Buzz Aldrin was at Stonehenge on Sunday and “decided to send a message to the cosmos,” as he put it in his Tweet. If you can’t read the full slogan on his t-shirt, see the enlarged version here. The comments at reddit are mostly derails, but this one stood out:
Imagine, in full view of the world, you take a step onto a new frontier. Your foot presses down upon a celestial canvas that has been a source of folklore, myth and religious speculation for millennia. You are progress incarnate and after your time in the limelight you are eager to see your progress become the stepping stone for even greater accomplishments.
You wait a while and you see progress here and there. More discoveries are made about the nature of our universe. Machinery is sent to distant masses to search for signs of life. But there isn't any progress like what you imagined the first moment that your foot imprinted upon that fine lunar soil.
You're aging now. You're getting older and that progress still hasn't been made. You wonder what landing on the moon really accomplished if it wasn't a stepping stone for even greater things, but then you hear whisperings of plans to colonize Mars. This is what you've been waiting for. This is the next step. This is the fulfillment of your expectations and you yearn to see it.
A sentence rises from the depths of your desire and escapes your lips, "Get your ass to Mars."
If only they would do it in time.
Aldrin is actively pushing for NASA to send astronauts to Mars, and even wrote a book about it.
(Image credit: James O.Davies)
Comments (0)
The first generation is very aware of where they came from, and what they must do to succeed.
The second generation still hears the daily stories from their parents, but are now living in relative luxury and can relax a bit.
The third generation knows no other life, and have no idea of the suffering their ancestors went through to give them what they now take for granted. They hear the stories from their grandparents with skepticism.
TLDR: "Kids these days, they just don't know what they got. Now get off my lawn."
In saying that, the article doesn't seem to talk much about acculturative stress. These children are not simply 'becoming American'. They are dealing with the psychological stress of incorporating two identities into one child, the identity expected at home, and the identity expected at school (or the more "Americanized" identity).
For 2nd and 3rd generation children, they are now legally Americans (as they were born in the States) but are still struggling with being bi-cultural. Quite literally, bi-cultural children must learn twice as much as their established counter parts. Often that includes two languages and two sets of expected social time tables (education, marriage, children, ect). Of course, two sets is the simplest scenario. Then, these children must learn (all on their own) how to balance the two.
While building awareness about these children's struggles is important (as many were either transported as infants/toddlers or born here) we must be sensitive to their experiences as uniquely defined by their bi-cultural status.
-Usually by/after 3g, they've pissed it away because they're not visionaries anymore, they're Useless Aristocrats who know how to do Nothing but spend money.
Most immigrants who come here legally enjoy life here and make a go of it. Their children end up spoiled, period. Their grandchildren, even more so. What is so surprising about that?
As to WHY they are spoiled, well, put it down to how upwardly mobile immigrants can be here and stop bashing America.
You won't find many countries in the world where people can come, work hard and so quikly carve out a decent life for their family.
Jealous? Get over it. That's life.
But don't try to make us feel ashamed of the freedom we have to move up.
Habituation. We habituate and slacken on our morals and habits when the environment is so.