William Shatner went to space but shared a Profound impactful message when he came back!

Hello Readers!

I just wanted to comment on the events of this week as I am quite filled with emotion.

William Shatner went to space this week (for real) on Wednesday 13th October 2021 aboard Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origins Space Vessel! Congrats to you for an achievement few have managed in the past. It must have been amazing. Hopefully more will be able to take the same ride as the space tourism sector heats up.

If Gene Roddenberry were alive today, He’d give you a pat on the shoulder.

As some of you know William Shatner played Captain James T. Kirk in the original series of my most favorite space franchise, Star Trek and as Captain of the famous Starship U.S.S. Enterprise traveled amongst the stars every week for 3 years, with several movies afterwards however now he has been to the very edge of space for real going nearly 65.8 Miles up.

But that isn’t even the biggest news or revelation to me. What Bill said when he came back stuck with me and is profound. And I now realize why. His experience and his words on trying to describe the experience were not only real and in the moment, they were very human and very emotional in terms of their implications about the environment and life itself for all of us.

The paraphrased message: Humans are destroying the planet, the planet is fragile and we must work together to prevent a major catastrophe of environmental proportions to our civilization. The Earth itself will remain for a great many eons but the thin piece of paper of breathable atmosphere that enables life won’t last if we don’t start taking care of it. Space is dark, cold, death if you will. then you look at the Earth which is blue and full of life.

The irony here is that shooting rockets through the atmosphere is also hazardous to that thin Blue line and the more it happens is also going to cause more problems. We need a better way if space tourism is really going to take off and I don’t mean rockets or explosions. Jeff, I hope you are listening. If we can get past Rockets as a propulsion system we will open our civilization to space in a responsible way. Okay back to the meaning…

When I think about those words and think about what humanity has just all been through and is still continuing to go through with the global pandemic, I think about the Earth and it not having people on it anymore. What would that be like? Humans can’t survive without other people. The hardships of not having our societies as they are is just too difficult. But not having anyone on the planet means the end of the human race. Earth would be emotionally and physically dead without life. And that death is closer than any of us like to think about.

Even the disruption of any single life cycle or one nuclear weapon going off in the world and everything changes for the worse. People talk about the planet going to back to the way it was before COVID. I am convinced that is impossible.

Our species needs to do better and we all need to make better choices to achieve both environmental goals as well societal goals so that everyone who has to live here now and in the future can benefit.

Our Greatest Threats

Humanity’s greatest threat is itself. Recent news events weigh heavily on me and the rest of the world as we watch events from  all around the world about civil unrest, possible conflict, terrorism or war and general hardships faced by everyone throughout this terrible pandemic. We have so many problems that are not fixed on planet earth but most are caused by us too.

What this all means is that our civilization is not taking care of our own people or the environment and are simply unable to address everyone’s needs. We need to figure out how to reorganize to address and build better societies to meet everyone’s needs. Not an easy task to say the least with so many points of view of how people should live on our planet. We as a species have a bad track record on cohesion. But this time around, it’s getting serious.

When I think about the vast problems of parts of our civilization is dealing with or could be deal with every day, it overwhelms me.

• Nuclear War
• Regular War
• Environmental Disasters & Global Warming
• Famine
• Slavery (Economic and Physical)
• Social Inequality
• Financial Inequality
• Equal Rights
• Extreme Capitalism and Greed
• Political Extremes and Dangerous Geo Politics
• Weapons of Mass Destruction
• Global Pandemics & Viral Outbreaks
• Energy Crisis & Oil Dependencies
• Overpopulation, Under-planning and Resource Depletion
• Racial Inequality
• Refugee and Mass Migration Challenges

Just to name a few of the bigger ones. And we are not even talking about the Galactic ones or potential ones out in the cosmos that could come our way.

The Good News

I know, I know, good news is hard to come by these days but the Good news is that whilst there are many challenges ahead, we do have motivated and smart people working on these problems. We need more of them and we need to keep working at them. The human race needs a wake up call as William Shatner has just mentioned and is another voice in that fight. The fight to change for the better. He’s seen it first hand from space. He get its now. He understands. We need more people willing to make the commitments for real change and also people like him as spokespeople. We need more engineers, scientists and political action in order to put aside our differences and come together to create the Utopia that Star Trek envisions or at least prevent all of our deaths. If we do nothing it won’t happen and the universe will have missed out on a great little civilization called humanity.

It all starts with small things, which lead to much bigger things.

Education and learning is a great starting point. Learn to love learning is what I say because its so essential to understanding everything around you. You can make a difference in some small way.

Then, think about what you can do and then always ask yourself how can I make things better, to make a difference. Whether that’s throwing things in the recycling bin instead of a garbage and bringing it out the curb for collection or buying a more energy efficient bulb for your whole house or lowering your expectations and making sacrifices instead of being resource heavy, these are all changes daily you can make. You can also look at lowering your carbon footprint where necessary by purchasing newer and more efficient appliances, and if you have the money, make the switch to electric vehicles, try to eat less meat on a weekly basis if you can and don’t waste food where possible. Life is full of choices.

Consumers have a great deal more power then you’d think. It all starts somewhere.

We all need to start making better ones for everyone’s and our future generations benefit.

Choose better.

Until next time.