Gene Roddenberry

Space... the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the Starship Enterpise, its continuing mission... to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. (Star Trek, August 1966)

Michaela and I had the opportunity to discuss about economic progress, ecological sustainability and population growth over the Eid Al Fitr weekend.  Her thinking is that while current human population is already at 6 billion, we could peak at 12 billion, but population would slowly stabilize in time at around 8 billion.  I was of the opinion that Malthusian predictions could be adjusted and that the Earth could comfortably house more humans, even at 20 billion, if allocation and distribution methods were more efficient.  Furthermore, my thinking is that the exponential growth of technology demonstrates that the human intellect is growing and someday, give or take a couple of hundred years, we will be able to pierce Einstein's light barrier.  That has been clearly shown with the discoveries of black holes (gravity becomes a more propelling force than light) and has been heavily theorized with postulates on tachyons.  While these are science fiction today, you have to consider that manned space flight was seemingly impossible in the early twentieth century, and that today we have a roving camera stationed in Mars.

Gene Roddenberry was a humanist and a futurist.  He began his career as a US Air Force pilot World War II, and thereafter became a sergeant with the Los Angeles police department.  He envisioned the television series Star Trek, and his philosophy about the possibilities of the human potential leads me to believe that there is hope for the human race.

Human nature.  We squabble, we fight.  We love, we nurture.  We oppress, we conquer.  We suffer, we adapt.  We go forth and we multiply.  We live, and we love.  We become true to ourselves.