Robert A. Heinlein

Everyone should read Robert A. Heinlein (author) and see the subtly and in some ways blunt hypothesis (in most of his books and writings) on the survival of the human race.  Which would have to militarize via space travel, colorization programs -  in it's goal to venture out of our (relevant to this point in time in our history) doomed predicament.  Not a new theme, finding a common goal to bring humanity together - in Heinlein's books it was an external threat i.e Starship Troopers fighting the extraterrestrial "bugs".  Various Sociologists, economists and philosophers have always embraced the idea, or fantasy, that a collective  threat against humanity is our best hope in offsetting our own self destruction.

I was discussing this issue on the weekend with a friend of mine, talking about how really fucked up our world is at this point in time: cold war/s (Japan and China, Russia and America), viral pandemic/s just a hair away, economic charades and conjobs, crony capitalism rife, mass shootings and wayward analysis of those tragic events, war on women, religious and theocratic infiltration into our society etc.

My reply was half joking and half serious, which was we all should be working for space technology programs, health and environmental studies and build a colonization/futurist based society - which would be the conquest our solar system and beyond.  The discussion ended once she suggested that we would just take our problems on Earth into Space, it would be prudent just to ride out our flaws, painful as it will be, in the long run our freedom is paramount.  On the 11th hour we will steer the right course.  Leaving that discussion at her last point, we proceeded to get wasted on Martinis for the rest of the afternoon, finishing the day with a trip to the local art gallery. 

Still...Heinlein's subtext, viewpoint and solutions to our problems has a tantalizing appeal.

“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’  ‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”  Robert A. Heinlein