Why go to get the insight if you've already got it? Have we forgotten how to live?
I want to do X so I can think a thought I am already saying.
But you're already saying it. So it must be... I want to do X so that when I say the conventional thing that people who do X say, I will somehow really mean it, in a way that I don't mean yet.
But Jeff Bezos isn't going to have a changed relationship with Planet Earth and humanity! And I think he knows that. He's planning not to change, as shown by his recitation of the stock trip-to-space insight, spoken by endless astronauts through the ages. If he really believed in going to space to acquire insight, he'd wait until he'd gone to space and then tell us what wisdom seeped into his skull while he was up there floating in the tin can.
I suspect all those astronauts talking about their relationship to the planet have been bullshitting. I'm buying into the verisimilitude of the scene in "The Crown" where Prince Philip believed he would learn something profound from the astronauts, and the astronauts, it turned out...
... had nothing.
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7 comments:
Joe writes:
"He is trying to sound humble, but he is really only looking forward to getting a good overview of his domain (pun intended)."
Joe writes:
Bezos is a tourist...he's there for the ride. He can look out the window and ponder his existence.
The Apollo 11 guys were test pilots at a time when it was one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. You think you know people who are cool under pressure? Think again. If they made a mistake in their job of flying, the odds are they would die. They were focused on the mission at hand. Sure, they had a few minutes here and there when they could think about their relationship with God or whomever, but those were few and far between.
I remember seeing '2001' when it first came out on the really big screen. And in all of the times I've watched it since, it always struck me that the two astronauts on the Jupiter mission were really bland, boring guys.
And then it hit me...they had to be. They would have been selected for the trip precisely because they were incredibly dull people. They were going on a years'-long mission with nothing to do but check flight systems, charts, graphs, etc. HAL ran everything. A 'normal' person would have gone insane...kind of ironic that the machine ended up being the crazy one...
That's the point of that scene in "The Crown."
Paul writes:
You wrote: "I suspect all those astronauts talking about their relationship to the planet have been bullshitting."
Any actual explorer or scientist recognizes the subjectivity of the experience. I'll venture to suggest traveling far enough into space that you can see the extraordinary fractal geometry of the mountains, the oceans, the clouds, etc. and then concluding that these large-scale visible self-similarities of inanimate matter translate directly to human psychology, sociology, politics, economics... which themselves derive from humans as individuals striving to achieve our individual ends by our limited means makes you an obvious nitwit.
We allowed the Apollo astronauts the poetic license we allow all explorers of new territory, and no regrets. But for God's sake, let's not lapse into such naïve literalism. The map is not the territory.
Paul writes:
"He missed the chance to quote one of the very funny fake quotes. When Neil Armstrong was asked how his experience changed him, he (fake) said: “when you look down on planet earth, you don’t see man made borders or divisions. You just see humanity as it is—nothing but a bunch of losers who have never walked on the moon.”"
Steve writes:
A while back I watched a documentary on Neil Armstrong which reminded me of the highly fictional episode where Prince Phillip meets the Apollo 11 astronauts.
When I saw the episode it reminded me of an anecdote Neil Gaiman told. He was at a very private function with 120 of the most distinguished people on the planet when the person sitting next to him said, "Look at all these people, all the things they've done. Why am I here? I just went where they sent me." To which Gaiman replied, "Well, being Neil Armstrong counts for something."
In the documentary Armstrong all but says the same thing, and the person who picked Armstrong to go to the moon explained that, in part, was why he was chosen. Armstrong thought of himself as a quiet, ordinary guy from rural Ohio, just one of 400,000 people working on the Apollo project. He was an able pilot and engineer who proved time and time again, in combat and a distinguished career as a test pilot, that no matter how badly things went wrong that he would remain calm, solve the problem and complete the mission. More at home wearing a pocket protector and teaching college, he shunned the spotlight. He was exactly who they wanted to represent the US in that historic moment.
A "little" man who knew there was nothing he couldn't do.
R.T. O'Dactyl writes:
"I want to do X so I can think a thought I am already saying."
>
> But you're already saying it. So it must be ... "I want to do X so that when I say the conventional thing that people who do X say, I will somehow really mean it, in a way that I don't mean yet."
Is anything hypocritical or wrong with that? When I was a teenager, this would have been a meaningful and accurate statement:
"I want to have sexual intercourse so that when I say the conventional thing that people who have sexual intercourse say, I will somehow really mean it, in a way that I don't mean yet."
Rosalyn writes:
Count me as skeptical as well.
Anyone who’s flown in an airplane and has seen the NASA photos of earth from the moon or the Space Station,
or watched science fiction films about space travel, has already changed their perception of the planet. Of
course flying that fast in a rocket has to be a thrill.
If Bezos already knows what he’s going to experience by going up into space, why is he doing it?
IMO doing it with his brother is a great marketing tool and he wants to have the experience before he monetizes
it like an amusement park and makes it commonplace.
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