Opinion/Editorial
The Edge Of The Envelope
When older people still living were much younger, they grew accustomed from birth to a strange American thread running strongly through the fabric of the entire culture. That thread was one of expressive enthusiasm for a future that would be grander than the present they survived in and a future that they could be a part of building. Younger people will not be able to identify with how aging citizens feel because they’ve grown up with only the hope of getting a job that pays better than minimum wage. They’ve grown up adapting to crumbling bridges, closed factories dotting the land, and leadership always complaining that there simply isn’t enough money to do anything except slowly degrade the years away patiently waiting for something never discussed.
Perhaps the year 2015 which will fade into memory only a few days from now, will be the last of nearly forty years of enforced and applied American ennui. Ennui is a French word converted for English use because of how appropriate it sounds. It means weariness and discontent resulting from a lack of interest. 2015 was a perfect year to describe such a national emotion. Nothing much happened that might ignite a new era of expressive hope except in the very last days of the year, and those events were barely recorded by the mass media guided by the same blind nepotistic forces running Hollywood, New York Publishing, and many of the world’s largest corporations.
Is the fantastic hopeful news most hopefully heralding a return to enthusiastic joy about some kind of wondrous future? Two private American companies flew spacecraft up into space and then returned those same crafts to safe landing fields on the earth below. What’s the big deal? Look up. Yes, in these first days of the New Year while the moon is barely waning from full, the first time in thirty-eight years of that whole run of American and world lassitude described earlier, the conquest of space, the solar system, and even the galaxy beyond becomes once more a likelihood. Global warming is proving every day that the earth is not big enough for humans unless humans want to get small enough to accommodate such a limited geographic and geologic location. Limiting or fixing the problem caused by humanity’s development is something that has to be undertaken with great vigor but fixing or limiting the problem pales into insignificance next to thrusting upward to assume the mantle of God-like stewardship the universe is demanding. If the earth was enough, if pollution and warming were not rearing their ugly heads and the universe was not calling from beyond in a silent demand for civilization, intellect and rule then life could continue the way it’s been since the last full moon at Christmas.
Even if the physical factors of future comfort and survival were taken out of a discussion about the future of the human species this overwhelmingly important and dominating emotion of ennui must be considered. There’s an old Chinese proverb that sums up this attitudinal dilemma: “he who shoots at no target hits same.” Human beings must have targets and they have to be carefully designed in order to allow human continuance. There is no questioning the result of the marvelous inventions that sprung forth from the initializing and short-lived continuance of the world’s first and only real space program back in the fifties and sixties. The ‘target’ of that program in America and the Soviet Union of the time was the moon and the competition surrounding the shooting at the target was cultural dominance.
Communism and democracy were two differential economic and political systems fighting one another for dominance. A race to the moon proved the ‘target’ selected to prove which system was better and which would survive. We all know the result. For the space program, however, which matched step for step the feelings most human beings held about positively moving into the future, the target was poorly chosen. Once the moon was reached the space program began to die and until these two rockets took off and then landed on fire the program has languished in deliberate failure (barring a limited shuttle effort, the space station, and some unmanned missions). Even the first man to step on the moon later voiced his regret at a school speaking engagement about his fixation with landing on the moon as his only target. “After the moon, there was nothing left,” were his words.
Human beings can live without adventure. They do it all the time. In prisons, hospitals, nursing homes, and sometimes by simply working away in a closed environment to make enough money for survival purposes. Human beings are capable of living under the most horrific of conditions. Humans can eat almost anything, survive huge temperature swings, endure injuries that would kill lesser animals and drudge on day after day without enjoyment, bliss, happiness, or even hope. Humans are amazingly adaptable. The question all humans ask themselves all the time, but seldom discuss, is “Is it all worth it?”
Adventure, or the expectation of adventure is what humans live for; the rest just existing to get there. Adventure is doing something dangerous that has a happy ending, although the ‘danger’ can be subjective and the ending undefined. Test pilots, going up in experimental airplanes to check them out and take them to extremes so great the planes fall apart in mid-flight have a phrase they use to describe this never-ending search all humans have for adventure. It’s called going over the edge of the envelope. The inference is that a person writing on the front of the envelope moves right onto the back of the envelope as if it was part of the main writing surface for imprinting upon. Thinking outside the box.
Reality television shows have taken advantage of the human need for adventure. The television shows use fake adventures, scripts, and actors but the result is that the shows attract something in the audience the audience isn’t fully aware is there. That is the human need for adventure. There is only one real place left where humans can go where no one has gone before and get it. That’s out there. America lost its target when astronauts landed on the moon. It’s high time to get it back. This time the target must be the universe, which may well prove to be not big enough, given the enormity of intellect that God has given human beings. It’s either that or humans must build ever more hospitals, prisons, institutions, and nursing homes. Since the space program ended man’s ambition has faltered. It’s time to go right over the edge of that metaphorical envelope and become not what we will be but what we must be.
