A collective sense of responsibility
Reading "Pray that naysayers are right about climate change" by David Horsey http://blog.seattlepi.com/davidhorsey/2011/09/01/pray-that-naysayers-are-right-about-climate-change/ again am impressed by the depth and balance of that author's wisdom.
The complexities of all the "players" in the overall scenario are almost beyond my comprehension; Yet David Horsey has come up with some quality summaries here, I think.
My own vote would be to accept the oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, considering that America is very dependent on energy supplies and huge amounts of it, to survive.
And we as a nation seem unable to function with anywhere near adequate comprehension, vision, responsibility, and ability to act responsibly.
As Horsey says in the article, "There is not enough political will because there is no collective sense of urgency. Denial is the reflexive stance because the science is too ominous."
The "collective sense of urgency" was what got the Apollo program going and achieved. Otherwise we would have just continued to spend our equal amounts of money on such things as cosmetics, or quarters put into video game machines. But we were freshly scared enough to be building nuke shelters in basements and backyards then due to the Cuba thing, and the thought of the Ruskies also building nuke launch sites on the Moon aimed at us was too much; we got that collective sense of urgency and went for the Moon, and achieved that which was long considered impossible.
(I will just barely mention - once again - here, that I foresaw the 'clean" energy crisis on the way to happening decades ago, and struggled to find what appeared to be some viable ways to solve the problems of need for non-petrochemical large scale electrical energy, and for cleaning up the nature-non-recyclable junk of our discarded industrial civilization's stuff. I won't mention the resulting concept's proposed project's name here - "K...." - as it might get this post automatically blocked on the net, for all I know; such is the power of those who have been blocking it for over two decades.)
The focal point of this post is to explore Horsey's term "collective sense of urgency" as a key concept for America's survival.
More generalized, the focus here is on what might be termed "collective sense of responsibility."
That seems something I fantasize that all Americans can have. Yet that fantasy got me into the belief that my concept "K..." (again avoiding mentioning that name in this post) would be eagerly taken up by America and then the world, seeing it as a way to solve the big problems upcoming and forge a great new opportunity path for civilization. Twenty-two years later and the concept is still as if non-existing among the options.
I have had time to do some pondering about the why-nots during these past two decades.
It is a visionary thing. Among the eight basic psychological types (ref Jung and Temperament theory) "visionary" is only easily comprehended by half of them.
The opposite type, the git-er-done redneck type so necessary to actualize things in the physical world, seems to not be aware that "visionary" is worth a notice at all. The git-er-done type man is too busy in the game of grab-all-you-can-grab, and the women who go after those men so as to get easy shared resources. Git-er-done types built the Moon rockets and walked on the Moon.
And then mostly walked away from it all, when there was no more money nor glory in it. (Not in all cases, of course; notable exceptions happened, like Buzz Aldrin, ever promoting space activity.) Some pursued money and glory in the launch vehicle privateering thrust; but as for what other vision, is not so clear to me. Most likely there is great complexity in the mix of motives; as with all of us.
NASA settled down to fulfilling the responsibility of ensuring that America maintained technical competency and skilled manpower to take on such national defensive tasks if they come up again in the future; sponsoring projects that exercise such industrial and manpower competency, seems to be its sole function; as it's function was from the beginning.
NASA's functional purpose was therefore not that of maximizing America's growth into space resources in a fulfillment of a "collective sense of responsibility" or NASA would have taken on the "K...." project starting in 1989 as I described it, and we would already have the transportation system built and functioning by now and have some large scale electrical energy already being beamed down to take over some of the petrochemical-sourced energy supply for America by now.
The "collective sense of responsibility" involved began and ended with the perceived threat from outside, of the whole nation. The Apollo project and follow-ons did not threaten the wealth of the power barons of petrochemical supplies here or abroad. But the prospect of the Satellite Solar Power Stations in GEO does threaten that wealth expansion.
Unless, of course, they gain control of it and somehow it becomes an easier path to wealth than just sitting on business-as-usual. I don't see that likely to happen in my lifetime. The "collective sense of responsibility" clearly was not involved.
When the redneck git-er-done types have too much control of the government, as has been happening a lot in the past decade, we end up with the situation we now have as the referenced article's pointing out. There is a lot of attractiveness for demonstrating the git-er-done mode, including having lots of goodies and women, major needs in life for men. When the nation gets weakened by too much of this going on for too long, and too much has been grabbed-out-of the economy, we are here in it. And getting deeper in it by the day.
Obama's effort to stimulate jobs deliberately, primarily construction worker type jobs, would have to be paid for by more taxes on the money-hoarders. But the money-hoarders play the power game very expertly if not responsibly. Government-sponsored jobs are necessary because the private business people have not taken on the responsibility of building an adequately abundant job base in America. Clearly not considered their responsibility. If they are considered the only ones who can create jobs ... the situation is obvious. Nobody is minding the store.
To get to where one wants to go, first requires knowing where one is at the start of the journey. Otherwise the map is not very useful. Thus this post: a bit of effort to figure out where we are at right now on the map.
