couple of nights ago, I have to wonder whether I’d ever have stumbled upon this fantastic, extraordinary series by Tim Urban at “Wait But Why”, courtesy of @spacecom.
Start with Part 1: The Story of Humans and Space — which, if you have any inkling of wonder in you, will pull you in like a sci-fi tractor beam, the way it did me. It’s preceded in the series by a two-part, in-depth background about SpaceX’s Elon Musk, who is rightly cited as a major driving force in the quest to bring space travel costs down and pave the way to human colonization of other planets. I’ve spoken of the urgent need for a new frontier — for a way out to another place where humanity’s pioneer spirit can again thrive. This series is about exactly what it will take for us to achieve a future in space — as an even more fundamental matter of long-term survival as a species.
Of the psychological difference between manned and unmanned space exploration, Tim writes:
The human spirit of discovery is alive and well, having thrived in space in the years since Apollo.
But as fascinated as we are by discovery—as much as we yearn to know all the secrets hidden in the pages of Where Are We?—when it comes to filling us with true excitement and inspiration and getting our adrenaline pumping, discovery doesn’t hold a candle to adventure. Probes and telescopes may fill us with wonder and light up our curiosity, but nothing gets us in our animal core like watching our species go where no man has gone before.And in that arena, the last four decades have left us feeling empty.
There’s a familiar bit of disappointment or despair in that. But Tim isn’t remotely convinced that our recent spacefaring lull is the end of the human story in space. Much to the contrary:
I’ve spent the last couple months reading, talking, and thinking almost non-stop about what the coming chapters of this story will look like—and my assumptions about the future have now changed dramatically.
I think we’re all in for a big surprise.
By all means, read the whole, magnificent series. It’s well worth it.
I’ve been nose-to-the-grindstone focused on the all-important day job for a while now. (What’s new?)
Setting aside projects like this one to facilitate evening overtime on that is easy enough to do in the short term … until the weight of thinking about all the other important stuff I’m not doing becomes too great to bear.
Writing here has been a tremendously helpful and valuable outlet for me, and in times of stress I too easily forget that. Articulating and posting these thoughts decreases my stress levels greatly, and seems to do an even better job of that when I can keep at it regularly. The gloom is hardest to endure when you’re doing nothing about it. Stress is the mind’s little way of saying: Get up, man! We’ve got work to do!
Occasionally in writing here, I even manage to come up with stuff that, when I read it later in moments of despair or uncertainty, lifts my spirits. The posts I’ve written so far in my “The Way Out” series have been a prime example of that. I’ve come back to them several times lately (especially the inaugural post), finding some needed comfort in the thoughts and perspective I’d put to the page, while at the same time contemplating what’s next in this line of exploration.
Feeling better is all well and good, but of course the main goal is to figure things out. I’ve had hope that my thinking on this might be of help to others who find themselves facing the same cultural dilemma, and that in the course of working through the details verbally I might find some new answers. Take a look while you’re here, and see if where I’m going with this doesn’t have some relevance for you. There are key practical mechanics to work out, and I welcome ideas as to how to tackle them.
