History, the brutal parts that is, mostly consists of people trying to expand into uncharted regions of the Earth. Sometimes they run into other people, and then they either trade genetic material or spear points- sometimes both. It's a tale as old as humanity itself, and the drivers that were present and active at the beginning are present and active now. We require resources to survive, and we compete for those resources. Whether we want to admit it or not, we are in competition with each other, each nation against the other, each state, each person. All in competition, yet all linked to and stuck on the same 8,000 mile diameter ball of dirt floating like a moat of dust in an uncaring and expanding universe.
I truly believe we will be at war with China in the next decade at most. That our mettle will be tested against theirs, and in the end a new paradigm will be instated. I hope it's with America at the top, but the future is not set, and right now it's not certain. But there is one thing that I am certain about, and it's the fact that we can't stay in the cradle forever. Population pressures, a changing environment, and the increasing likelihood of a calamitous event seem like good enough reason to me for our species to become a multi-planet species as rapidly as we can. Our eggs are in one basket, so to speak, and we have the ability now to start changing that fact.
The future of the human species relies on this burgeoning ability of ours to leave the planet and "go somewhere else" as Heinlein posited in "Notebooks of Lazarus Long." Space provides the opportunity to do as the colonist of this great nation began doing some 500 years ago. Unfortunately, we are stuck in this place where we can't just leave when we feel oppressed. There is no where to go without interfering with the lives of others. Some would argue that was never the case. Whatever you believe- space is that place.
That step into the great expanse of the unknown will be dangerous. There are many things we have to learn and master before we can successfully ply the stars with reliability, and it will cost lives as well as dollars. I don't know what the answers are to the questions of "how," but I have a really good grasp on the "why." The hyper polarization we are seeing in the nation today is a good example- some ideals just can't coexist. Increasingly we find that those who believe that men are men and women are women can't live with those who think that such things are mutable and fluid. That people who believe in individual rights can't coexist with those who believe that morality should be shoved down from on high by the governing body.
That a burgeoning super power that enslaves its people with social credit, and re-educates portions of its populace to destroy their old ways of life can't coexist with a super power that stands in direct opposition to those ideals- even if only on paper these days.
Conflict is in our future, and that conflict will not be a good thing. People will suffer, and lives will be destroyed as a result. This is something that we can avoid if we'd just take the necessary steps.
I don't like the idea of running away and leaving good people to suffer the wrath of those I'd normally stand against- but I find the idea of "going somewhere else" a nice one. Right now, we can't because the will to do so isn't there. We'd rather bicker about how much stimulus to throw around and what jobs to cut to make way for the "build back better" that some seem to worship. If we truly want to build back better, we should be looking up at the stars, and not at the climate models or social victim hood status. We should look toward the future of mankind as a whole. Toward where we will be two hundred- a thousand years hence.
In my mind's eye, that's in space, finding new worlds to call our own. We can't sit here forever. There will be no last minute rescue, and the desire to alter those around us to make our lives easier will cause conflict the likes of which we haven't yet experienced. The world wars we have fought will look small and insignificant, the atrocities committed by dictators and tyrants will seem like insignificant waves washing against the shores of a small lake. The worst is yet to come if we fail to take those first steps into the unknown and "go somewhere else." We have to venture up and away, and carve our place in the universe to truly find the best that could be possible.
Or we'll die here in the cradle, consuming ourselves with hatred and despair in the vain attempt to create a utopia that can never exist. I know it's not much, and that I'm pretty much whispering my thoughts into a rock concert of anger, but I will do it anyway.
Battle Specter, out.