Mars and Africa

Originally intended as a letter to the President, written on November
1, 2005, this has been held on to since then; in part, because the
current president is in a terminal lame duck condition. It is being
posted here instead, as an open letter directed to a general audience,
though still addressing him.

----------------

Mars and Africa
http://federation.g3z.com/FedSeries/...ricaLetter.htm

Dear President Bush,

In 1965, the term Future Shock was coined by Toffler, who eventually
came out with a book by the same name in 1970. The major theme, of a
future arriving so fast as to drive many into a terminal state of
neurotic overstimulation, was the focal point of its chapter, "The
Limits of Adaptibility" on overstimulation.

However... few people are aware that tucked away at the end of Future
Shock, nestled away as a footnote, is a very long addendum on the exact
opposite problem - understimulation.

In it, Toffler made a very important point which has gone by unnoticed
and (apparently) forgotten over the years even by himself: the effect
of going in either direction outside of one's ideal adaptive range,
whether it be over- or under-, is pretty much the same.
Understimulation can, too, lead to a neurotic condition, with symptoms
that are very familiar to anyone who's been around to see 9/11.

This is a problem which can occur on both the individual level or at
the level of an entire society. Anthropologists know it as the Rapa Nui
Syndrome or Easter Island Syndrome (Rapa Nui being the native name for
Easter Island).

What would happen if an entire civilization were to become permanently
stranded on an island? Whereas, in tradition, the female of the species
has always had the birthright of being the deliverers of new life into
this world, males have traditionally been called on to follow and claim
another birthright: that of being the innovators, risk-takers,
explorers - the carriers of the torch that lights beneath the spirit
of enterprise. This is the frame of mind that espouses the creed:
better to try and fail, than to sit around, playing it safe for the
sake of trying to prevent the inevitable outcome of life.

In a civilization locked away in the prison of permanent confinement,
this drive is thwarted. But one way or another, it will find expression
and it must manifest itself in some fashion, regardless of the
consequences for good- or ill- fortune of its having done so.

The name of the syndrome recalls the situation that actually took place
on Easter Island when the natives cut down the last trees, thereby
stranding themselves permanently on the island. What had started out as
a literate people, the farthest reaches of an enterprising race that
had colonized the Pacific Ocean and had reached all the way from
Madagascar off the coast of Africa, to Easter Island, not far from
South America, rapidly degenerated into a society fraught with rape,
cannibalism, fratricide, terrorism, extremist cults, and so on. By the
time Spanish or Latin American colonists returned for another visit to
the island, there was little more left than a rabble of illiterate
savages. The written script, to this day, remains undeciphered and the
words spoken by them had fallen into the mute oblivion of a dead
civilization.

This is the effect of understimulation, and it hits males particularly
hard in virtue of the greater need for them to express their
birthright, though it ultimately affects everyone, both male and
female.

An instance of the Easter Island Syndrome, in fact, struck the metro
area of Milwaukee during the spring and summer of 2005; and possibly
other areas throughout the nation - not to mention throughout the
world: even as I write this, the outcroppings of the same syndrome are
manifesting throughout France. The spike in murder rates around
Milwaukee, this time around, was not the heat, nor drugs or gangs, but
simply anger: people looking at each other the wrong way, simple
arguments blaring up into murderous hostility.

What few people realise in their parochial and topical outlook is that
these occurrences are not the random spikes of local communities, or
occurrences related to the latest pet-issues of the day on either the
Left or the Right.

Since the end of the Age of Exploration - a time that can be marked
by the conquest of the polar regions in the 1920's - the suicide
rate ratio for males vs. females has skyrocketed in the United States,
going from 3:2 to 5:1, at present. In every single nation on this
planet (possibly except China), wherever suicide rates are reported in
substantial numbers, it is seen to be an undertaking carried out mostly
by males. In some parts of the world (notably the ex-USSR) the ratio
well over the 10:1 ratio of the US. The rates, overall, have risen
substantially since the middle of the previous century to the point
that the WHO has now made a major issue out of it. It is, in fact, now
one of the leading causes of death amongst the world's youth -
particularly, young men.

This is, in fact, nothing less than the early outcropping of what would
be expected from the emergence of a worldwide Rapa Nui Syndrome.

Throughout the world, it is as if the males of the species have come to
progressively lose their direction. Colleges and Universities,
worldwide, have become female-majority in their student population.
Even in Saudi Arabia - traditionally one of the most patriarchal
nations on Earth, with even one of the highest male/female ratios in
its general population - it's up to around 60% female. In the Gulf
States, where the male/female ratio in the general population is even
more extreme (as high as 2:1), the ratio for college students has swung
more extremely the opposite way - as high as 70%-75% female. In
Mongolia, it's up to 70% female, the US Virgin Islands, 70-75%. All
throughout the developed world, college student populations have risen
to 55%-60% female (with only a few exceptions, like Germany); in parts
of Southern Africa, likewise. In South America, the students even at
the high school level have gone female-majority in many places;
likewise for the student population at the college and university
level. Even in Iran, this is the case, as well as in Libya now.

