NASA Will Deal With It
I guess. It's their baby - or at the very least one of their babies. How scientifically, socially, technologically exalted can one get, after all - it's stratopheric - the business of astronaut production. A rare breed. Reminds me actually of the kind of crisis-driven, talented, brilliant, tormented, adrenalin-loving over-achievers who succumb to the lure of facing adversity and near-death experiences climbing the Himalaya.Adventure, breaking new ground, experiencing the beauty and the torment of impossible odds to prove you've got the guts to perform, to succeed where most cannot, would not even try. Truly the right stuff. Competitive, aggressive, creative, empowered. Isn't that the ultimate experience? Isn't everything else on the down-turn? NASA's astronaut contingent, the anointed.
Alas, human withal. With all the drives inherent in any warm breathing human body. Only more so. With a larger presence, clarified, brighter, luminous even. A self-assurance and egotistical drive for success, recognition. And then there's the human burden asserting itself again; we achieve but the rush must be repeated again and again for diminishing returns.
Well, it's like this: put male and female together in a highly-charged atmosphere of achievement and everything becomes highly-charged. There are those male-female attractions, an indelible and welcomed whole other challenge. Eros will not be denied. Here's another opportunity for conquest. Sex, the affirmation of value as a sex object; pretty fundamental.
Once you're up there in the great blue yonder what is there left, after all? The commonplace of family, children, routine. Pedestrian existence. Compare that with the flush of empowerment and achievement. Pretty dull stuff. But unleash all those ungovernable passions and what happens? All that intelligence kind of seeps underground. Surrender to passion becomes complete: lust, jealousy, revenge, murder.
Ah, what a world we make for ourselves.
Labels: Human Fallibility
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 07, 2007
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