On July 21, 1969, The New York Times published the reactions of intellectuals and artists to the Moon landing. Can't help but laugh... Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose--Hatred of progress, adventure, & achievement. Same dung thrown at @elonmusk every launch. Pablo Picasso: "It means nothing to me." Charles Evers, Mayor of Fayette, Mississippi: "America needs to look at the Earth, not at space. Before one more dollar is spent on outer space, we must make sure that not one child here on Earth goes to the dinner table with no food on it." Saul Alinsky: "I wish to Christ they'd take the South Vietnamese Government and stick them in the capsule. Send them to the moon one way. That's the only way to get rid of them since they won't take dough and go to Switzerland. We'll have to fight a war of independence to free ourselves from the Vietnamese." Louis Mumford: "A symbolic act of war!...It is no accident that the climactic moon landing coincides with cutbacks in education, the bankruptcy in hospital services, the closing of libraries and museums, and the mounting defilement of the urban and natural environment, to say nothing of many other evidences of gross social failure and human deterioration." Reinhold Niebuhr: "The chief reason for assessing the significance of the moon landing negatively, even while the paeons of triumph are sung, is that this tremendous technological achievement represents a defective sense of human values, and of a sense of priorities of our technical culture. The same technology that gave us this triumph has created many of our problems." David Riesman: "The possibility of nuclear destruction has made a greater difference in my life than space exploration is likely to make." Jesse Jackson: "How can this nation swell and stagger with technological pride when it has a spiritual will so crippled, when it is so weak, so wicked, so blinded and misdirected in its priorities?" Robert Jay Lifton: "The moon landing epitomizes the more general awe and helplessness we feel before our own tools and techniques." More here: timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1…
@elonmusk There is one awesome response from Eugene Ionesco, a Romanian playwright best known for his play about rhinoceroses taking over a town.
@William_Blake @elonmusk back when progressives fought for actual progress
all the above are and is true and do not diminish what was done. in retrospect, it didn't do anything major to change things society-wise. we even lost the tech to go back, weirdly. now we have to recreate the wheel. the feat will only really matter if we can become multi-planetary. but I think the biggest contribution is that we know we did it once so we can do it again. The knowledge that we know it is possible, that we did something so great with retro-tech is a good motivator. Hopefully, we can shift the world's focus from inward to outward. To save ourselves from global cabin fever.
@William_Blake @elonmusk Even Alan Watts, who I admire, was pretty lame on the whole rocket thing if I recall correctly.
@William_Blake @elonmusk Some of the reactions are funny in retrospect, for sure. Worth noting though that the NYT absolutely treated it as a momentous, world-historical event, as the link you posted makes clear. The reactions you quote from ran on page 7, after six full pages glorifying the landing.
@William_Blake @elonmusk @peterrhague seems like you’d appreciate this, the “ignore space” crowd has been going on for awhile!
@William_Blake @elonmusk We haven’t been back to the moon because no one wanted to go in the first place newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/the-moon-lan…
@William_Blake @elonmusk Ding ding ding, we found the answer to the Fermi Paradox. The aliens compassioned their way through using their reserve of cheap resources, got stuck returning to a pre-industrial society, and >90% of the people died.