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Yes, you read this correct reader. Within little time, the night-sky
will disappear. It is certain that, even today, space-flight and
orbitory occupation has become commercialized. One can buy the
services of spaceflight and rocketry firms in order to put things in
orbit around Earth. To put things in order is one thing, to put
things in orbit is quite another. Space is the latest addition to
the spheres of existence. First there was only land for Neandertal
man, then came the waters, the second sphere in roughly Homer's
time, a substantially bigger one. Soon, i.e. 2700 years later came
air, an even larger sphere, and now, there is a fourth added namely
space. The development of the use of these spheres seem to be on a
fixed pattern. After the merest experimentation, they become
military almost directly, and then follow the commerce and trade
application. Travel first, and advertisement hard upon it. Because
of the little suitability of the waters for advertising, the utter
suitability of air and space will be extra pronounced. So it is that
one can see airplanes in the sky trailing messages that mean nothing
to you but will purport to induce you to buy things you don't need,
visit places you don't want to go to, eat, and drink or smoke things
that are certainly not good for you. Now, with advertising in
general, a top-stupidity has emerged. It is the fact that ... the
customer himself pays for it, not the firm or the directing manager
but you, the buyer. Often, even, the law admits subtraction of the
cost of advertising from the tax, so that all taxpayers pay for it,
if not, it is footed by the bill in the price of the article or
service, so that the buyer pays for it (double). This, seeing the
fact that the other fellow does the same hence competition remains
on equal level, makes it possible to embrace the (stupid) principle
of shooting a fly with a ten-inch piece of artillery, in a broadside
of twelve guns. It is YOUR money! (Of course, you also pay for the
debts that others make, through tax subtraction and you are punished
for saving-up for later by tax). Waste, stupidity is rampant and
wholly logical because the tax payer or the customer, often both,
foot the bill. We therefore can observe engineers breaking their
heads in order to find silent air-flight, while the advertising
machines just 'must' make as much noise as possible. Hence the ugly
drone of numerous, noisy, air-engines in the summer sky (I could see
a full 15 in one go once). Commercial stupidity; and wholly
ridiculous if it wasn't that the costly fuel being wasted is in
reality our-, your-, fuel, your precious metals and raw materials
being worn and torn at your own cost as well. Is greater stupidity
thinkable than that you PAY for the wasting of your own riches, by
others, without protest?
But now space. This fourth sphere has passed the military initial
stage and has become commercialized. Soon, executives of trades will
want to shorten their wholly unnecessary air travels (at the
taxpayer's-, consumer's expense by tax subtraction) from 10 hours to
one hour, using space hops. The gain in time is justified by it
being the customer, YOU, who pays, and they will waste the extra
time and those of others by alternative absurdities. Directly after
this stage or consonant with it, comes advertising in space. It is
well to remember that those who decide these things have absolutely
no scruples and know that you are to foot the bill. It is therefore
very easy to estimate the further developments when there is no
world-government to stop the bastards. Already (1985) there are
serious and advanced plans and possibilities, enabling you to have
the remains of your dear ones, compressed into small metal tubes or
cubes which are later to be strewn out into orbit. This is a reality
or becomes so very soon. While air advertisement has to rely on
sound as well as on sight, it will very rapidly be realized that no
sound is needed for space advertising, only size. On clear nights
people will look up at the night-sky. It all will begin on a small
scale. Since it is very difficult to say to your friends 'there goes
granddad' when he is strewn about in small cubes, it must be
possible to put these remains in a huge inflatable mausoleum that
circles the Earth. Then you can see it! (Naturally, they will not
actually put your-, or anybody's- granddad in orbit but since you'll
never be able to check up on that, granddad will be flushed through
the toilet). After that, the richest religion, Christianity, will
pecuniate for a large cross to be sent up, advertising that 'Big
Brother is watching you'. With the development of still flimsier and
more reliable plastic sheets, it will become possible to produce
advertisements of the required kilometer size. Inflating such things
with a fraction of the atmospheric pressure is possible through a
relatively small pressure bottle. Soon, a sickle and star will
follow the Christian cross, and other chosen people symbols. Then
will appear a hammer and sickle, the stars 'n stripes, or a huge
ribbon with 'Democrazy' on it. In quick succession will follow an
Eiffel-tower revolving along its long axis, tooth-paste tubes,
tyres, chewing-gum tablets and medicines. There will be
washing-machines, vacuum-cleaners, sausages, Piat, Merceless,
Hitlercars, Polvo, etc. There will be Dafts and Craterpillors, large
cranes and small arms ammunition. A big, ball bearing 9 mm cartridge
may temporarily obscure a ball-bearing saying F. D. C. , sheets,
Light-bulbs, blankets, Electronic microscopes, and ball-point pens,
Oranges, hunting knives, computers, radios and Napkins follow one
another through the sky. All this, IS not in geostatic orbits
because the distance then, would require a size, well out of
proportion in order to be readable. Geostatic orbits would make it
possible to remain in the night-sky permanently (with corrections
for solar-wind drift). When not geostatic they can disturb radio-,
and radar investigation even during day times. On the other hand,
many will go right over the poles, giving the Icelanders and the
Laps, their full benefit. Benefit indeed, MY goodness! Soon the
level of light in the night sky, will exceed that of the full moon
by 500 or 1000 times. This means the end of street lighting and
finally, cars will no longer be fitted out with head-lamps.