The discrepancy even exists in the 3rd World, with sharp contrast
between the older world, still set in the rural regions of Ethiopia,
for instance, where the majority of school dropouts are still girls;
versus the newer world, exemplified by the urban regions of Ethiopia,
where it's the boys dropping out in larger numbers.

In the world of the professions, the same development has begun to take
root. Here, too, as men appear to be losing their direction; women have
had to take up the slack to fill in the vacuum. One can see it readily,
for instance, on television at news time, with the TV news sector
shifting from majority male to majority female, in recent times. As of
the last few years, economists have become female majority;
psychologists had already crossed over 50-50 a few decades ago;
accountants, actuaries, marketers, human resources have gone to female
majority. The managerial sector, in the US, has crossed over the 50-50
mark in 2004, and is now a majority female occupation. Enrollment in
public policy schools, law schools, med schools have tipped over to
female majority this decade. The professional sector, throughout the
developed world, has gone as high as 60% female (and nearing 70% female
in the ex-USSR).

The progressive loss of direction, the increase in suicidal behaviors,
in the incidence of other expressions of neanderthal impulses - not
the least being the medieval backlash movements in the most affected
parts of the world, such as the Middle East ... these are all
outcroppings of the growing phenomenon of the worldwide Easter Island
Syndrome.

What lies under all this speaks directly to the fundamental malaise of
the world unique to this time: the world is suffering a serious case of
the cabin fever of the Easter Island Syndrome. It is too crowded, too
cooped up, like a civilization on a stranded island. It is too
self-absorbed, too obsessed with the petty grievances of the day, the
very obsession which only serves to perpetuate the condition, itself.

One only need look at the history of China from the 14th Century (Ming
Dynasty) on to the 20th Century to see what happens to a great
civilization that falls into unremitting self-absorption., During that
time it evolved from being the premier power on Earth (even with rocket
technology and the potential to have discovered the New World before
Europe) into little more than a venue where foreign armies from dozens
of nations could freely parade around in its largest cities by
September of 1900. In that span of time, it went from being top dog to
being everybody else's bitch.

All the energy that would have gone into an outward drive and focus
ended up being thwarted by the rise of xenophobic isolationism and in
that period of time, as it stagnated in a perpetuation of its status
quo, the rest of the world passed it by.

This time, the deadline that the world faces, it faces together and
there will be no outside force to supersede its stagnation, no outside
agency to rescue it. The world is a circle of guillotines, a major
power locked in each, holding a cable that keeps aloft the blade of the
guillotine of the neighbor to the right. The first to let go shall be
the last to witness the full truth of the saying that what goes around
comes around.

Providence has called on you to bring forth a new vision of the world.
But, you have not yet seen the full extent of the panoramic vista that
lies before you, in this vision, except in heretofore disjoint
fragments. It is the full picture accompanying this vision that I am
about to lay out before you here.

Yes, Africa is central to this calling, as you have sensed. And, yes,
Mars is central to this calling, as you have attempted to express. The
connection between the two, which has so far eluded you, however, is
what is central to the vision, itself. The biggest impediment to the
proposition of Mars is the here-and-now; yet that is the most salient
aspect of their connection!

Take a photograph of the Sahara Desert and one of Mars, and place them
together. As you do so, you will begin to understand the destiny that
lies before the human race. Like Mars, the Sahara was once a more
waterbourne climate and (in contrast to Mars) was, indeed, a
greenspace.

Each year, the desert grows, in recent years its sand storms reaching
all the way across the Mediterranean into Europe, and across the
Atlantic into the United States, itself.

A similar problem now also exists in China, with the Gobi Desert
advancing each year, and its sand storms now impinging on Beijing,
itself, and occasionally reaching all the way east into the United
States, even to the Great Lakes region. In California, the Salton Sea
and surrounding regions are suffering the same fate, putting the entire
region in danger; and the threat of another Dust Bowl, like that in the
1930's, looms large. The Aral Sea in the ex-USSR (or, more correctly,
what used to be the Aral Sea) has suffered under a misplaced effort by
the ex-Soviets to appropriate new greenspace in its surrounding
regions. As we draw from this disaster the lesson of how not to reclaim
greenspace, we now face a situation that has not only brought China,
Africa and the United States into the loop, but Russia and the rest of
the CIS, as well.

