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Missed Chances

 "The next Mars opposition will be in August 2003, when the two planets will be the closest they ever been in at least 5,000 years, approximately 55.7 million kilometers (34.6 million miles)."

(Quote from this Nasa JPL news release)

 (Another figure said 78,000 years.)

 You want to know what we're doing about it?  We're sending probes.  Probes!  Damn it!  Sure, we should be gearing up to launch a fully manned round trip voyage from our complete international lunar base, but, of course, we don't have a lunar base, do we?  No; we're too busy lying to, cheating, brutalizing and bombing the hell out of each other with depleted uranium shells down here on good old Earth.  You may ask, "why?"  Well, I'll tell you why: because we're a petty, short-sighted, warlike species that will exploit any minor difference of appearance, gender, behavior, belief or opinion to pick a fight.

 We love to fight; it's what we're best at.  There's nothing we love so much as the glorious rush of battle while we're drunk on the sweet wine of righteous indignation over past offenses (real or imagined) inflicted on (insert your group, sect, race, gender, or whatever, here) by (insert your favorite faceless villain or evil group here).  Never mind the underlying fact that we are all one species, one race, one common family of humanity.  I've gone from wondering if our race is going to make it in the long term to questioning whether or not we deserve to make it at all.  It's a complete disgrace, in my eyes, from our religious fundamentalism to our tribal race wars.

 It's not that we don't know better, because we do.  We've been told many times, by many sources, what the right things are, what the good is, and what the world ought to be.  We all, at some point or another, have seen it for ourselves, or felt it in our hearts and minds.  Sadly, the other thing we love to do is ignore all that.  We love to disregard great ideas, meaningful insights, or beautiful truths.  After all, the integration of these ideas would take thought, effort, honest introspection, and maybe even... change, on our part.  Who wants to be bothered with all that?  All we need is an excuse, and when it comes to protecting our feeble, mostly-accepted-by-default view of reality, any excuse will do.  We don't like the person who said it, or we don't agree with everything else they've ever said or done, or they were too much this, or too little that, or they didn't live up to the ideals that they themselves set forth - therefore nothing they said can ever be meaningful, insightful, beautiful or true.  Besides; who has time for all of this?  We're busy gassing up our sports utility vehicles, watching mindless sitcoms or provincial sporting events, and worrying about what the latest media-pumped villain-of-the-week is up to.

 The saddest part of all of this is the wasted potential; we could be so much better than this, we should be doing so much more.  Meanwhile, the universe moves on, and opportunities which come around once every 100,000 years or so pass us right by.

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