From: ksm@abb-sc.abb-sc.com (Ashley)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Space, the final frontier
Date: 11 Jan 93 18:14:45 GMT
Organization: Kaos Laboratories


In article <1993Jan8.162016.27929@radian.uucp>, markbr%radian@natinst.com (markbr) writes...
> 

(..........clip/snip.......)

Mark - 

	I wouldn't argue with your astute observations regarding the drive of 
our research industries. You are right that it is driven by consemerism and 
disposable technology and packaging is at the center of it. However there have 
been many refrences here to renewable resourse technology as "stop-gap" until 
mining the moon or asteroids or whatever gives us new resourses. This is what I 
object to. New resourses get used up too and what I see is a need for a mental 
evolutionary step by mankind. 


	I don't consider myself some kind of backwoods yokel for not wanting to 
leave the earth and I find that kind of attitude towards people who don't dream 
about walking on the moon very silly. I respect you enough to reply though 
Mark, so I am doing so. Earth chauvanist? The term makes me laugh, but yeah, 
this is the best planet I know about, at least the one that is the most 
friendly to me. She is also the Goddess, or an aspect of her, to me. Other 
worlds may be interesting, but not a place where I would want to live from what 
I know of them. Visit scenic Venus? Uh, no thank you, it's not really very 
friendly there. I'd love to visit Mars, see canyons that would make the grand 
canyon look like a dranage ditch, but live under a bubble there? No, I'd hate 
it. If you want to work towards living under that bubble, then that is your 
dream and I encourage you to follow it. But don't count me in. I really love 
the planet I'm on!


>   Yes, the summary helps. Does it help your case? No. What you write in
>your final paragraph does crystallize my attittude. You sound like someone
>who pictures themselves as an older aunt, patting the head-in-the-clouds,
>several-cards-short-off-a-deck 12-year-old on the head, saying those are
>lovely stories, and thinking, "too bad he's so dumb/crazy". I will point
>out that you seem to have a problem with anything to do with space: from
>science fiction, to fans, believers in space, to actual space development.
>You have yet to show *any* acceptance of any validity of our ideas.

	What ideas would you like me to accept? The reailgun expert I spoke to 
at Rockwell said anything other than very sold, low-tech objects would be 
crushed or damaged. That's why rail-guns are thought of primarily as weapons, 
not launch systems. Should I believe you over him? I don't think I should. Your 
reaction to the possible age of this individual causing him to not be able to 
think of new possibilities is very ageist. Nonetheless, I'll play devil's 
advovate and let you know he is in his thirties or fourties. I think that kills 
your argument for age limiting vision in this case.

	In short, I'll believe the people who are working on these projects, 
before I believe the people who read and speculate about them.

	You do have a point that I am not fond of the bulk of Sci-fi/Fantasy 
fandom. I stand by my words on that, in my experience, the mass of the genre 
is crap, the mass of the fans are idiots. There is a 10% group that is not 
lost in their fantasies. These people I enjoy talking to and have friends 
amongst. The rest I try to have nothing to do with. 

	By the way the group I complained about several months back have 
self destructed, but not before tresspassing on private land and destroying 
a freind's medicine circle to send one of their own memebrs to "rengal"(?!?). 
	One of the things that had prompted me to post at that time was seeing 
some idiot grab a Priestess's athame from her iduring circle and scream at her 
that if he had not done so she would have opened a portal to Cthulu. 
	Do you still fell I need to consider these people rational pagans? I 
think their fantasiy lives are out of control and see them as a threat to 
paganism. If a group like this where to represent us to a governing offical, 
we could get our legal recogniton as a religion stripped by someone who wanted 
an excuse to do so. I'm not acting as a older aunt, I am concerned about 
issues like this and I screen the people I allow into my circle carfully to 
prevent anyone like this from ever practicing with me. I see the way they act 
and can only imagine the way they would apply the techniques we practice to 
their lives. Eghad! I would never share with them.


>Tell me, have you ever had a long-distance relationship? (...snip...)

	I understand your desire to go there yourself. I'm sorry that science 
does not seem to be far enough along for you, but reality sets in and so far, 
we haven't beaten a trail to the worlds you dream of. You speak in pretty 
words, but science has never shown a tendancy to be seduced by words.

>Perhaps, to you, they are coyote songs, a dog howling at the moon;
>to me, you have your head in the clods. If the Goddess is at all, she is
>in the sky as well as the Earth. To deny one is to deny both.  I will 
>accept both, instead.

	I would listen if I thought you where singing a Coyote song, but 
unfortunately, you are not. This isn't Snake's transforming wisdom, or even 
Lizard's (*not* A.Lizard!) sage advice. It is more like Raccoon, out on a 
branch, gathering nuts, and day-dreaming of being a bird. Tonight when Raccoon 
dreams there will be a new bird in the sky, let us hope he lands before Raccoon 
wakes up!
	I could post a story of Coyote, who has danced with the moon too, but 
that would be just too much.

	I'm probably speaking in toungues to you, but maybe you understand my 
point of view better. I don't think we will ever agree on this, so I will post 
no more about it.

			- Ashley