Opinion Editorial
THE EDGE OF THE ENVELOPE
by James Strauss
When today’s older people were much younger their heritage included a unique American trait, a thread which ran 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 were living in, and an even better 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 landscape, and a leadership always complaining that there simply isn’t enough money to do anything except watch the slow degradation of our society, while patiently waiting for something never discussed; something better.
Perhaps the year 2015, that 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 ascribe ennui as the national emotion. Nothing much happened that might ignite a new era of expressive hope except in the very last days of the year. And these events were barely recorded by a mass media guided by the same blind, nepotistic forces running Hollywood, New York Publishing and many of the worlds largest corporations.
What were these fantastic, hopeful events; potentially heralding a return to enthusiastic anticipation about a possible wondrous future? Two private America companies flew spacecraft up into space, and then returned those same craft back to safe landing fields on the earth below! What’s the big deal? Look up. Yes, for the first time in the thirty-eight years of American and world lassitude just described, the conquest of space, the solar system, and even the galaxy beyond, has once more becomes a likelihood. Global warming is proving every day that the earth is not big enough for all of humanity, unless humans can somehow shrink small enough to accommodate such a limited geographic and geologic location. Limiting or fixing the problems caused by the earth’s burgeoning population is something that has to be undertaken with great vigor, but fixing or limiting these problems pales into insignificance next to the implications of thrusting upward to assume the mantle of god-like stewardship over the universe. If earth was enough, if pollution and global 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.
For the first time since 1977, Christmas was illuminated by a full moon. Credit: Carmendiluccio.com
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 for human development. There is no questioning the result of the marvelous inventions that sprang 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 both America and the Soviet Union of the time, was the moon, and the unspoken outcome of this 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.
The race to the moon became a literal, as well as a symbolic, manifestation of this rivalry, and “winning” proved which system was better, and thus would survive. We all know the result. For the space program, however, (which matched step for step the feelings most humans held about positively moving into the future) the target was poorly chosen. Once the moon was reached, the space program began to die. Until these two rockets took off, and then landed on their own fire, the program had languished in deliberate failure (barring a limited shuttle effort, the space station, and some unmanned missions). At a school speaking engagement, even the first man to step on the moon later voiced regret about his own 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 working in a closed environment simply 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 injures 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, but seldom discuss, is “is it all worth it?” Adventure, or the expectation of adventure, is what humans really live for; the rest is just existing, while waiting to get “there”. Adventure is doing something dangerous that has a happy ending, although the ‘danger’ can be totally subjective, and the ending undefined. Test pilots, going up in experimental airplanes to check them out, and test them to extremes so great the planes have fallen apart in mid-flight, have a phrase they use to describe this never-ending search all humans have for adventure.
It’s called “pushing the edge of the envelope”.
The inference is that a person writing on the front of the envelope pushes 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 inside the audience that they may not have been 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, where true adventure still awaits. That’s “out there”. America lost its target when astronauts landed on the moon. It’s high time we got it back. This time the target must be the universe, which may well prove not to be big enough, given the enormity of intellect that God has given human beings. However, it’s either that, or humans must build more hospitals, prisons, institutions and nursing homes. Since the space program basically ended, mans’ and societies’ 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.
~James Strauss
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