My Tribute to the Commander

I meant to post this a few days ago and it slipped my mind so apologies for the late and brief tribute Commander!

So the legend that is Commander Hadfield has left the International Space Station. The man who brought us into orbit with him and shared so many wonderful glimpses of our beautiful Earth has returned to terra firma and he should be returning to a lot of gratitude from all of us. I personally was lucky enough to have my home county featured on one of his flyovers. Even more amazingly he got us without cloud. Something that led me to believe he photoshopped his image! This website is amazing.  Kudos to the people who mapped out his pictures into lovely drop down options. From what I can tell, via Dara O’Briain, it was this guy that mapped it out so a big thank you to him!

The Commander is one lucky man however. Even in this day and age he has bosses that evidently don’t have a clue about social media. Their employee was up in space tweeting, playing space sounds on Soundcloud and ‘Youtube-ing’ to his heart’s content! Did the man get any actual work done up there I wonder?! How many billions in working hours did he cost his employers? Actually, now that I think of it, I’m glad the Commander is back. Hopefully the next Commander of the International Space Station actually does some work up there and gets off the Twitterer and Facebuk or whatever they’re called. IT’S NOT A HOLIDAY CAMP SPACE PEOPLE.

On a more serious note, in the last number of years, we have seen the United States decimate its funding of NASA while its military budget is ever increasing: both are to the detriment of humanity. Not only is NASA’s core budget cut for sending shuttles to space, its outreach program is also being destroyed. Commander Hadfield should act as an inspiration to governments around the globe to quit both cuts to education and austerity measures and pump money into science and education. It should be noted the interest this man garnered from the Earth’s populace. Imagine a new age of cooperation among nations and a space race that was not about one country winning, but everyone. Just imagine the technologies that could be invented due to massive investment in new research and people. Look at the jump humanity took when NASA was receiving a mere 4% of the US’ Federal budget in the 1960’s. Sadly since then, NASA’s budget has continuously shrunk. It didn’t even receive half a percent of total Federal funds this year. That is criminal. I mean compare it to the funds the Energy Corporations receive. Massive, profit making, tax avoiding, Earth polluting, energy companies. The figures are terrible.

Upon landing (and at the time of writing) he had amassed 969,338 Twitter followers. Imagine if we could get more people in such wonderfully privileged positions to engage so wonderfully with the general populace. Give people proper role models in life with proper aspirational goals. You would hope that stories like this are true and that he does inspire more and more people to dream about space. That can only have a knock on effect in terms of funding and humanities evolution as a species.

Of course there can’t be many people who didn’t see or at least know about his amazing penultimate departure day serenade! David Bowie’s Space Oddity never looked so good and with over six million views – the world agrees! Can you imagine having written that song, how awesome it must have been to have it performed so fantastically by an actual astronaut?! Actual space footage to go with your words? It sent chills through me watching that video and listening to the words! The Commander has inspired us and governments should ride this wave of inspiration and drive ourselves on for a new scientific age.

I mean when you glimpse at a selection of his best photos it is truly awe inspiring to think of the possibilities for better understanding our planet and its wonders.

So for reminding me of just how amazing our home, Earth, is and just how lucky I am to have a chance at living on this planet, I humbly thank thee.

Is It Time To Go Small?

Size matters. Ask anyone and they’ll all have their own reasoning:

“I enjoy a larger size” says Mark.

Nadine disagrees: “A small one packs more punch. All you need is a shot of caffeine in the morning. That’s why I like an espresso.” Mark of course, is into his frothy latte so enjoys the ‘grande’ beverage offered by some.

Now what I’m going to write about is probably impossible to achieve in this day and age but what I hope to provoke is thinking! Think about the possibilities of downsizing society. My reasons for doing so can obviously be debated, and I may be taking the most extreme examples but I believe extreme is what works. There’s so much out there today that makes us say “oh. That’s terrible” and click to the next news story.

So here it goes.

I believe that a downsizing of society is necessary. I believe that we are proving ungovernable as sizable entities and I believe this is being shown by countries like Greece, Spain and even America. It is too hard to govern from one particular city, a vast country with so many differing political philosophies. I believe that it is easier to corrupt someone who is far from their electorate than someone who lives and works amoung their voters. I hope my following examples will help my cause of why I’m beginning to believe that less is more.

The nation state system we currently live in emerged after the Treaty of Westphalia. We had defined borders, ones which other states could not interfere in. All well and good until the transnational ‘person’ came to be: the corporation. The world we live in right now is being overly influenced by the power of the multinational corporation. Their size and their power are massive influences on so many lives. Most worryingly, their monetary influence in democracies is ever increasing. America is going to have the most expensively bought presidency this November. The figures being mentioned are just frightening and sickening. Not wanting to state the obvious, but when you invest millions and millions of  $’s, €’s or £’s in a parties or individuals campaign, then it’s expected they repay your ‘generosity’ by passing laws that benefit you, the donor.

But it seems to have come to a stage where the laws and bills passed, are nothing but a gigantic benefit to corporations and are eating away at our humanity. The mantra is now consistently ‘profit before anything’, be it humanity or the environment. And personally I find this very troublesome. Capitalism has taught a large section of humanity to care, not about each other, but about their ‘stuff’. People’s concerns now are about their property. While laws are passed that “don’t affect me” people don’t care. This apathy is allowing big business buy control so much of what affects us and what we do. People who want out of this society and want away from the corporate bought governments are finding that laws written to protect them, are not there for the people any more.

In regard to the environment, well it truly is frightening what corporations are doing. Bad news? Lets just buy silence. Artic is considered off limits for oil drilling? Let’s buy our way to that limit. Lets prove that everyone has a price. It’s hard not to write they’re proving that everyone is corruptible, but for the most part, people live in the here and now, for themselves. If someone offers them facilities that they previously didn’t have, they accept. No thought is given to the generations that we’re passing this earth to. It’s going to be in some state. There are some victories for the small guy, but they’re becoming so rare and localised that it’s disheartening for the society we live in. Look at some of the other battles that are on going and you realise the relentless push corporations engage in. They have the means to keep on fighting in the courts and as shown in this amazing documentary they are becoming less able to lose, if indeed they lose at all.

Smaller society could prove more difficult to buy as individual communities would need to be negotiated with. A government based in Dublin for example, couldn’t just sign away the rights to an oil field in Cork. Responsible governments like Norway’s for example, are increasingly difficult to elect. Lies are told to get people into power and so it exists until the next lying, sorry, election cycle. Look at what is possible with a government for the people. A solution where society as a whole benefits, and the people get a little bonus also. But how many countries firstly have the ability to stand up to corporations, backed up by the countries governments they’ve bought, or are brave enough to do so?

Now I know downsizing what we have is nigh impossible, but what I hope to show in this writing is that it is possible; small victories have been won but we need to want this change to last. By having smaller society, communities will be willing to fight for each other more. I think this would lead to a ‘decommercialising’ of our lives, but what we would lack in capitalist consumerism, we could enrich our humanity with. I’m not asking for a return to pre technological era, I think that technology could only improve the community experience. We are all, after all, one big worldly community. But I believe energy needs can be met locally with the improvements in solar energy, wind power and wave energy. My examples above of small victories, I believe more are possible in smaller society. Local, small victories make nice stories in a national press. Nice stories that are forgotten about a few months down the line by all those except those that fought.

We need to have more than symbolic victories which corporations simply show their cunning and patience, in order to win at all costs.

My argument is currently thin, it needs fleshing out, but these are just my formative thoughts!