What Should Have Been The Ultimate 'Popcorn Movie' Has Become A Painful Reminder Of What We've Lost

I admit it. I'm bummed. I'm kinda out of sorts... and this time, the FAA has little to do with it.

No... this time, a movie, specifically 'The Martian' is wholly responsible.

Don't get me wrong, the movie is one of the most entertaining I have seen in a long while... even despite a barely credible ending and a few other issues here and there. Still; the movie makes a sincere desire to get the science right, and by and large, its does better than most. And yes, I recommend it strongly and hope it does REALLY well. Simply stated, it's just a heckuva a story.

But what bothered me most as I sat through the flick was the growing realization that stranded Astronaut Mark Watney's world/reality should have been ours. I was watching a work of fiction... and I shouldn't have been.

Damn it.

Instead of the world we have, a world that seems more interested in punching a clock, avoiding outside involvements, and not rocking the boat, we should have been living in a wholly different world -- and been part of a species that has not only been to Mars not just once, but several times by now...

We should live in a nation, maybe even a world, devoted to exceeding our potential -- to achieving great dreams, becoming adventurers and engaging in all manner of exploration and education -- all the while seeking all that was beyond our reach, even just days before.

But no... the political dullards, the dreamkillers, the naysayers, the anti-technologists, those that fear taking one more step than absolutely necessary have ripped from us a future that should have immeasurably enriched our world by now. Our kids should be well beyond dreams of 'just' going to Mars, much less to space... they should, right this minute, be developing the minds, attitudes, communities, and sciences required for pushing our potential and propelling us beyond our solar system and further out among the stars...

And to those groundhogs that will immediately jump all over these thoughts with fear -- decrying them as wastes of resources that should go only to various social issues (real and imagined), I simply ask them to get their heads out of the ground (or a certain portion of their anatomy) and realize that great social progress will come when we can not only look back on Earth from another world, but look out at the stars from an even more remote, and exciting venue.

It's going to nearly impossible to hate the color of the man standing next to you when your feet are embedded in the red sands of Mars... it is going to be even harder to seek hatred in the name of some compromised God when you traverse the wonders of the universe -- and by learning to survive in inhuman locales, we will learn far more about what it takes to be better caretakers of Planet Earth.

We came to be on this world as a life-form of limitless potential, and no matter how you believe that to have occurred, its hard to disagree with the premise that the limits we currently face are self-imposed.

God help us... In the course of little more than 100 years, before we gave into the soulless drag of the dreamkillers and the urgent exhortations of achievement phobia; we went from riding on the backs of barely tamed beasts to circling the globe in exotic aircraft to eventually putting our foot prints on the moon... and yet, in the nearly half-century since the last Man on the moon bid adieu to the bleak surface of our closest natural satellite; we've lost hope, beat up on/even shamed those with ambition, and find ourselves mired in an shameful, eroded, courage-sucking world that strangles our spirits, stomps on our dreams, and endangers even our basic understanding of what it is to be an evolved human... with little hope in sight that such a woeful state may be reversed any time soon.

I guess that the thing that really annoys me right now is that when watching a movie called 'The Martian' in 2015, I shouldn't have been watching science fiction, I should have been watching history.

Folks, we've been robbed, you and I... but the big challenge remaining at the moment is this ... will we allow this state of affairs to rip off our children even more than what we've already lost?

I'm with our friend, mentor, and adventurer Buzz Aldrin... we need to get our asses to Mars... and to Europa... and to check out the surreal surface of Pluto for ourselves... before launching boldly, confidently, and adventurously to the stars... and long before we lose the right to be called an intelligent, evolving species.

Per Audacia Ad Astra (Through Boldness To The Stars)

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