[Musings] Perfection Deception
I spy with my little eye an epidemic.
There it is! Right in front of you! Buy this magazine, buy this book! You too can have perfect abs, perfect hair, perfect SATs, perfect sex. We're obsessed, enamored, entrenched. We have a love affair with the impossible - perfection.
When did we ever start believing this was possible? And how did our thinking become so warped that now we expect NASA and the space program to be perfect?
Thinking back to the coverage of the Discovery mission, I am still puzzled over the talking heads in the media. Their infotainment spin on the mission was if the shuttle explodes again, that will be the end of all space travel for the US. Ever. (Of course with some meaningless polls to back them up.) Now I can see how another tragic loss may prompt tax payers to take a harder look at the massive amount of fundage NASA receives, but I suspect the real reason for a NASA shut down would be that the public would consider another accident as evidence this whole space exploration thing is a total failure. We demand perfection from the most dangerous of our peaceful (as far as we know) pursuits.
I guess that's what baffles me - we do not recognize the cost of growth. Somehow we've been deluded into thinking progress and discovery come in neat, clean, and expected intervals.
6 comments:
I honestly don't think things are that different than even twenty years ago. When I came back from my four year tour overseas, I was shocked at how much the civilian population of this country whined about everything. People seemed more interested in pointing out other people's foibles than in honestly self-reflecting. What's worse, they wanted perfection for themselves without spending the time and effort to actually improve themselves at all. In short, they wanted everything now, without having to pay the necessary price.
Wow. Things really haven't changed, have they?
Which is of course is not how new things in life (i.e. birth) are, it is messy, smelly, and very very painful.
I think we, those of us who are creating and discovering, are hesitant to allow transparency into the process. For those making consumer goods, companies probably fear the backlash if people actually knew about the environmental damage and the abominable working conditions of the poor in destitute countries. (I would hope there would be a backlash, though I suspect we would continue to be blase simply because we want our SUVs and disposable lifestyles.)
In the sciences, we are just as guilty. We keep the public naive about the actual process of research. Perhaps it's because of the carcinogens and radioactivity we commonly employ, but I think the number of animals that we use prevents us from openly educating the public. Yes, they know we need them, are used only when there are no other scientifically sound alternatives, and we treat them as humanely as possible. But I don't know if they understand what that really means in terms of numbers. Or even the 'humanely as possible.'
Ignorance may be bliss, but the general public's expectation of immediate gratification is a bitch of a side effect. Then again, who really wants to know where sausage comes from? Or their jeans? Or medication?
WTF - blogger spam is NOT cool. No, we are not stupid enough to believe you spammers actually read and thought about this blog to formulate an opinion, even a bland one like, 'Very good!' This blog is not for your free advertising and fake drugs!
PERFECT: I guess my thing is that I'm not quite sure what perfect is. Most people's idea of a 'perfect life' would probably kill me if I ever got it. My perfect life would probably bore the heck out of most people (much of it would involve reading books and playing music in private, living in my head, and not travelling much).
NASA: I'm convinced that there is a deliberate plan in the works to pretty much kill the space program except those few R&D portions needed to keep weapons research going. Manned missions in space aren't likely to be safe or cheap anytime soon. The people who go up into space know that, but the American people seem to think going to space should be like dropping off a package with a UPS truck. The realities of hard-radiation make manned extra-orbital spacefaring a long off goal, likely to remain more science fiction than achievable goal for the forseeable future. When the economy tanks, you can pretty much kiss NASA goodbye. People will not want to fund something so theoretical and expensive when they can't afford gas, medical care, or even housing. Then again, as Larry Niven said, "The dinosaurs died
because they didn't have a space program."
INSTANT GRATIFICATION: As for getting all the things you want in life, my own, admittedly slanted, view on things is that "most things of any real or lasting value are at least a little frustrating". This view has come out through my own experiences, which gives me hope that the things I'm doing will have great value in the future, because I'm way too frustrated for them not to be...
BLISS: There is little cure for willful ignorance (there is no cure for willful stupidity). James Kunstler refers to the "consensus trance", of how everyone believes stuff and never dares look under the surface lest their systems of belief be destroyed by the complexity and subtleties of reality. Call me an elitist, one of the literati, whatever, but that sounds like my definition of hell. The unexamined life is not worth living.
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