The Reality Of Being. . .

. . .On The Good Ship Earth
by The Old Hippie Because It Is The Reality Within

The significance of the old adage of the planet being like a spaceship, with finite limited resources, is of more significance today, than ever before.  The internal politics of its human crew centers around only one thing - The control of and access to, and the profits from, its finite limited resources.  Resources that are necessary for humans' pleasure and survival, as the Good Ship Earth travels through space.  i.e. the big-5 for any spaceship - air, water, food, energy, and waste.

Two factors, the crew's population and technology levels, are paramount to the stresses on these "finite limited survival resources," ("flsr,") as is the third factor - The political control and manipulation of the "flsr" by the crew's leaders.

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The population level is an obvious self-limiting factor, especially within the reality of closed system with "flsr" such as with our Good Ship Earth.

The technology level is, just as obviously, a non-limited factor, one which can be used to mitigate the stresses produced by an increasing crew population and diminishing "flsr," or make it worse, if abused by ignorance, or to further the profits of the corrupt and/or naive few over the survivability of the entire crew.  Where profits means not just wealth, but also the profit of the access to and the control of the "flsr," i.e. power.

The political factor is of less importance on normal ships, as the crew is normally of one faction.  But that is not the case on our Good Ship Earth.  This ship's crew is broken up into multiple complex political factions within factions, within factions, etc., all competing for the ship's overly stressed and rapidly diminishing "flsr."

The Good Ship Earth's main energy source is the star Sol, or what we commonly call the sun.  The ship is safely within in a permanent orbit around it, and will continue to safely orbit Sol, no matter what its human crew does, and along as no large space rock smacks it out of its orbit, it will continue to do so even past Sol's exhaustion of it's own finite resources.  Even if all life where to cease to exist today, the ship/planet will continue to orbit.  It simply doesn't "need" us humans, the crew, or any other life, to do so.

The Good Ship Earth is not a "living" planet, it is a spaceship, a machine, that happens to have life on and in it.  This ship/planet is not an intelligent, much less living, being.  It does have huge evolved dynamic physical processes that its current human crew has no control over at all.  i.e. The inner and outer cores of the planet, the movement of the crust's plates, the planet's magnetic field.  But there other huge dynamic processes and systems that, because of population levels and increasing technology levels we are now able to affect and effect, and are.  i.e. the air, the water, and the weather they produce.

As the crew on this spaceship, we have only one real concern - Continuing survival.  After that priority, we can than contemplate the quality of that survival.  And because the large majority of the sane and rational of the crew want survival for all, and want that survival to be within a sane and rational equalized sharing and renewal of survival resources, so that all can live a life of quality, rather than just survival - The political factor has gone beyond the importance of "who will control who will profit," to "who will control who will survive, if any."

Almost all of us, the reality-based, within the crew are very-very worried by all three of the factors to our survival on this Good Ship Earth, but most particularly the current state of the political factor, and that of its effects and affects, never before possible, are now having on the huge complex dynamic physical processes and systems of the air, water, and weather that the entire crew's very survival depends upon.