(Don’t look now, but it’s the Amish Tech Support Blog A Day Tour!)
Dr. Weevil (who doesn’t seem to ping weblogs.com, the naughty naughty man), strikes a chord with something in his Misleading Geography post:
Next 6 Exits
When was the last time you heard of some geographical feature being endless?
When was the last time somebody talked about being tossed in a bottomless pit?
When was the last time you heard of someone going outside exploring for a fountain of youth instead of looking for it in a science lab?
Even the “endless” pasta bowl at the Olive Garden is just a metaphor, you know. They just keep bringing you different bowls. It’s not like there’s The Well of Pasta in the back room where they lower buckets, make a wish, and pull up your dinner. (There’s a separate well for bringing up the sauces, by the way)
We have minded the legends out of our world, and there are no more myths left in the veins of our history. Movies, television shows, and books now provide artificial legends and myths, like a once-proud wild animal receiving Purina Endangered Species Chow at the zoo while a parade of snot-nosed primates walk past and gawk.
When man finally gets the opportunity to explore other worlds, will his sense of wonder and fear lead to a new age of serpents roaming the maps of the seas and thoughts of demons beyond the vast walls he builds to protect his spreading empires? For this, we must explore beyond our world, because without legends and myths to lure us into the future, our species will truly perish.
Most of us are not educated in contexts which promote thinking in the long-term. The “it’s all about oil” crew have still shorter attention spans. It isn’t about oil. It isn’t even about the potential catastrophe of WMDs in the hands of NGOs such as al-Qaeda. It is about the future of our species. Are we going to thrive and survive for the next step or will we falter thanks to the midievalism of the Islamofascists or the anti-science, anti-technology, and above all anti-fun “left”? I believe if we are going to move some of our eggs out of the egg-basket of the Earth we need freedom and the education and wealth which come with it. Perhaps more important still we need the will to do it. Perhaps the very legends and myths this post suggests will rise from the next step are also the source of the long-term thinking we shall need to take it. There is another word connected to contemplative thought which takes as its scope the long-term and the pursuit of the myths of freedom to inspire us: faith.
Thanks Laurence.
Actually, I think the argument could still be made that we are still burdened with many shibboleths, baggage we should have discarded long ago. Remember, too, that for every one who is willing to step forward into the unknown, there are many who are afraid, fearful, not of what they know, but of what they imagine.
You lie, Laurence. You want us to go out in space so we can steal Juppiter’s oil.
Or Uranus’s gas.
(Sorry, some things I cannot resist…)
I want more shibboleths! More! More!
What’s a shibboleth?
As long as there is the Myth of the Female Orgasm, mankind will never rest.
“Endless Mountain Region
Next 6 Exits”
Not to be a geek ( too late) but I am from that region and the name of the Mountains chain is the “Endless Mountains” I believe it was an Indian name
The problem with the lack of imagination stems from the education system. People are being taught to think in absolutes and not consider that problems may have other solutions. Look at engineering fields, In the past, the developers found imaginative ways to solve problems (Apollo 13 for instance) now they only see one possible solution and can’t conceive of other ways to achieve the same goals (Columbia accident, they claim that if the tiles were broken there was nothing they could have done anyway)
We need more Liberal Arts Education to teach people to learn rather than teaching students a rigid set of rules.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge” – Albert Einstein.
That sign has hung over my desk my entire career. My bosses hate it. But that hasn’t stopped them from occasionally calling me into meetings and starting off with “I know this isn’t your field, but do you have any ideas about…”
I haven’t been able to convince them that we all have ideas, I just seem to be missing the part of my brain that says “That won’t work, keep your mouth shut.”
“I just seem to be missing the part of my brain that says “That won’t work, keep your mouth shut.”” David, I think I have a spare one out in the garage. The only thing wrong is some dust and a little surface rust. Ya want it?
Sorry- I couldn’t resist 🙂
Weblogs.com is screwed up or something. Half the time I get a “failure to ping weblogs.rss” or something like that when I make a new entry.
Yall don’t have what i am looking for no site does and it is making me angry come up with little sites so that it would be interesting to teenagers