SHOULD ASTRONAUTS BE ALLOWED TO READ 1984 WHILE PREPARING TO BUILD EARLY COLONIES? Imagine you´re running an early colony mission - say on Mars and your worst nightmare comes true. The guy in charge of the group of astronauts supposed to be building your colony - the first parts of the colony that is - on the Green Planet suddenly cuts ties with you because two days before he had been reading 1984 and feared the possibility that you had intentions to send assassins after him out of envy. But of course that was never your real intention to begin with - but as we all know, we all have a little paranoia and paranoia knows no boundaries. It doesn´t talk politics either - it just does. And that is one of it´s most terrifying aspects. It can hit anyone and probably ruin a future space colony mission. But it can be prevented. The question is - should extreme measures be taken to prevent astronauts to become overtly paranoid. Should the first crews to Mars be allowed to for example - download free copies of 1984 or similar books which we all love or take them with themselves? We all want to go to Mars and in Mars One everyone thought that I was going to support the idea of bringing copies of 1984 to the first colonies to the point nobody even thought I considered it. But what if I told you that - probably everyone wasn´t thinking about it to begin with - such a thing as bringing a copy of 1984 to an early Mars colony mission or even an early future Venus ´first colony´mission - that I am not so sure about 1984´s right to leave Earth whenever it wishes. In other words - I don´t recommend that the first astronauts to arrive to Mars start obsessing themselves overtly with works like 1984 when they arrive - but should prepare doing so for the arrival of future generations of astronauts - to avoid the first missions of falling victim to extreme states of paranoia. Yes none of us becomes paranoid when we´re reading something like 1984 while staying on Earth - probably not even while on a sea going vessel. But another planetary environment is probably considerably more stressful - and the more stressful the environment is - for certain people it makes less sense to add up to the stress with reading overtly stressful material. And yes I´m not saying that there´s anything that paranoid about 1984 - I´m saying that if I was an astronaut and I was a crew member of 4 astronauts who went to Mars to start a new colony - I´d be a bit stressed if I knew about a 1984 copy for fear of the possibility that several weeks or months later attempts would be made to cut ties with Earth.........out of a misunderstanding. Suddenly after reading this article - the idea of reading 1984 or a similar book on Mars might seem considerably more alien to people than it does already.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 23:29:37 +0000
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