Cultures that do not embrace space travel, are they "flawed" or "doomed"?

a reply to: NthOther

So what?

Let the stayers stay, and the goers go.

If the stayers are right, there is nothing out there anyway, and if they are wrong -- it belongs to whomever is strong enough to take it.

Sith Empire for life, yo.

a reply to: FlyingFox

Cultures that do not embrace space travel, are they "flawed" or "doomed"?

It seems many of these cultures embrace other more Astral-Ethereal forms of travel, perhaps they establish a link after all un fathomed...

A link that when there are possible e.l event they call forth the space - cosmic - dimensional brethren that come and assist them, who understand that they are part of NATURAL EA*RTH as they still rely primarily on their natural surroundings to thrive and survive without causing mass amounts of soil movements and builds that harm the wild life coexisting with them.

To 1 they are closer connected with their Vibrations in sync with EA*RTH vibrations to the beyond more then considered...

a reply to: FlyingFox

They are both " Flawed and Doomed"!

For the simple reason that if you do not get of your home planet .. then in time you are ultimately doomed when your star either explodes or dies.

Either way ... your home can no longer support life.

a reply to: FlyingFox


Pretty cool thought experiment. I would say that the technology to escape Earth's gravity was not available. Some have postulated that ancient civilizations had access to so called "stargates". What happened to them and how were they built? Were they just myths?
The tradition as you say, will be established eventually. Once we get our collective ignorance out of our asses.
We have squandered much since the days of the Apollo program for the sake of creating war economies. I'm always in disbelief that we had a period of sending people to the Moon every six months on average, then we stopped. Yes, we have the ISS, but we should have colonized Mars 20 years ago.
I always get the feeling that we live in screwed-up timeline. Human civilization should have already have taken a foot-hold on other worlds.

Considering the absolute infancy of our space program in regards to "conquering" space and self-sustaining colonies, time-wise we're not really much closer now than when witches were burned at the stake.

The technology hasn't matured much, in a sense. We can say we're still in a Newtonian period, for sure. With that as a given, that older cultures also had an incomplete grasp of the technology, the *concept* is absent. It most every example, it's always Themvisiting Us. This almost gives weight to the idea that we were visited.

I may have initially misspoken on the idea of "colonizing" space. A more apt model would be the idea of visitingspace, to whatever ends...

originally posted by: FlyingFox
a reply to: Kandinsky

What I'm trying to say is that the ancients didn't have alloys, steel, glass, books or even the fuel required to lift a heavy object into space.

Yes, this problem is absolutely known, to us, in hindsight. But old civilizations were also very naive. Given the proper inspiration, why wouldn't they think it possible? Spaceships could be made of mud, for all they knew.

In your OP you state:

It's a well-shared notion to the ancients that the stars represent other worlds.

The reason it never occurred to them (if you mean actual ancient cultures) is that what you state above is false for these cultures.

That is, the idea that ancients thought of the stars as other worlds is certainly well shared.
But it is utterly false to anyone that knows anything about ancient cultures.

All they knew was that there are sparkly things up in the night sky and that most of them move in the same way but a handful do not.

Harte

a reply to: FlyingFox

From many ancient cultures 'getting to space' as a concept is explored in metaphorical ways, such as 'ascending to heaven', the influence of angels, the journey of the soul, nirvana etc. it is all there just encapsulated in language that varies from that of science.

Many ancient cultures used the stars as a means of navigation and from detailed observations, early astronomy was formed, such as seen in ancient buildings of astrological alignment such as the Great Pyramid etc.

It seems some cultures are more naturally inclined to philosophical and cerebral musings and pursuits than others, which is perhaps caused by various factors such as geography, migration, diet, culture, genetics etc and perhaps other less obvious factors such as extra terrestrial interaction, being in tune with certain harmonic frequencies etc.

Perhaps it's all part of a great plan, an experiment or just the natural way of diversity.

For the layman, the Heavens were reserved for the Gods.

Maybe this is the root of why space travel wasn't considered a human endeavor.

All they knew was that there are sparkly things up in the night sky and that most of them move in the same way but a handful do not.

Harte

I think this is most likely the correct answer to your question OP. Most cultures, as far as we know, didn't even consider that the stars could be viable inhabitable locations for humans and this assumption about them, if true, is obviously correct. They may have had some notion that the stars were just like the sun only further away and therefore too hot to consider living on but that is just speculation on my part. How many were aware that those specs of light could also have planets orbiting around them and that somewhere a planet like ours might exist? I'd wager zero, but others here have more knowledge and experience about ancient cultures than I do.