In former times, there could be primitive peoples, untouched (i.e.
unspoiled) by man or missionary. They would have developed new gods
and religions because they began to see strange gods in the day and
the night, things that their forefathers had never told them about.
Due to our jet-age, they would see blinking lights in the night, and
horribly straight creeping clouds in the day sky. They became a good
excuse to sacrifice more of their unwanted people to these gods.
Wives had to learn fast, that it would not do to nag, in order to
evade sacrifiction at the next happening of jet flight. In future,
these new gods in the night-sky, saying 'GRIMS', or these huge
sausages, the large windmill that says 'JEERS AUS HOLLAND' (an
illiterate advertiser), would give ample scope to rid the tribe of
unwanted children or critics, by sacrificatory rituals, new
theogonies, new theologies, new agonies.
In the days of Homer, it could have happened that a large
planet like Icarus (astronomers call them planetoids,
although they wander far better than planets) would collide
with Earth, and smash all the life therefrom. These Trojans
would see a strange light for some minutes, an hour later
they would be dead, on a shaken planet on its way to a new
orbit inside Mercurius' orbit. Some millennia after Homer,
such an accident became highly predictable through the
invention of the telescope. It was not till after Hiroshima
that our technological progress enabled us to plant a hundred
hydrogen-bombs on such a culprit months before the collision,
and blow it into harmless bits.
With the advancement of space technology, thus, through
space advertisement, not only is observation of our solar
system no longer possible, but even the radar warnings stop
altogether.
Of course, when the first mausoleum or toothpaste tube is launched,
astronomers all over the world will stand on their hind legs. There
is nothing they can do though. They have the unfortunate occupation
of which nobody takes notice when they go on strike. Nations,
however 'can' do things. They can send a man up there, who clamps a
rocket on the Eiffel tower in orbit, sending it back into the
atmosphere. This, however, is an act of war. Besides, the next
orbiters will be booby-trapped by buckshot stingers, small packs of
rockets that will puncture a space-suit.
This development, the loss of our night-sky, is predictable by sociological means, just as war and diplomacy,
economic predation, is predictable in our crazy world. Precisely as certain as wars are going on still, and will go
on, so will the night-sky become as light as, say, a rainy
day. The only possibility to thwart this stupidity is a
world-government that is well-advised by scientists.
International agreements will not help, as they will never be
accompanied by sanctions. Even the taxing of advertisement,
instead of the 'rewarding' of today, cannot prevent it
because ... it is the customer who pays, it is all in the
price.
Freedom, the notion so dearly coddled, so costly paid for (in
blood), so much advocated in literature, is, 'the presence of
choice' (77). Well, you can choose to go and live
on a small island in some ocean, but you cannot choose to enjoy a
night-sky for very much longer. The only thing you can choose still,
is a better organized world, one that is controlled, governed,
organized, kept in check, by a proper World-Government
Humanity has been compared by one contemporary writer
to a sleeper who handles matches in his sleep and wakes
to find himself in flames. Wells, The World Set Free.
Next: The Emptiness of Life
Up: The World Solution for
Previous: Justice and Rights &
Ven
2007-09-11