When Mars is brought up, it's only too common to hear the natural
retort: "what's the point of worrying about going there when we have
all these problems to take care of here?"

But - that's exactly the point!

What's the point of going to Mars, itself? The destiny of the human
race and its civilization must be to evolve to its next stage, now
imminently upon it, as a full-fledged spacefaring civilization
throughout the inner solar system with two worlds as home - one on
Earth, one on Mars. After the Civil War, laments could be heard about
how much the Public Debt had accrued as a result. From the perspective
of today, those concerns are laughably quaint with the US hundreds of
times larger and the debt of that time little more than pocket-change
of today. How much different, then, would the perspective be from the
vantage point of a vast cosmographic civilizations thousands of times
larger than the largest geographic economies of today, of our "massive
Debt", which will likewise be laughed off as little more than
pocket-change of concern only to the quaint rubes comprising the
Earthlubbing folk of the present era? This is what makes the
self-absorbed obsession of today so dangerous. Has the lesson of China,
and its stagnation into permanent self-obsession 1300-1900 not been
learned sufficiently well to avoid repeating the folly once more?

But, the here-and-now is the salient aspect of the connection between
Mars and the African continent; and of the picture this connection
bespeaks. For, if a civilization that would purport to transform an
entire planet into a form rendered suitable for habitation cannot even
render the desolate regions of its own planet likewise suitable, then
it might as well just throw in the towel and forget about ever going
off-world.

And having done so: then we're back to the Easter Island Syndrome,
ultimately at root of the destructive loss of focus of half of the
human race. At that point, then, it's only a matter of time before
it, too, falls into the mute oblivion of yet another dead world.

The stars and planets may always be there, but there is a deadline to
Destiny.

Unless the world of the present wants to become witness to the
obsessive self-absorption, thwarted ambition, the Easter Island
Syndrome of cabin fever understimulation and all of its consequences,
then it must reclaim its outward focus: starting here, at home, in the
deserts of this world.

The Sahara Desert, you see, is nothing less than the natural proving
ground for the transformation and colonization of an entire planet.
Before one would seek to transform an entire world, it is only natural
that attention should be placed on rescuing the most desolate parts of
this world. The technologies developed and used to restore greenspace
in this world shall then become the embryonic precursor of the more
advanced technology required in the transformation of Mars, itself.


This is the connection of Africa and Mars.

The timeliness of the need to bring about a virtual Second Agricultural
Revolution that would be needed to engender this result, to effect
restoration of the greenspace on this Earth is beyond dispute. In
addition to the problem of desertification, there is the related
problem of global warming - a cause for concern not just for those on
the Left, but increasingly for those in the community of the
evangelical Right who are now voicing concern over the lasting
well-being of "God's Green Earth". Quite possibly, this change is
related to the recent increase in the number and intensity of storms in
recent years. This includes not just the major disasters, Katrina,
Wilma, etc., that have dominated the news, but lesser-known incidents,
such as the anomalous appearance of a virtual hurricane, powered by and
coming off the cusp of a huge temperature gradient, in the mid-section
of the US, the winds in the Milwaukee area getting up to 80 MPH or more
just days before Ophelia; or monster tornado storms, like the 23
simultaneous tornadoes that barely missed the Milwaukee metro area just
before Katrina struck New Orleans, and even as I write this: the
biggest tornado in 30 years striking the middle of Indiana in the
middle of the Autumn half way to winter.


What better way to break the backs of this overall syndrome than by the
brute force measure of systematically reclaiming new greenspace where
desert sands now lie? As people fret over the prospect of a "Green
Tide" of fundamentalism sweeping the Islamic world, let the true Green
Tide come to be known as that which sweeps across the desert sands
bringing forth once again new life and prosperity even as malcontents
and cynics bemoan the "evil imperialist West". As environmentalists
hash out the vagaries of such audacity as that of reclaiming an entire
desert; while they continue to whine about the need to cut back on
automobile emissions, forge ahead and cut the Gordion Knot. For in
times to follow, they will long commemorate and sing the deeds
accomplished in this era -
In a time when Venus eclipsed Mars, a great yearning had awaken to
reach the stars.
A Green Tide swept over the lands, where there was nothing but desert
sands.


This is a new cause for the African Union, which seeks both to resolve
its desertification problem and to consummate a new space agency. It is
a legacy that its most vocal leaders and founders in Africa are in
search for as they reach the end of their lives. What could be more
fitting for the inaugural mission of a new African Space Agency than
that of establishing a new proving grounds in the desert? To establish
a large-scale mission, in collaboration with China, Europe, Russia and
the United States, to reclaim Africa; and to turn what is now the
basketcase of the world into a new breadbasket for the world?

