Published Los Angeles Times, Letters to the Editor, July 26, 2013
John F. Kennedy
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?
Robert Kennedy
A real Moon mission is the rising tide that lifts all hopes.
Mark Goulston
Why is a Moon mission important? And why is it that it may be the only thing to break a deadlock between highly transactional parties that may talk "win, win" but only act in a "zero sum" fashion?
The reason people become so entrenched and intransigent in their positions is that their position or in actuality their POV is that whatever they view as right is the only answer and all other answers but theirs are not only wrong, but are a threat to the their POV and the way their thinking, feeling and action brains and minds line up.
If you're a hammer, the world's a nail. If you're a rigid and often obsessive compulisive person, the world is not just a nail, but anything other than a nail is an enemy bent on your destruction. That is why in another blog I explained that: "Resistance N'existe Pas."
What a Moon mission does is have the possibility of creating a vision so grand that when you look out at it, the possibility of being part of something historic to mankind causes all but the "dyed in the wool" selfish and petty people to be willing to not only drop the way their thinking, feeling and acting brains and minds line up, but of the way these parts of their mind are even connected to each other in order to figuratively and literally reach for the stars.
However, people that need to be in control at all times will have difficulty letting go of the way their thinking, feeling and acting brains and minds line up, because as soon as there is wiggle room in the way their brain is connected to itself they begin to feel "unglued" or "unhinged" or "wigged out" and the anxiety is unbearable.
The unwillingness and perhaps even inability for people to let go of their rigid and constricting POV's to "reach for the stars" was well reflected in one of my favorite stories of the primitive native that visited Manhattan and who was asked by his guide, "What do you think of Manhattan?" to which the native replied, "They don't see the sky."
Maybe he wasn't so primitive after all.