On Behalf of the Goose

Of course I watched the SpaceX launch when it happened at last on Saturday. Didn’t you? We and some neighbors went outside a few minutes later in hope of seeing the rocket fly over us, but the sky was still too bright.

Like me, you have probably seen memes on the Internet quipping that the astronauts who (after a launch delay) took off to go to the International Space Station had the right idea in leaving planet Earth right now.

But if you think space people are too absorbed in nerdy preparations for and support of flights to pay attention to anything else, you must not know any space people. Working at the Johnson Space Center, I found an unusually high level of community awareness and involvement. We could have made much higher incomes in private industry. We “did space” because we loved it. We loved the world and wanted to make it better. We understood how going above and beyond the planet could help us do that better, but our care showed on the ground too.

Space people volunteered a lot in all sorts of ways. Coaching sports teams for youths. Getting certified as paramedics and volunteering to serve on the local ambulance, which was usually parked somewhere at JSC with one of the volunteers between call-outs. Leading Scouting troops. Volunteering in any type of charity that did good works. In my case, organizing for societal change.

My job was in a vast team that undertook some of the most dangerous of human endeavors. Pushing for societal change as a volunteer was in many ways more difficult, more hazardous to me personally, and required even more long-horizon patience. I didn’t know all that when I got started. I had a lot to learn just to do my small part. Activism requires an ability to think in terms of having an impact a few generations in the future. It requires considering what people need who aren’t necessarily like yourself. It requires depth of commitment now so that life will be better for people who aren’t born yet.

That’s what we are all witnessing on the news since the USA’s Memorial Day. It is the best and most essential work of citizens in a society that hopes to grow more balanced and mature.

It is being resisted, sometimes fiercely, by those who are paragons of selfishness and greed.

As children we learn that the greedy kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Think of our communities and our planet as the goose. And as we have all learned in the pandemic, everything is more connected than we realized. Inequality is linked to poverty is linked to substandard (and energy inefficient) housing is linked to greater impact on the climate is linked to poor health is linked to increased mortality… and on and on. We really are all in this together, whether or not we realized it before. What harms some of us ultimately, through our interwoven connections, harms us all.

So I support the defenders of the goose. How about you?