Arguing with the birthday-taxpayer yesterday evening, I hit upon that the present is infinitely crappier than the predicted future because his generation failed to change anything: namely, going to the Moon (or not going, to be more accurate). The taxpayer brings in the cost - because they started analysing everything for cost-effectiveness. 'People are starving in Africa' - because you insist they pay back ridiculous loans from the 60s despite the people you elected holding the G8 summit and agreeing to ease the costs - that was only last fucking June. 'Let's fix the problems on this planet first' - You've had over 20 years to do that. 'There's nothing on the Moon' says the Six-O'Clock News viewer - oh, apart from Helium-3 which, though fusion, would slash Carbon emissions from energy production immensely.
Having won that, as indicated by the line of discussion ending, I later broght in the fact that Columbus did not discover America: not because the people living there already discovered it, not because the Vikings stumbled on it, but because Columbus died denying he had found a new continent. I then posed a question: Should Columbus have gone to the Americas when the Old World was still plagued with a myriad of economic, social and political problems? We agreed the Americas were better off unknown - but we needed something to distract the people from the aftermath of the Reconquista.
[237]
No comments:
Post a Comment