04-09-2015, 09:00 AM
quote:
Originally posted by dakine
Until this discussion started I didn't have any great feeling one way or the other about the telescopes on Mauna Kea, though as I have said I have a lot of awe for the science and the technology. But the further we go in this discussion and the more disrespect and unwillingness to read and consider what others say without having the need to lash out, especially by those here that express no patience for the Hawaiian movement, the more I question my own assumptions. Interesting how the push and pull of opposing ideas causes one to hone their own. For instance I have recently asked myself:
What does astronomy really do for mankind? When we see some great discovery announced in the press what is being gained? Is the discovery of black holes or whatever elemental structures, star dust etc., really serve to help us, mankind, in any way? Does looking back in time, for it is backwards that the telescopes gaze, provide us with tools to apply as we go forward? Does it make us better, kinder, healthier? Does it put food on the table, or make better medicine? Who gains what from all the staring at the stars?
For me to have stumbled upon that question and not find an immediate and glaringly positive answer means (to me) that for all of it we aren't really benefitting in proportion to what is being invested. And, maybe, as exciting as it all is it's not in keeping with our needs. In fact maybe it's taking too much from a world that has extensive needs that aren't being met as it is?
On this planet we still have wars, we have famine, we have malnourished and uneducated, we have extreme poverty. We have sick and dying, and we have an ecosystem that is collapsing. In all of that we have arguments over expenditures of money when we know that if we were to spend enough we could fix it all. Truly, the race to build an atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project, showed us what could be done if we want something enough to just throw all the money necessary at it. In all of that what good is our syphoning off of funds for astronomy done for us? Especially when there are so many other places that need those funds badly.
If there isn't some glaringly obvious gain, why is anyone arguing so strenuously for it? I mean yeah it's way cool and all but at the expense of so much and in the light of so much opposition what does it really matter?
Really, in the light of so much opposition what does it really matter? Is there really something to be gained? Or is just the act of dominance important? What's the point?
Oh boy - how to address a keyboard jockey luddite?