Into Plowershares Into Space Leftovers

I wonder if all people, at least men, who have lifelong focus on people-manipulation skills, are leaders that passed through a "bully"' stage , now civilized?

To some extent civilized, that is. There are many motivations of people. perhaps part of the "bully" ongoing phenomenon gets "civilized" into many forms, including team sports like football, resonating to deep instincts of "us vs them" "bullies battling for supremacy", and "territory taking over" types.

Exercise of those motivational forces excessively, is at risk of affecting choices of usage of technology to harm instead of nurture, a "back and forth swords into plowshares into..." kind of thing. Some technology that was sponsored development for warfare programs, has gotten later also used for civilian usage, such as aircraft development for warfare uses, includes changes that are later usable for mostly more functional commercial airliner aircraft. The "space race to the Moon" in the mid to late 1960's 's "Cold War" environment was not for science and exploration adventure, but to get to the Moon as a potential high outpost for launching nuclear missiles at the "other side". Along the way the "space race to the Moon" found both the difficulties and the usefulness of space activities, and the "International Space Station" brings former adversaries to work together in a place they might otherwise be assaulting each other, overwhelmed by bully urges; but instead have truce in mutually beneficial high-effort activities.

If space were truly seen as opportunity for civilization to expand responsibly for betterment of all people and the world environment, the focus of space development would have been upon (and still intensely be upon) space access structures. Instead, the mid-1980's concepts such as Lofstrom's "Launch Loop" (a circulating belt between two points on the ground that would lift rockets to the fringes of space for more efficient launch from 90 miles or so up), and Hyde's "Starbridge" vertical tower for electrically lifting up by electromagnetic drag technology vertically to stability height limits (90 miles?), and Smith's concept of an iron belt circulating between ground at Texas around the planet up to some high earth altitude, would have been researched to better forms even back in early 1990's.

The "KESTS to GEO" concept utilizes parts of those concepts, re-formed to eliminate the earlier conceptual design's difficulties and errors, into a form much closer to feasible high volume electrically powered space access structures that could provide transportation of the efficiency and magnitude enough to enable construction of the solar power satellites in GEO, and vastly much more from then on, such as total recycling plants of giant mass spectrometer separation systems solar powered in zero gravity and hard vacuum up in GEO, high spaceports for large scale efficient manned access of Moon, Mars and beyond, and construction of high quality living space in GEO related to the Stanford Torus passively shielded design of 1976 (except using ice for passive shielding, a safety feature).

This addresses major issues we face even now, particularly those of need for clean low cost abundant energy delivered worldwide and into the distant future too; coping with toxic byproducts of technology by solar powered conversion of it back to pure materials for re-use; room to build homes, grow food and live well yet not leaning hard on the earth ecosystem thereby; and even high efficiency spaceports in GEO for exploration and resource collection.

But no, we did not elect to do this. It shows that the stimulus for large scale projects is not driven by desire for betterment of all in ever-improving overall civilization, long-term, but instead is mere leftovers from the squabbles of people over what is already there. Leftovers from the romp of bullies who are rewarded by reproductive choices of best mates, and goodies of life such as fine homes and glory in the public, thus it is their ego-and-pomp-and-clever-bullying kind that increases as it has for eons even in the mamallian herd arenas; and to heck with the rest of us. Wasn't America's balance of power government supposed to get around that problem? It seems that the semi-civilized bullies are still showing who is boss around here, who it is who chooses what happens, using mudslinging and cunning accusations and sabotage if needed, to grab more power for themselves, not for civilization, ever obscessed with "control or be controlled" issues instead of survival of the world environment civilization upon which even they depend upon for life... along with the rest of us.

Wisdom: what is it, and is it worth the effort?

Wisdom, what is it and how does one get and use it? Is it worth the bother?

What is the relationship between knowledge and wisdom?

Is wisdom the same for the cat as for the mouse it chases? Does wisdom get a grade, a score, such as "barely passing", "A+", or "flunked"?

Is the comprehension of wisdom the same for people divided up among the four Temperaments: is wisdom the same for the Artisan as for the Idealist, or same for the Guardian as for the Rationalist?

For the homeless person as for the rich elite person?

