9.28.2016
Today is the day after Elon Musk laid out his plan for Mars colonization. I am still freaking out a bit. I haven’t really been able to focus on anything because I’ve been fantasizing something fierce about a future that I won’t ever see. I understand I will die before Mars ever becomes an equal alternative to Earth, but one day it could be. And I got to witness a detailed presentation that showed the possibilities of how that may happen. That fills me with so much joy. Or, maybe it’s pride? Like, I can imagine how humans will one day do this and even though I’m not personally doing it, I’m proud of us who are alive right now because of what that means for the future of humanity?
Fuck, I don’t know! It’s a complicated feeling.
It’s literally the coolest possible future I could ever imagine for the human species and people right now are working on it. Although, sometimes I get ridiculously excited thinking about what humanity will do long after I’m gone. Then I get ridiculously jealous of future generations that will experience the things I can only dream of. Then I get sad thinking about how I haven’t heard one god damn person talking about it today.
Why the fuck isn’t everyone as excited as I am?
Why can’t I be having this conversation with a friend instead of a fucking computer?
I mean, I sort of understand...
I was waiting for this presentation for a while now, for I am a dumb person who is absolutely fascinated with the future AND space travel.
Plus, I have a giant Man Crush on Elon Musk and his sexy ass brain.
But what I legitimately don’t understand is why no one seems to give a fuck, time and time again, about the future. I get that we are all different and my interests aren’t going to be your interests, but this one seems like EVERYONE should be interested. It’s not just my future, it’s everyone’s.
I don’t think I’m in the wrong here or am I missing something?
As I was watching our Lord and Sav... I mean, "Elon’s" presentation, I honestly thought this would be the most newsworthy and talked about event all year.
And I’m fully aware that it’s an election year.
In fact, watching that presentation the day after the first presidential debate where Fuckhead#1 and the Lesser of Two Evils debated about America and all its policies, I realized how little people seem to think about the distant future in general. It seemed so much more important than the next four years, yet no one gives a shit.
What is that?
Does anyone else feel that excitement, that complicated feeling, that I feel?
Or, I wonder, do people just fear the future because that inevitably makes us think of our own death and we’re just not wired to deal with our own mortality?
If that’s the case, we all need to collectively grow the fuck up. We are all going to die.
Let’s not get hung up on that part.
Deal with it now.
Stop being an asshole.
Get excited about Mars, damnit!
But seriously, I often think back to when I was a child and how much I legitimately feared death. It was almost debilitating. I mean, I still fear death in the sense that I don’t want to die and I avoid it, but I thoroughly understand I will. I accepted my own mortality, which doesn’t make me a slave to it.
That may seem obvious, but I was raised in the Christian faith, so all I could ever fucking think about was how much I did not want to die. So many nights I would lie awake in my bed thinking about the logic of how everyone sins all the fucking time, hundreds of times a day, and if just one little tiny sin happened right before a freak accident that killed me, I would spend a damned eternity in excruciating pain, alone, and separated from my disappointed family.
#guilt
(BTW, please understand that “Hell” is an invention of Man to control people and that a benevolent Creator would never create such a place... Cheers!)
When I started questioning and eventually losing my faith, at such an early age, I had to confront my own mortality. That sounds weird. Actually, it sounds absolutely absurd. But there was genuinely a time where I whole heartedly believed that Hell was real and if I didn’t believe hard enough I would be sent there when I die. This meant I had to very seriously consider my own death and ponder my own existence while trying to fall asleep. THOSE ARE COMPLEX THOUGHTS FOR A FUCKING CHILD.
Now that I think about, I should probably write an entry on that whole debacle. It’s probably one of the biggest “ordeals” from my life that has shaped who I am today.
Whatever.
What am I talking about again? Death? Mars? Future? (Fuck up some commas!)
I suppose I am just getting tired of not having the important conversations because someone “doesn’t like to think about that”.
I’m so fucking sick of that excuse.
What is the point of this irrational fear? We all know that we are all going to die, so what’s the hang up? Why do we have to let the only fact of life be off limits?
That’s so limiting.
I think I know why, I just don’t think I accept it.
It’s very hard for us to picture the world without us in it. We are incredibly selfish beings in that way. It’s scary to think about death, and we sort of think that life shouldn’t go on without us. This is why man creates thousands of flavors of religions and a million versions of an afterlife.
By any definition of the word, it’s not “fun” to talk about or even think about our death, but that’s not fucking good enough of a reason to not deal with shit.
It is absolutely necessary to make decisions now that will shape the future.
Just like how thinking about global warming, or an asteroid, or the AI overlords, or whatever the event is that actually destroys this planet, isn’t “fun”, but it is a fact, and we shouldn’t be ignoring it.
I’m not a “Doomsday-er”, but just like you, this planet will one day die. Ignoring that seems incredibly foolish to me. Especially when if we were to just confront and address these issues humanity can live on!
Wouldn’t it be fucking rad if we all grew the fuck up and made changes to ensure life kept going?
Isn’t that something to take pride in?
Isn’t that sort of an afterlife?
I don’t man, I just know I’m stoked I’m alive right now. I think that colonizing Mars is this beautiful example of human preservation. Humanity will literally SPREAD TO ANOTHER FUCKING PLANET and live on because of the shit that people alive RIGHT NOW are doing.
Long after you and I die, humans will be around... loving, changing, creating new shit, becoming more and more capable within this universe, and just being human! That’s how this shit works, folks! We get better and better every generation and we figure new shit out.
I find that to be the most beautiful thing I could ever imagine.
I get super excited, I am filled with joy, and I am proud to be a human. Or whatever.
It’s a complicated feeling.
This got a bit ‘Ranty’ and (ironically) a little ‘Preachy’, too.
Just please think about the future.
Like, really think about it.
Think about how bad ass you are because you’re a fucking human being who is alive right now, but then think about how that’s all going to end one day.
Embrace that.
Don’t dwell on it, but really understand that humanity will outlive you.
Don’t let your inevitable death cripple yours, or the lives of future generations.
-Matthew Preaches