In regard to the subject: Recently I listened to a lot of Randall Carlson interviews and his focus on global cataclysms got me thinking about humans and our potential. If the Earth has suffered, due to extraterrestrial impacts, massive megafauna extinction events many times over, then humans are the first living thing the Earth has produced that actually have the capacity to do anything about it. Working on an assumption that the Earth is capable of an agenda or is conscious, then humans, in all our blundering biodiverdity-destroying industrialism, are worth the growing pains involved in evolving to a technological position to protect the Earth's complex living systems and therefore allow the evolution and complexification of life on Earth to continue unimpeded.

I understand there is a big IF in there, but it is just a thought I had and one of the few reasons I think interstellar travel is actually important to us. The other reasons I've read that argue humans leaving Earth as being "our birthright" or "obvious" leave me less impressed.

1. The Earth is overpopulated. (Not really. The dense habitation of cities we live in gives the impression of overpopulation but the real problem is how these cities are maintained. Only in an unsustainable culture living out of balance with its ecosystem should we consider our current footprint as bordering on excessive as there is still plenty of land/life left.)
2. Earth's resources are finite. (see above)
3. The sun will burn out or expand beyond Earth's orbit. (we've got time)

And if anyone thinks it's more difficult to shift to a more sustainable culture than it is to colonize another planet, similar to Earth or not, then I recommend evaluating your subconscious for any impressions a few generations of Star Trek and techonophilia have placed on it. We have zero examples of humans colonizing other planets and many, many more of cultures and people who lived in balance with the Earth and believed that there was plenty here for everyone given the correct cyclical management of resources/energy.

Who is more advanced, the man who builds a craft to send his body into space and visit distant worlds or the man who has mastery over his mind who can sit in deep meditation and send his mind to distant worlds and other realms?

originally posted by: rowanflame
Who is more advanced, the man who builds a craft to send his body into space and visit distant worlds or the man who has mastery over his mind who can sit in deep meditation and send his mind to distant worlds and other realms?

Neither.

It's the man who sells insurance to both of those.

Harte

We still are not traveling to other planets, we only set foot on the moon and that by itself did nothing good really, I mean it's a rock and when putting a flag there we went back to our own rock.
The change we ever will travel to livable planets are very very small (we didn't even founded 1), bigger change we are just stuck here.
Only the last few hundreds years we made big advancements (tech wise) but on the same time the planet is getting in a poor state, we might as well go back to the dark ages and start over again on this planet with the few remaining. For now that seems to be the path..

a reply to: SlickMcFavorite

This is a well-thought out response, and I agree.
Everyone likes hyping doomsday talk, but we will likely be able to live on Earth for the foreseeable future.

Personally, I hope we engaged in space travel, partially to escape the inevitable death of our star (or extinction level event, which is theoretically possible but IMHO unlikely for the human race at this point) but mostly because I think it'd be really fun.

originally posted by: FlyingFox

It's a well-shared notion to the ancients that the stars represent other worlds. Why was traveling to them a lost notion?

Odd, I came across this quote earlier today. Seemed relevant to your post.

from xkcd: "The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space — each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."

a reply to: ByteChanger

I've got to give you a star, just for quoting xkcd.

My take on any planetary colonization is, if sentient beings inhabit those planets they are off limits for colonization, I do agree with the sentiment that eventually for our own survival as a species we may need to be at least a two star or two planet species,this may off course come in conflict with beings that are not at present self conscious but may be so in the future as our own planetary history informed us. but if that Philae comet do indeed harbor life it's a step closer to the panspermia theory which in our case would be a natural thing to want to spread our form of it elsewhere.

The question is ass-backwards.
What chance do we have of surviving on alien worlds when we can't do it on our own planet?
How long would that fiasco last - until the food or fuel ran out?
Seriously, if we can't manage living here what business do we have even thinking about trying elsewhere?
When we have mastered living on Earth maybe after thousand years or so we should think about it.

They thought they were going to space when they died to meet God?

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
The question is ass-backwards.
What chance do we have of surviving on alien worlds when we can't do it on our own planet?
How long would that fiasco last - until the food or fuel ran out?
Seriously, if we can't manage living here what business do we have even thinking about trying elsewhere?
We would spend a fortune just to throw some people out in space who will not be able to create a self-sustaining habitat anywhere else.

I think we can do all of the above today, it's really just a matter of political will right now we are hobbled by our greed and avarice.