A Message to the Cosmos

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)

Honestly? It's the same reason that the grandchildren of self made millionaires tend to be spoiled brats.

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."
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I think, that the first generation immigrants tend to believe in the idea that you just have to give your best, and you can socially and economically make it to wherever you want (to become "rich"). The second generation notices, that dad an mom work their a***s off to get somewhere, but fail (due to racism or other inequality that occurs). The second generation therefore is less motivated in working hard (it's not leading to the goal imagined) AND tell their kids that working doesn't pay off (or/and get into drugs etc. thus being a negative role-model for their kids - the third generation). The boredom (and sense of inequality/latent racism) resulting from a life of less motivation leads to drug abuse and delinquency (and less empathy to the natives).
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I would have liked to have seen comparable research done in other countries with substantial immigrant populations, and the results compared with these studies. Only then can you start legitimately raising the possibility of the "corrupting" influence of America, as opposed to the "corrupting" influence of being damn human a la Laston's trenchant analysis. (And I speak as not only first-generation, but the only one in my entire family tree to be born in the USA.)
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I find I am uncomfortable with the idea that either immigrants disrupt the US or the US 'corrupts' immigrants. The moving of people across government(s)-defined boarders has been a natural practice of the human condition since borders were created.

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.
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@Laston: The 3 Generation Rule is quite real, especially in Corporations, Founders, Sons of Founders, etc.

-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.
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Another article trying to make America seem like a horrible place.

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.
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Sounds to me like a case of regression to the mean. First-generation immigrants are those with enough "get up and go" to make dramatic changes in their life in the hope of improving their lot. But, as in any situation where you have a mix of heredity and randomness, the children will tend to be more average than their parents were. A simple example of this is rolling a bunch of dice (which have no 'heredity' from roll to roll), selecting all those "exceptional" ones that rolled sixes, and seeing how they do on a re-roll.
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Hard work is an archaic American virtue. But not so for other nations. The immigrants I have known tend to begin a bit more "miserly". They will have 3 families living under a single roof, and all working at the same business.

Habituation. We habituate and slacken on our morals and habits when the environment is so.
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I don't have the time to read another study. Do both of these studies focus on Latino immigrants, or just the second one? Cultural differences could affect the results.
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