why, as a modern, complex and evolved species, we can’t seem to figure out this thing called life just yet, it will probably help to remind yourself that less than a hundred years ago, our best scientists still held the majority view that the entire universe lived within the milky way.
It was only in 1923/24* that we first definitively learned that we live in a much bigger village than had previously been believed throughout the prehistoric mists of time before that. For countless millenia we’ve bounced around between shaman with their varying views views to charismatic religious zealots proclaiming that earth and man were the centre of all creation, to a time of enlightenment and scientific advancement, when a shift in our thinking and understanding occurred, placing our sun at the centre of everything, to…
Less than a hundred years ago when we first learned what our neighbourhood actually looks like.
So.
if it seems we can’t figure out inter-stellar or even planetary living quite yet…
Might I suggest we still need a century or 3 to grow up in?
*An assistant named Henrietta Leavitt (who discovered the fixed brightness of stars as a measuring unit for determining distance – the cepheid variable) would have gotten us there sooner, but she wasn’t allowed to play with the big toys that only the boys had access to…
Cough Cough “Glass Ceiling!” #realitybaby It’s how it is now, but we’ll keep evolving and #we’llgetthereeventually
And whenever I want to resign myself to despair I think of countries like Georgia and Ukraine where ordinary people stood up and did amazing self-sacrificing things, willing to die when the crushing reality set in that their government was willing to intimidate, torture and kill them in plain view of anyone with a phone.
It dawned on ordinary Ukrainians that they were being sold out to Russia despite voting the leadership in on their bill to solidify Ukraine’s independence.
And then it became obvious that they government had placed thugs to create tension, resulting in horrific beatings, and eventually deaths.
And then it got worse…
So, although the protests had begun with the students, their parents and grandparents started coming to the rallies, and ordinary Ukranians did whatever ordinary Ukranians could.
some made soup and meals.
some brought their welding skills or plates of steel from their business and built crude steel defence structures.
paramedics in the ranks setup field hospitals and treated the wounded as they came in.
Ordinary people.
It blows my mind.
They rallied.
ordinary people.
brought change.
ordinary people went out each day knowing they could well die, but were willing to do it anyway, together with thousands others, believing in principles that were and are self-evidently true.
Politicians who tell the truth, who don’t dance and mince around words and who do their friggen jobs.
Cough Cough “Glass Ceiling!” #realitybaby It’s how it is now, but we’ll keep evolving and #we’llgetthereeventually
We just have to know to keep taking rent-seeking oligarchic scum down, wherever their slimy heads pop up, like whackamole.
And we just can’t stop…