Choose Your Fruit

Recent events in India have me rethinking a lot of popular socio-political commentary.

I'm talking about the kind of commentary that goes, "Eat your broccoli, don't you know there are starving children in India (Zimbabwe, Uganda, whatever)?" and such things as "If they can put a man on the Moon, why can't they make a Big Mac with negative calories?"

It may sound like I'm poised to make light of the tragedy in Mumbai, but I'm not. I'm only going to scold the entire world, the terrorists included, for having once again proved to me that humans don't really deserve the planet they've got born to. It's not funny, but look at what I have to work with.

It's the "If they can put a man on the Moon" business that's really got me. It was only 3 weeks ago that India hit the Moon with a space probe of its own. So, Indians can now be asking, "If we can hit the Moon with our very own rockets from almost 400000 kilometers away on Great Nehru's Birthday, why aren't our cities safe from terrorists?"

[Right: Chandrayaan-1 (चंद्रयान-१) lifts off on the PSLV-C11.]

Well, part of the answer is fear. Let's say you are a nuclear military power. What could you do that could allay the fears of your neighbors on Earth concerning this fact? Could you allay such fears by building up your space program so you can do target practice at the Moon? Really?

Part of the answer is the Apples vs Oranges thing that I hate so much. "The Moon isn't a terrorist." Really. Which feeds back into the first point, because it underlines the fact that lobbing missiles at people where they live is physically a whole lot easier than fighting them close at hand in your 5 star hotels, it's apples to brass balls actually, and if you are doing target practice with Moon gophers, you've pretty much signaled that you've clued into that sort of reasoning, therefore increasing the aforementioned fear.

"There's a war going on." When the United States was in India's position vis a vis the Moon, it was the '60s. The US space program started gaining in prestige right about the same time the Vietnam Conflict started being called a war. This was not coincidence, and neither was the fact that the '60s were marred by all those assassinations and riots.

Which brings us to Priorities. The issue of Priorities is really that of Apples vs Oranges turned on its head, as in "Would you rather have apples, or would you rather have oranges? They're different, you know."

Would you rather have peace and prosperity, or would you prefer to put a handful of your citizens on the Moon?

Don't get me wrong; I'm not against going into space. I'm only a little annoyed that nobody's plans ever involve getting me to the Moon. It seems like even with the occasional incoming probe, the Moon is a whole lot safer than where I'm at.

Lessons Toward Better Living

1. If you had slaves to spare, would you let them go, or would you make them build a giant pyramid to be your mausoleum? If the latter, isn't it odd that you're always thinking in terms of your own mausoleum? You should think about what that says about you.

2. Suppose you understood that you could spend on the order of a hundred million dollars to reduce crime by putting criminals in a jail, or you could spend one-tenth that to reduce crime by an even greater amount by improving the conditions of the lives of people and funding programs that have been proven to work at turning youth away from crime. Knowing that, would you be wasting time arguing about where to put the jail?

3. Think of a way to end the sentence, "If they could put a man on the Moon, why can't they...?" that incorporates both apples and oranges. You may substitute brass balls for oranges, provided I don't catch you.