Sunday 10th November 2013
Today, there is a rush for Red, as Planet Mars is known. All those who can afford it are scrambling for Mars.
This includes India, even with its hungry multitudes. However, in case Mars proves a rich prospect as a colony, does anyone want it monopolised by countries of the West? Maybe it’d be the answer to the problem of those and other hungry multitudes of our countries of the South.
None of us should be left on the fringes of high technology. So, we can understand it even when a not-so-rich country like India takes on such a project.
But can you wrap your mind around the idea of an individual being so cranky as to launch such an outlandish and prohibitively costly project? Yet that’s exactly what Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp has done: finance an $8 bn-dollar mission to take four people on a one-way trip to Mars in 2022.
Wouldn’t you say this world is full of crazies! Sponsoring a one-way ticket to Mars?
Yet, if you can imagine someone quirky enough to sponsor such a mission, can you imagine someone so utterly idiosyncratic as to sign on as a passenger?
When Mars One mission organisers advertised for four applicants, 202,586 people, no less, from 140 countries applied! Imagine it: you, a young father, call your wife over: “Mama Junior, I think you need to know this. I have a vision – Vision 2022. Come 2022, I have a date with Mars. Mars must be explored. And we young professionals, if we don’t do it, who will?”
No, my imagination is not running away with me: the four successful applicants will be open to our viewing, reality-TV-like. In fact, it’s rated to be more Olympics-spectacular than Big-Brother-show, which means it’ll rack up billions of dollars, to dwarf the $8-billion investment. As Lansdorp will be laughing his way to the bank, the poor quartet will be fading and withering in their space suits.
USA, Russia, Europe, India, who’ve all sent missions to Mars, and now Lansdorp, who’ll beat who at its wealth, if it possesses it? It’ll be Star Wars VII!
Which means the aforementioned are not necessarily your run-of-the mill crazies. Rather, depending on whether they manage to co-operate, they may turn out to be the angelic prophets the world’s been waiting for.
Because if you think those Mars voyagers are crazy, what’ll you call Armin Meiwes and “his dinner”? “His dinner” because, around year 2000, when Meiwes felt like eating choice meat, he advertised online for someone willing to be eaten!
Four dudes eagerly responded but all were disappointed because, aside from physically-fit Armando Brandes, no one else passed the test as robust enough to grace Meiwes’ platter.
So, Brandes’ flesh bedecked Meiwes’ plate as his soul was hastily dispatched to the hereafter. Meanwhile, Meiwes was later confined to the cooler where to-date his soul is wasting away. But, happy sort, that was after he’d had his fill.
When we remember that Meiwes was answering his yearning for human flesh, we can bend over and understand this, impossible as it is.
What about a whole society of 1994 Rwandan shaitans; where can we place them?
Imagine a deeply pious priest picking one out of his flock, an innocent young lady, and subjecting her to hours of rape. After this, he picks a sharp wooden piece for insertion; slices her slender neck; and then sucks her heart’s blood. Now count all priests, nuns, flock and all the génocidaires of the time and give me a name for those unfathomable Rwandan cacodemons.
Maybe, again, and again impossible as it is, we can really, really bend over and understand this.
Now, can you wring your mind, without breaking it, into understanding how some European priests in Rwanda were on the side of such priest-génocidaires? And how those génocidaires are welcomed by normal beings, fully aware of this, in some African countries as well as in Europe and North America?
And now the incomprehensible of the most incomprehensible: can you understand how those priest-génocidaires are welcomed in the Vatican?
No, all humans are almost incurably selfish. No one values the worth and lives of others; sometimes, even their own. It’s the rare individual who will act selflessly to strictly serve the good of the community that they have the capacity to influence.
That’s why when such a rare soul emerges out of our society, we should celebrate them as hero and rally around them. In Rwanda, those who want to understand, do.
But alas, those in the world with the clout to influence the world have institutionalised that incurable selfishness. The UN, that humungous chimera that’s string-puppeteered by two or three countries, stands out as our monumental-shame example. In USA, the UK and France, those in their governments who want to understand, do.
If there are riches on Mars, they’ll set off WWIII. Even if that war doesn’t totally obliterate the powerless of this world, it will only add to their agony.
