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AudioAugust, I think you’re absolutely right that space *was* your suggestion, and of course we could come up with a dozen more. And you’re absolutely right that the Arab Spring argues for you instead of against; it shows people in developing countries organizing around a common cause just the way we used to when we were developing, but don’t any more.
The issue of kids is a bit more problematic. If most people have kids because “I really need some help running this farm” then that’s a conservative-in-the-bad sense motivation that we’re better off without; it certainly isn’t ambitiously progressive. And I think that Georg’s point is well taken that a lot of people seem very excited about new worlds that technology is opening up.
But the main reason I so strongly agree with your article is because I work with high school students, and I ask them what they want to do with their lives. They don’t want to be astronauts, go to Mars, discover cold fusion, find God, build a better mousetrap, or write the next Google. What they want to do in droves, boys and girls alike by the way, is become a doctor, save the life of one ailing child who is forever grateful, and make a ton of money. I remember hearing a statistic that I will probably quote wrong, but something like 50% of students studying at UNC-Ch are studying health care in some form. Our main ambition as a culture seems to be keeping each other from getting sick.
Kenny, All this stuff about health care reminds me of the point Becker made about advances in care that might one day lead to the end of sickness and the ability to rebuild the body. He said this quasi immortality would not make people less anxious and more risk friendly but more risk adverse since accidents would be so devastating. It seems that the longer our life spans become the more we cling to them.
When I read history I’m always amazed at how hell bent for leather people used to live when living to fifty was something of a miracle. A regal whim or the slightest misstep could bring down the quite literal axe yet men still played the game with gusto. August
