To Go Where No Man Will Ever Go



(Yeah, I'm in a mood. Sue me.)



Here's why the human race will never reach the stars: We're genetically compromised by our life spans and our breeding habits. We are, in essence, the rabbits of the universe. (For now I'm ignoring the fact that our little sacks of meat are perilously fragile outside the troposphere so any talk of exporting same to other planets deserves as much serious attention as garden fairies.)



Look at us. (And I'm basically talking about Americans here. The rest of the industrialized world has basically got their shit more-or-less together.) We're so collectively ignorant that a modest contingent is seriously considering appointing Donald Trump as the Guy Who Pushes the Big Red Button. This is because we spend inordinately greater amounts of time spoiling our kids with the latest consumer widget than we do ensuring their safe and secure futures by intently studying government's every move. Especially the right side of the Congressional aisle which seems to be mostly populated by nematodes and carpet remnants.



As a space-faring species we'd ideally have long life spans. I mean thousands of years instead of this measly "three score years and ten" albatross impeding our carotid blood flow. Luxuriously long life spans would give us plenty of time to study and observe the known universe, perhaps even live long enough to survive a long, lonely voyage through the seemingly endless streams of dark matter on the celestial road to other planets. As it is, we get a few salad years where our minds function at warp factor ten and then we get tenure, sew patches on the elbows of our jackets, and relax to bathe in our modestly accumulated amounts of respect while we wait for our Social Security check and the inevitable myocardial infarction. If we're lucky.



An ideal space-faring species would also devote minimal time to child-rearing, pooting out just enough replacements to grow the population without having to war over the available resources. Putting the womb into overdrive as a result of bronze-age directives has left we homo sapiens muddying the waters that we all must drink. And lately that mud contains ever-increasing amounts of BP-approved radioactive contaminants.



We talk about genetically modifying organisms, eventually ourselves, but while we're stomping out the vast plethora of genetic defects (Thanks, God, for so carelessly assembling our sex-Legos that Republicans now have a new demographic to fear monger.) we might also consider zapping the gene that makes us so insanely acquisitive that we end up watching, in horrified delight, programs like "Hoarders" and saying to ourselves "Well, that'll never happen to me. Oh, look! A gardening tool decorated with the state vegetable of all fifty states, which also doubles as a truss and a coffee maker. And it comes in fourteen decorator colors! Let's get collect them all!"



What I'm suggesting is that we quit betting on the stars, or God's right hand, for mankind's ultimate destination and spend more time on keeping this good old Earth clean and green.



Happy Towel Day, everybody!



=Lefty=

