I Want to Be Fired into Space (at a Promising Target, Of Course)

What am I? I look on the street and see the cement in the sidewalks and the trash receptacles and the lamps for the night and think, “This is modern man.” Except it's only a sliver of a spectrum of cultures. That spectrum, though, only varies so much. We're all primates, and while our cultures frame our experiences, we all have similar if not the same sensory experiences. All we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste is phenomenologically processed and categorized by our minds. What then, of me, when I'm aware of this process? When I look at all the architecture in Philadelphia and my heart sinks. Why does it depress me? The people on the street are so sure of things. Family, loyalty, justice, god, etc. are all terms they're comfortable speaking authoritatively on. Never mind the priests who are comfortable to take a role in representing god. It all makes my mind spin.

I have a harder time imagining a universe that spontaneously exists than one spawned by some entity, but the rest, the details are uncertain. Surely any entity, any author of the universe, a god should be amused by the antics of man.

When I hear or see articles labeled “natural” or behaviors such as homosexual sodomy described as “unnatural”, or, as I have, encounter stories of technologies or practices “destroying nature”, I have to ask, “Isn't it all natural?” I mean, nature doesn't guarantee the survival of humans or the preservation of the planet. In fact, for at least the latter, I'd say what we understand indicates the opposite, that this planet is not going to last forever. We as a species may be doing ourselves in with our opposable thumbs and big brains, our technologies and even our agriculture. There are too many of us, and when this happens in “nature” there is often an event which serves to cull and restore the balance of life and the resources that life requires to perpetuate itself.

So, not to be apocalyptically whooped-up, or pessimistic, but to regard all of this with a sound perspective, I have to consider what it means. Should I have children? It doesn't appear that we, as a species, need that. However, I'm asking the question while others are out there breeding like rabbits. Humbly, I have to consider that those like myself who ask the questions are going to be outbred by those who just assume it's “natural” and god wants them to “go forth and multiply”. By my own logic, perhaps that's natural. Where does it leave me, though? Am I to learn to love the bomb?

I can end up giving myself a headache. Taking a page from Lucretius and friends I've met along the way, I can set myself to enjoyment in life. High thread count sheets, beautiful women, nice socks, travel, art, music, and let the world rot itself. I wish it were more easy for me to do that though. It's not easy for me.

So when I say, as I have, that I'd be willing to have myself fired into space alive, knowing full well that I'd not survive the journey, perhaps taking an agent to stop my heart at the same time the cold of space quickly preserves my body, with a full set of documentation in video and sound interfaces, so that, on the off chance I should ever be found (my interstellar sarcophagus should emit radio, laserlight, and other announcing indicators to draw attention) I could be reanimated if the technology exists (perhaps we have that technology, space is, depending where in space, quite cold), I'm dead serious. I'd do it next year, or any year when I had a year to prepare for it. I'd do it for man, to meet god, and for myself. Would you?