The path seems to involve the definitions of "We" and "collective sense of responsibility."
The complexities of all the "players" in the overall scenario are almost beyond my comprehension; Yet David Horsey has come up with some quality summaries here, I think.
My own vote would be to accept the oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, considering that America is very dependent on energy supplies and huge amounts of it, to survive.
And we as a nation seem unable to function with anywhere near adequate comprehension, vision, responsibility, and ability to act responsibly.
As Horsey says in the article, "There is not enough political will because there is no collective sense of urgency. Denial is the reflexive stance because the science is too ominous."
The "collective sense of urgency" was what got the Apollo program going and achieved. Otherwise we would have just continued to spend our equal amounts of money on such things as cosmetics, or quarters put into video game machines. But we were freshly scared enough to be building nuke shelters in basements and backyards then due to the Cuba thing, and the thought of the Ruskies also building nuke launch sites on the Moon aimed at us was too much; we got that collective sense of urgency and went for the Moon, and achieved that which was long considered impossible.
(I will just barely mention - once again - here, that I foresaw the 'clean" energy crisis on the way to happening decades ago, and struggled to find what appeared to be some viable ways to solve the problems of need for non-petrochemical large scale electrical energy, and for cleaning up the nature-non-recyclable junk of our discarded industrial civilization's stuff. I won't mention the resulting concept's proposed project's name here - "K...." - as it might get this post automatically blocked on the net, for all I know; such is the power of those who have been blocking it for over two decades.)
The focal point of this post is to explore Horsey's term "collective sense of urgency" as a key concept for America's survival.
More generalized, the focus here is on what might be termed "collective sense of responsibility."
That seems something I fantasize that all Americans can have. Yet that fantasy got me into the belief that my concept "K..." (again avoiding mentioning that name in this post) would be eagerly taken up by America and then the world, seeing it as a way to solve the big problems upcoming and forge a great new opportunity path for civilization. Twenty-two years later and the concept is still as if non-existing among the options.
I have had time to do some pondering about the why-nots during these past two decades.
It is a visionary thing. Among the eight basic psychological types (ref Jung and Temperament theory) "visionary" is only easily comprehended by half of them.
The opposite type, the git-er-done redneck type so necessary to actualize things in the physical world, seems to not be aware that "visionary" is worth a notice at all. The git-er-done type man is too busy in the game of grab-all-you-can-grab, and the women who go after those men so as to get easy shared resources. Git-er-done types built the Moon rockets and walked on the Moon.
And then mostly walked away from it all, when there was no more money nor glory in it. (Not in all cases, of course; notable exceptions happened, like Buzz Aldrin, ever promoting space activity.) Some pursued money and glory in the launch vehicle privateering thrust; but as for what other vision, is not so clear to me. Most likely there is great complexity in the mix of motives; as with all of us.
NASA settled down to fulfilling the responsibility of ensuring that America maintained technical competency and skilled manpower to take on such national defensive tasks if they come up again in the future; sponsoring projects that exercise such industrial and manpower competency, seems to be its sole function; as it's function was from the beginning.
NASA's functional purpose was therefore not that of maximizing America's growth into space resources in a fulfillment of a "collective sense of responsibility" or NASA would have taken on the "K...." project starting in 1989 as I described it, and we would already have the transportation system built and functioning by now and have some large scale electrical energy already being beamed down to take over some of the petrochemical-sourced energy supply for America by now.
The "collective sense of responsibility" involved began and ended with the perceived threat from outside, of the whole nation. The Apollo project and follow-ons did not threaten the wealth of the power barons of petrochemical supplies here or abroad. But the prospect of the Satellite Solar Power Stations in GEO does threaten that wealth expansion.
Unless, of course, they gain control of it and somehow it becomes an easier path to wealth than just sitting on business-as-usual. I don't see that likely to happen in my lifetime. The "collective sense of responsibility" clearly was not involved.
When the redneck git-er-done types have too much control of the government, as has been happening a lot in the past decade, we end up with the situation we now have as the referenced article's pointing out. There is a lot of attractiveness for demonstrating the git-er-done mode, including having lots of goodies and women, major needs in life for men. When the nation gets weakened by too much of this going on for too long, and too much has been grabbed-out-of the economy, we are here in it. And getting deeper in it by the day.
Obama's effort to stimulate jobs deliberately, primarily construction worker type jobs, would have to be paid for by more taxes on the money-hoarders. But the money-hoarders play the power game very expertly if not responsibly. Government-sponsored jobs are necessary because the private business people have not taken on the responsibility of building an adequately abundant job base in America. Clearly not considered their responsibility. If they are considered the only ones who can create jobs ... the situation is obvious. Nobody is minding the store.
To get to where one wants to go, first requires knowing where one is at the start of the journey. Otherwise the map is not very useful. Thus this post: a bit of effort to figure out where we are at right now on the map.
The path seems to involve the definitions of "We" and "collective sense of responsibility."
Labels: economy, jobs, NASA, petrochemical sourced energy, solar power satellite, space
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