free thoughtpolice wrote:PZ writes a piece about how Musk's plan to colonize Mars is a pipedream and totally impractical. Meanwhile, Caine, who must really hate her half European self hears the word colonize and goes on the warpath:
And I loathe this asinine fantasy even more, because as I knew would happen, there wasn’t one fucking person in that other thread who didn’t get all lost in the fantasy, demonstrating that no, they don’t give a shit about the planet they are on. Our earth has become a dumping ground for most people, white people in particular, who get the glitter of colonialism in their eyes once again, happily ignoring the wealth of damage that colonialism has wrought right here, on the one fucking planet we can actually live on.
I despise colonialism, and the goblins who perpetuate it – you’re nothing but forces for evil destruction, a complete lack of care, respect, and any other quality that makes us naked apes anything worth possibly saving. My people and many other indigenous people are fighting for all lives, all over this fucking planet, and do most white people care? Nope, you want your damn oil and coal, you’ll destroy earth, air, water, and people to get it, wring everything dry, then say with that possessive, destructive evil, “there are other planets, fuck this one”.
I have a fuck you too – fuck every single one of you.
Peez. So parochial. So little. All the vision of some beige-clad bean counter who insists on peas with every plain meal.
WHY? Why do we need to be a multiplanet species? I’ve read the same science fiction novels and watched the same science fiction movies of far-flung interstellar empires and exotic alien worlds, and I think they’re fun and neat. But they’re fiction. They’re entertaining. They echo the romanticizing of the American expansion into the West (which was dirty, bloody, and cruel, but hey, let’s not bring that up).
But it doesn’t explain why we need to get off planet Earth.
Because, eventually, something is going to happen to the sun which will...well, destroy this planet. Now I for one would be perfectly happy for someone like Peez to stay and cook* if he wishes, but Peez - you don't get to decide if future generations should have a future or not. After all, is that not the beard's main complaint as regards the importance of environmentalism? That we have a duty to make our world fit for future generations? Then why, pray, should research into off-world survival be taboo? Perhaps it just seems too impossible, too daunting a task. Perhaps Peez thinks too many people are like himself, and that his own record of failure can be applied similarly to the wider population. Hence, maybe, why people like Musk perplex him.
We'll never do it. It's pointless. We simply can't win. I suppose it's understandable why someone like Peez should feel this way, doughy failure that he is. Thankfully, in being such a loser, he'll never get to influence the rest of us with his loser's lack of vision. Just bitch and whine and mong out to the likes of Nerd and Caine on his failing blog - which is about his measure, really.
*self-basting, naturally.