Monumental failure

I guess everyone of age looks back on some monumental failure in expectation.  Periodically I go back to the same lament.

I remember going to see a new movie that was causing a quandary for reviewers. The movie was “2001: A Space Odyssey”. It was in essence a space manifest destiny. In 1968, when the movie appeared, there was no controversy over rather the future technological advancements envisioned in the movie will have occurred by the year 2001. Achievement was a universal article of faith. 

I remember my chagrin when the year 2001 actually arrived. America had abandoned manned moon missions in 1972. There was no initiative for any new manned missions. The international space station was really a Russian vehicle. Space was a place we remotely viewed and not the path tread in our expanding steps. Worst, we were still a world hopelessly fragmented by nationalities.  

It seemed we had progressed very little from 1968. As a nation we had atrophied. Our eyes were no longer filled with wonder and we were increasingly a nation drawn to religiosity. Greed griped our hearts and guided our leaders. We had become an empire with thousands of military bases around the world. We dictated, cajoled and threatened to get our way in the world. We look in the mirror and our narcissism looks back.

How could I have been so wrong about man’s progress? We opted for banal pursuits. We did not keep to a linear soaring toward apogee. We steeped our selves in the age old sin; war and rumors of war. We feasted on the here and now of economic largess. We are the pig that might be proved to have built a house of straw. Inequalities abound and our abuse of the environment. It is an evil torrent of wind that will come gushing forth plunging mankind backward.  

Maybe we have gone as far as we can toward the bright vision portrayed in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”.