A world without frontiers

[JTScribe]

In the last ten thousand years - an instant in our long history - we've abandoned the nomadic life. We've domesticated the plants and animals. Why chase the food when you can make it come to you?For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game - none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band's, or even your species' might be owed to a restless few-drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.


Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: "I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas..."


Maybe it's a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds - promising untold opportunities - beckon. Silently, they orbit the Sun, waiting.


-- Carl Sagan

I saw this quote the other day and was reminded of something I've always but never really followed through it's end.

As few as a hundred years ago, there was a frontier. There was a place where one could go if he was unhappy or dissatisfied with his lot. Live under a tyrannical government? Go somewhere where they weren't.

But now, our world has been explored, parceled out, and is interconnected. There is no more taking your ball and going home.

I don't know if I necessarily have a point, but it seems that this is not an ideal situation and doesn't bode well for the future. Thoughts?

 

[BogWalker]

With the amount of land in Federal holding out west we could launch another homestead act and second wave of western expansion. Lots of sparsely populated land out there. Not exactly a new continent, but it could be a fresh start for lots of folks.

Space colonization in any appreciable numbers is decades if not centuries off so I'm not hedging on that.

Also a big reason I'm not a fan of urbanization. I've always believed having "room to roam" on ones own property was good for health, both mental and physical. I've got to have a few dozen acres of woodland to peruse.

I suppose we could start pushing the northern boundary of civilization as well.

 

[snorko]

Ballad of Serenity
lyrics and music by Joss Whedon
sung by Sonny Rhodes

take my love
take my land
take me where I cannot stand
I don't care
I'm still free
you can't take the sky from me

take me out
to the black tell 'em I ain't coming back
burn the land and boil the sea
you can't take the sky from me

have no place
I can be
since I found Serenity
but you can't take the sky from me

 

[eldirector]

Maybe here in the US.

Lots of sparsely populated places left on earth. Especially if you don't mind driving out the native population.

I also believe that in a generation or so, we will be see a extra-planetary land rush. Nations, corporations, and other groups planting flags "out there", just like they did all around the globe.

 

[JTScribe]

With the amount of land in Federal holding out west we could launch another homestead act and second wave of western expansion. Lots of sparsely populated land out there. Not exactly a new continent, but it could be a fresh start for lots of folks.

Space colonization in any appreciable numbers is decades if not centuries off so I'm not hedging on that.

Also a big reason I'm not a fan of urbanization. I've always believed having "room to roam" on ones own property was good for health, both mental and physical. I've got to have a few dozen acres of woodland to peruse.

I suppose we could start pushing the northern boundary of civilization as well.

Yeah, the whole push to urbanization seems quite autocratic. It's almost a return to the feudalism days where everyone lived around the castle. The 'green spaces Agenda 21' nonsense is just an excuse IMO.

Space could be interesting. There's a treaty that I believe forbids colonizing the moon. My thought is, if you can get there, it's yours. I didn't sign a treaty, heh. Might make for interesting times, and I wonder if we'll see it in our lifetimes.

 

[BogWalker]

I don't think it would be difficult to make the moon neutral ground like the ISS. We would have to put the kibosh on exporting materials from the moon though unless we want nations warring over helium. I could see setting it up as an independent nation and letting such materials go to the highest bidder in order to stimulate a new lunar economy, but it wouldn't be difficult for foreign interests to set it up as a banana republic or puppet state to get better trade deals.

Or we could just take over the moon, stick a bunch of nukes on it, and give the finger to anyone who complains.

 

[Leadeye]

Lots of land that rarely ever sees people right here in Indiana.

 

[MPD742]

We're just beginning to explore our science potential. No need to hunt in the future because your lab produced turkey leg will be circulated as needed.

 

[JTScribe]

Lots of land that rarely ever sees people right here in Indiana.

Is that really a frontier, though?

 

[Leadeye]

It's frontier to me, walking through the HNF where I live wears me out before I get to the end of it and there's a lot to see. Nothing like Alaska of course, but still interesting.