Far above the Earth’s atmosphere, in the peaceful silence of space, Russian and US partners of the International Space Station are squabbling over who’s gonna die first if they separate. Linked at the umbilical cord, they both know that they will die without each other.
But the hate is so strong.
This picture is reflective of everything else that happens on this planet. People come together in great numbers called Societies, to do great things, and gain more collective power. Yet it is power itself in the end which divides them, as they viciously fight over what’s yours and mine. They fight over who is the most superior civilisation, each of them making absurd claims to unique lineage and imperial heritage from ancestors that they have never even met, all of whom belong to the exact same species.
The children of Ukraine are watching. More than 100 of them bombed to death just in the first few weeks of the war, while adults were floating in space making TikTok videos of themselves chasing blobs of toothpaste floating in the vacuum. WTF is this species.
We tend to view space exploration as an achievement of our civilisation, but it is a tragedy: because it demonstrates that however genius our next discovery may be, we cannot escape the truth that we all, deep down know: that we will still fuck up Earth. We will still bomb the children. We will still nurture the delusion that our history is one of glory, innovation and discovery, occasionally, only occasionally, interrupted by rare, momentary, unfortunate “blips” of judgement that resulted in occasional war, destruction, climate crises, plagues, and collapse.
The arrogance is real. The narcissism is everywhere. Goodnight.
George is an author, researcher, podcast host, chemist, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons , listen to his Spotify podcast George reads George, sign up for blog alerts below, or enjoy his books
George Tsakraklides 
Our sense of self is actually way to small. We are part of what happened to the evolution of hydrogen after 14 ? billion earth years. It is miraculous and we are stuck in a ridiculous petty, tiny, infantile, ignorant and a lot more adjectives, self identity. Way to small minded and afraid of what we really are which is nothing less than the enormous creative force of the universe in the form of an amazing creature that has forgotten what it is. Tragically fumbling around in darkness and fear. Our fear of death and amnesia has us trapped following small minded ignorant and fearful “leaders” that are actually more afraid of what and who they are than most of the rest of us. They are so afraid they feel the urge to posses the power of nuclear weapons. Most of use do not aspire to have our fingers anywhere near those buttons. Yet we let the least among us get near them. We are so confused about our real collective power. If a million of us decided to make our way to Ukraine to fight against small minded ingnorance, what would Putin do. We have been divided and conquered. Tragedy of Universe scale. Even though we are the least important species in the biosphere. We are still an amazing part of the evolutionary tree of life that shouldn’t be satisfied with collective suicide at the hands of most afraid and ignorant among us. Love Rick
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the world bandied together and marched to Ukraine! A universal policing force is the optimal concept but as we see with the UN, lacks appropriate teeth.
Our thinking brain has evolved to be our saviour and our death sentence.
YES
Sadly yes