For me, I'd love to go, of course. .I like a good vacation as much as anybody. And I'd me more than a little bit curious to see what life, time, energy, and space feel like from that perspective. As an astrologer, the thought of getting that close to one of the most important bodies in the horoscope would be incredible exciting. Then there's the weird irony that humans will eventually have so depleted our home planet that we will flee to the planet that represents our mothers. I suppose that would require teasing apart the astrological archetype of the moon to separate the emotional and liquid (milk) element of the mother from the earthy, Taurean, Gaia mother that is what we are made of physically.
No matter. It would be damn cool. But anticipating the massively (and typically scientific) naive final line of the piece, I had a sudden flash of the surface of the moon looking like parts of fly-over Nevada and Arizona look today. A barren and extraordinary desert with the random impossible lush green farm in the middle of it. The notion - in all sorts of ways - of turning the moon into some sort of foreign garden to support human life is utterly appalling to me. Maybe some day it won't be, but the thought of looking up at the moon from earth and seeing little green speckles everywhere. . .I can't even imagine (unless, of course the green speckles were made out of cheese, which would make perfect sense of course. . .)
But on an astrological note, it must be mentioned that the scientific/Aquarian perspective with its fundamentalist belief in humanism in the dignity of mankind always misses the boat when it comes to predicting the ways that "evil" men will turn their magnificent inventions against mankind and life itself. I used to think that there was something coldly attached about Aquarius- that somehow they knew that their inventions (like the original Promethean fire itself) could be used for good or for evil, and yet they believed it had to be invented anyway- for the sake of Progress. But I have come to think that Aquarius's square to Scorpio pits it so far against instinctual Darwinism that Aquarians really do hold the belief that even if their inventions are used for both good and evil that the good will prevail in the end. Kind of like a high-tech Zoroastrianism.
But it may be that scientists, because of their phlegmatic nature in general, probably just believe in this naive view of the world because they don't spend any time in the world of religio-/social upheaval and catastrophe. The Ivory Tower is a tired analogy for Aquarius, but I think it holds in this case. When I hear the scientist at the end of the piece say
"I think it is a destiny that we will go there as humans. I hope it’s not just for commercialization.”
I have to wonder if he's ever read anything but the Science section in the New York Times. Or if he ever took a history course, or walked across the tracks, or did anything but play make believe with his nerd friends in the laboratory.
The history of mankind has been exploitation. Even the United States - the great bulwark against unfairness and inequality - has been as exploitative as any other nation has of the natural world- and with a technological power millennia ahead (thanks to those scientists) of anything anyone in history could have dreamed of.
So we're amazing. But we're massively naive. Will liking on the Moon change us? Will Her compassionate aura calm the savage beast of exploitation and ragagery? Or will she be overrun with mining equipment and deep well diggers to extract what milk she may have left in her for us?
If it's the latter, I fear the end. Yes, she will then be used as a "springboard" to Mars, and all bets are off. The zodiac as we know it relates to us as earthlings. The timing and location of the planetary bodies are ephemerized around our physical place in the universe. All buts are off once we discover a lunar-centril or a Martio-centric zodiac. What could that possibly mean?
Here's a thought: Because earth-born humans will always maintain some memory of time (even when you're stoned, you can think of what it's like to measure a day and a night, etc.). So they will be able to carry with them a baseline sense of time based on their terrestrial (and caffeine boosted) experience. But what about the next generation? And the one after that? I think about the colonists who came here to America who originally had a British disposition and a loyalty to the old way of life. But by a few generations - and certainly by 1776 - the identification with Briatin had fallen off, and a new "breed" of human was born: The American Proper.
This has had a big effect. Not just on us as Americans, but on our planet and its destiny. We are in a way a Novo Homo, despite all the biological contradictions to that statement. And we have pulled the entire world in the direction that our inventions have indicated.
What then of those future children whose allegiance to Earth time/space/culture is secondary to their allegiance to Martian or Lunar space, gravity, and climate? Will they have adapted so much that they may never visit earth? That they may look at still-grounded earthlings as odd and curious fuddy-duddies the way I see Britons when I ventuire to their Island? Maybe. Like I said, all bets will be off. Who we - if it's appropriate to talk about "we" in that context - become is anyone's guess, but I have no doubt that we will have evolved (if that's appropriate to talk about!) into something other than what we are as earth-bound terrestrial humans. Terresties, or 'resties might be the derogatory name for those that never got off the planet. (Just a thought)
But I'm not so certain. Scorpionic economics and Capricornian limits have blessedly cut the budget for now, and President Obama has graciously pulled the plug. Does my imagination suffer for it? A bit. The thought of time shares on the moon is not an entirely unhappy one, but for now I feel blessed to have Her in her current role maintained, with only a few bruises from our scientific meddling. No doubt there will be a day when we overcome this "setback," but it looks like it will have to wait another cycle or two. . .
