Taking a Step Back...

So it's that time of the year again.

School has started.

I'm sitting at my desk, I've just finished reading the first chapter of my Physics textbook. It's the standard "gee, what IS scientific notation??" chapter that precedes all science textbooks.

I read one quotation that I've come back to about 3 times now, and would like to share with everyone here.

"We seem to be at the dawn of a major change in human growth, not unlike the stage of a chicken embryo before it fully matures. When the chicken embryo exhausts the last of its inner-egg resources and before it pokes its way out of its shell, it may seem to be at its last moments, But what seems like an end is really only a beginning. Are we like the hatching chicks ready to poke through to a whole new range of possibilities? Are our space faring efforts the early signs of a new human era?"

That quotation, paired with a video I saw today, have really begun to get me thinking...

Thinking about us, thinking about our future.

This is a politics blog, for sure, but some may argue that that the post I'm writing now has nothing to do with politics.

I think they're dead wrong.

Everyday politicians across the world wheel and deal, trade, undermine, force, and coax political ideologies. They traffic human desires and necessities. We call it politics. But I'm talking about the big one. I'm talking about humanity's greatest necessity. It's necessity to survive.

It's easy to get wrapped up in intellectual quandaries and minute details, but we have problems on a bigger scale to worry about. A universal scale.

In 9th grade, a teacher asked the class what the dilemma of purchasing land was. I raised my hand, got called on, and responded as he wanted. I said "that eventually land will run out" and he agreed. But then I interrupted him and said, "unless we colonize space," which got a chuckle from him and the class.

I WAS BEING SERIOUS! This is our problem! We're too disillusioned, we're too caught up in the easy stuff! The stuff we can "fix" with a few bullets or some aid money is what we concentrate on! We're ignoring the issues that are hard, the ones we don't know all the answers to!

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we're running out of time.

The growing fear of radical climate change is the ticking time bomb, and space exploration is the solution. We've outgrown our cradle. We're itching to get out. We need to before we're too weak to break the shell. We've got brilliant minds and strong hearts eager to get out there and spread humanity across the universe. We have the resources to begin doing it. We have the technology to make it happen. We're just too damn caught up in the minute details.

Support NASA. Support the EPA. We need to start thinking about the survival of the human race, before it's too late.

PRESIDENT BUSH; ADULTS, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!?!?

I try to remain levelheaded when I publish on this blog, mainly because I don't want to come off as an over-emotional, bipolar, disgruntled teenager. But the shit has just hit the fan, and I'm done with this.

Read this, then come back. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2369001.ece)

Okay. Lets discuss for a moment.

As a representative for my generation, I feel some need to voice a few concerns I'm harboring right about now.

FIRST of all, what on earth do you think you are doing? Does this lead anywhere good? Does anyone think crippling Iran will leave us any stronger? Have we, as a country, decided we should engage in pre-emptive strikes? Are YOU morally, politically, and intellectually comfortable with this? Regardless of the sorts of skeletons they'll leave in our closets, does anyone understand that bombing the shit out of people just makes them angry? It doesn't work, and it leaves us HATED. THINK about this for a moment, PLEASE.

IRAN is a country, with people, and culture, and sovereignty. We have no more right to bomb them than the Spanish had a right to keep Cuba in 1898.

And what'd we do to the Spanish in that splendid little war of ours? WE KICKED THEIR IMPERIALISTIC ASSES!

We're taking a position we can't forfeit, ladies and gentlemen. We're declaring ourselves the absolute deciders of right and wrong. We're ignoring international laws and organizations. We're breaking a lot of precedents that we're going to wish we had kept.

AND FOR WHAT?

There's only one country in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons on a hostile nation. That's us. We're the true terrorists here. We've murdered millions of innocent people and used indiscriminate force. Yet here we stand, missiles locked, guns loaded, ready to wipe out a nation's entire arsenal for threatening to create just one nuclear bomb.



Nuclear proliferation is inevitable. Technology is upgraded, techniques are modified. Nuclear weapons are going to become easier to make, not harder, so we need to take a step back and really, really, think about this.

Is the way to protect ourselves from nuclear weapons by killing and destroying? Not in any logical world. We need to be working on an international level to either tag or destroy as many nuclear weapons as possible. WITH the permission of the country in possession of the weapons.

IF an international entity that Iranians and other nations were comfortable with could come forward and secure every nuclear missile in the world, wouldn't that be safer for everyone? OR is it just going to be every man for himself? Are we going to assume for the rest of time that our brethren are not to be trusted?


There's bigger things going on! We're being those losers who sit around the Burger King and skateboard all day when we could be going to M.I.T. or getting a real job! We're wasting our few precious moments on this earth bickering over borders and resources when we could be realizing the vast potential of human community. We could be exploring outer space and discovering how this universe came to be, we could be improving nano-technology and saving the ill! We could be stopping global warming in it's tracks!

Instead, we're planning a 3 day campaign to utterly destroy a nation's attempt to defend itself in this scary, scary world.

Adults: look to history, look to your children. Ask yourself if this is really a good idea. Question the actual threat posed by Iran. Consider the threat posed by this administration. Contemplate where the world is going to be in 10, 15, 20, or 100 years.

Ask yourself how this is going to end.

And act on your convictions.