Space Travel for All
(William Shatner has taken a brief trip into the threshold of space at the age of 90.)
Mr.Shatner, I am unimpressed.
There are some things one does not have to do in the flesh.
I have gone before you, through the blue to the black. It is a beautiful, awe-inspiring, sobering, lonely, heart-wrenching thing to do.
The human mind, of which I have a functioning but not exceptional example, possesses a power of the imagination that renders a few expensive minutes on the threshold of space a self-indulgent unnecessary luxury.
I am struggling to try to employ this mind of mine, an improvable faculty, my starting point.
The majority of people in the world are still living in circumstances which they find familiar enough so that they are not driven to panic. Not today.
But today we learn that at the global level we have totally failed to curb our carbon emissions so far.
Most of us perceive the planetary environmental crisis to be in its early stages. This is not true, but we are simultaneously inundated with information concerning the crisis and besieged by a sense of unreality because of the means through which we are informed.
I need to learn how to use my powerful imagination to see through overabundant information and over-complexity in the same way I can leap into space without wasting precious resources. I can train myself, but education from others can help.
I put down my pen, step outside, and in my mind rise glorious into the sky. I possess the most powerful spaceship on Earth, the human brain. We certainly need this perspective as we struggle to keep the planet habitable.
