History must repeat itself if we are to move forward in this age of technology. We are currently faced with many problems that our politicians ascribe to policies enacted by their colleges of opposing partisan lines. It does not matter who is right and who is wrong, what matters is that we are not unified in purpose. We are divided as a country, but we can overcome this by repeating our past.
Rewind back to the early 60’s when the space race was taking off. As a nation, we were a new superpower trying to show off our strength to the rest of the world while at the same time trying our hardest not to enrage the Russians. JFK came along and said, “Hey! Lets do something that will blow people’s minds!” and the entire country backed his idea of NASA putting a man on the moon. We instantly became fixated on getting to the moon at that point. No one cared about ridiculous things like what Sarah Palin may say next or how much more awesome the Rally to Restore Sanity will be than Restoring Honor was.
We had a goal and put aside all of our petty differences to achieve that goal. The trickle down effect from that entire movement is still felt today. Getting to the moon was not an easy task. We had to bring science and math to the forefront of our schools. We had to focus all of our attention on inventing completely new ways of doing things. As a result, we built our knowledge base high enough that we actually did make it to the moon with a side effect of building a better nation.
Our modern way of life arose almost entirely as a result of the progress we made while at the height of the space race. We were making scientific breakthroughs left and right. We were inventing new technologies that greatly enhanced our way of life. If we could simply latch back on to that goal of scientific progress, we could solve so many of our current problems.
Our generation does not have such a clearly defined goal, however. The generation before us bickers in Washington over who gets what piece of the American pie while they allow our scientific literacy rates to steadily drop. We need to stand up and let them know that we have had enough. We must unify and set our eyes on the stars.
Is Mars really that far away? I’ll bet if we put our collective imaginations together we can engineer a way to get there in our lifetimes. It is time to bring back science and math for our future’s sake. Were there is no vision, the people perish.
VigRoco's Thought Generator 