This requires major innovations in water purification technologies, a
field Israel has become expertised in (as well as urban areas, like
Milwaukee, which also hosts a horticultural center under a system of
domes which could readily be converted into one of many research
centers or proving grounds for new agricultural or horticultural
technologies). It requires a bona fide revolution in agriculture, with
the inauguration of agricultural robotics (a field in major growth at
present), extraterrestial agriculture (a process undergoing development
in places like Texas A&M and Iowa State). Why strive for anything less
than novel or advanced technologies that, for instance, could allow one
to match and even exceed the amazing feat of those who live at the base
of Mount Kilomonjaro who, with their population density approaching
that of an American suburb and without the need even for tilling, still
manage to maintain life in a forest and grow as many as 100 separate
crops simultaneously in a area as small as an acre at a time?

And yet, even this miracle has a deadline - global warming has
virtually eliminated the snowcap atop Kilomonjaro, and it too will
suffer a fate not unlike that of the Sahara or the Sahel.

When people ask "what good is focus on Mars when we have all these
problems in the world?", answer by correcting the question "what good
is it not to focus on Mars, which the resolution of all these problems
provides the ideal proving grounds for; and whose very occurrence in
this particular time in history seems to be no less than the bestowment
of a challenge placed before us by an ever-watchful Providence as the
test of our fitness to bear the larger burden of establishing a new
world on a new home? I may not live to see us get there, but as God is
my witness, I will lead the way on the first steps of the journey that
will get us there."

The Easter Island Syndrome, the growing problems with the climate
change and the desertification of this world and the loss of its
greenspace, and the opportunity that awaits the human race on a planet
whose very history mimicks that of the growing deserts of the world -
these all point in the same direction to the same futu a new world
on Mars, and a vast, new cosmographic civilization spanning the inner
solar system.


We have not yet looked up to the True Horizon.

In the past 35 years, the world has advanced from the small step of
reaching the moon to the vaunted heights of near Earth orbit.
Procastination is the buzzword of an outmoded civilization, not an
enterprising people.

What is the point of endlessly delaying the Future, when the very
process of acting on it is one and the same as that of breaking the
back, by brute force, of the big problems afflicting the world of the
present? This is the Future already. It's the 21st Century, for
God's sake! We are supposed to have space stations in orbit, ships
going out to Jupiter, bases on the Moon and flying automobiles by now!
We're supposed to be doing all these things right now, not coddling
to Earthlubbers still stuck in the 20th Century "putting off" these
things until the "next century" as if the 21st Century were still the
future.

If this world continues to thwart the drive of its male half, even with
recess and dodge ball taken away and the young "brutes" drugged up to
keep them from acting on their natural impulses; if it chooses to
remain cooped up in a more-and-more crowded Easter Island prison, then
these natural drives that have always found expression in the times of
the past when a terra incognita Horizon had always existed, will turn
inward in this day and age of the Lost Horizon, and the effects will be
utterly destructive. The time bomb is set - the two most populous
nations on Earth, India and China, have had male/female birth ratios
shooting through the roof at 110/100 or over for a decade now. By 2010,
these males will be grown and the world had better have something more
going on in it than the belly-button lint-picking it seems obsessed
with today, by the time that year arrives. For, no less than was the
case on Easter Island, you can count on it that by the end of the next
decade the final outcome will see these words and all others fall into
the mute oblivion of yet another dead world. An entire gender will come
to perceive itself as useless baggage, living in the world that has
stolen their God-given birthright, and they will exact a toll of
unimaginable vengeance for this indignity, and either bring down the
world with it or go extinct.

In this moment of change and uncertainty in the midst of your second
term, you are seeking to establish a new direction, and to lay forth a
new legacy going beyond your administration and even your life. It is a
cause that is common not just to the US, Russia, China, Africa, India
and Europe, but even to those who are counted presently as amongst the
worst enemies of the West. Even the most extreme Islamist pines for a
world green with gardens and oases covering what now is only desert.
Steal the thunder and ideal, proclaiming the true meaning of the Green
Tide and of the green flag of the nation of Islam. Providence is
calling on you to complete the vision by bringing together the two
pieces that you have kept separate up to now: Mars and Africa.


With, or without you, it will be, and it must be. I have foreseen it:

An international Space program will come into being that will have the
ambitious goal of terraforming Mars. Preliminary to this will be a
trial run in which the Sahara will be 'terraformed'. This latter
event will lead to renewed prosperity in the African continent.
- 1991 November 11, news://sci.skeptic


Thank you for your time,
Mark Hopkins

http://federation.g3z.com