Who needs to apply wisdom? Is there ever a time when any person does not need to apply optimum wisdom? Learning from the past becomes knowledge, especially when generalized to archetypal morphological form such as "1+1=2"; or that "when it gets very cloudy out it might rain soon." Is that wisdom; or does wisdom involve more of what that knowledge might provide in some circumstance, involving overall context.

History kind of was recorded examples of peoples' doings mostly to each other, and tries to make some sense of it, pointing out that similar stuff could happen again, without more wisdom being applied. Some people crave the fracas: are they to be considered the cause of the rampant destructive grief others endure? We strive to learn from history, but learn what, exactly? Again, is wisdom the same for the cat and the mouse; the Artisan and the Idealist? Does the survivor of a gladiatorial fracas become the embodiment of wisdom thereby? Yet surely, somewhere in history one ought to be able to find wisdom for use in the present.

Maybe wisdom is as elusive as grasping for a steam of water meandering through the woods; yet also that stream is there from which to drink a few handfuls; a few sips may be all that one can utilize now.

Wisdom involves determining choice potentials, and making choices. That is something that could be said about it. Another consistent thing seems to be that to increase wisdom, one needs to look at the bigger picture, seeing the larger repercussion potentials. Assemble a big enough picture and some of the heavy questions seem to fade away, merging into context with a larger whole. Wisdom takes a lot of effort and rewards by satisfying in the much larger context.

Yet, wisdom probably won't provide the attention-getting excitement of ongoing fracas, of gaming about life, the vigorous playing of the sport of strife and conflict.

So wisdom is about choices and questions. Wisdom reaches for and finds place within the much bigger picture, the wholeness in which to play out in a small area that then echoes throughout. It is about who oneself is.

Getting better-than-others scores, instead

What happens long term when students' frustrations about getting less than perfect scores, gets skewed into the significantly different kind of goal of merely getting a better score than the others?

Remember that it is said that one is not doing one's best efforts if one does not make a mistake occasionally.

And yet, the ego urges the effort to appear infallible in others' minds. Many people use the principle that since people use appearances of others to provide data for making decisions, that the prime goal is to provide optimum appearances instead of optimum real functionality. The old "judging a book by its cover" principle, converted into effort focus on the cover instead of the contents. Result is that more "insufficient functionality" exists, since it is hidden by the dazzling "covers." The ego is a master of creating appearances to influence others' decisions.

A key example of this is that the "elitist-rationals" who concluded that the only solution to an overburdened world civilization facing loss of critical resources (like adequate energy and clean water) is to cut the population level, and now happen to stumble into the awareness there is a different kind of solution that is far more humane and potentially beneficial for civilization *, might see those concepts as in opposition to their earlier conclusions, and unfortunately also to actions based on them so as to cut down on the population covertly.

Esteem-maintenance is likely to overwhelm other considerations, especially if one is enjoying the good life the way things are.

This principle expressing in those elites appears to have produced the acceptance of a solution to suppress knowledge of "KESTS to GEO" AKA "Space Carousel Escalator" until it can be only theirs to wield for their own amusement. Problem solved... but tragically not for most others of the world: time and resources pass by too fast, changing the world situation rapidly to the weaker. What will be our ability to create such a new section for civilization, when energy resources no longer are cheap enough for the creation to be done? What about all the species that will have gone extinct because of the delay? It takes lots of experiments, practice with using real systems and learning from the mistakes and successes, all this takes time and effort, is not an instant thing that happens when we say "oh, lets do it."

To really, really, get a higher score in the bigger game, it requires a bit of backing up and getting a better shot at the real goals for civilization. Can the students-now-businessmen-and-leaders approach be de-skewed from merely "doing better than the others," back to the original goal of getting the material learned well and actions done correctly in the broadest contexts?

* (See the www.kestsgeo.com website for theory of operation and enabled applications for a potential economical way to finally put up the Solar Power Satellites into GEO, and build abundantly up there in very helpful other ways including efficient high spaceports in GEO, solar powered total recycling plants, and even Stanford Torus type cities except using ice for the passive shielding to protect the earth environment in case of collapse back to the ground in the distant future; also to a lesser extent, use of the "space elevator" anchored superstrength tether space access techniques)