Editorial – January 2013 (editorial).
Thinking is a sign of responsibility.
Considered action comes better from thinking before acting.
Hello everyone
A problem with western society today is that it is very much an action first, apologise if wrong later, mostly because the consequences haven’t been thought through far enough. What tends to be forgotten is to think through the ideas first and cover the options properly before doing anything. It isn’t simply a yes/no choice to consider, there are other options: If. Maybe. But. Combination. Even And. Multi-ordinal choices that all give different consequences.
Spontaneity might look attractive but it has its own shortfalls without some planning. As the world gets forever more complex, you really do have to apply some consideration as to who will get upset or lose out over any action that you carry out. Some things, I have to confess, deserve to be shaken up. Living as if changes should never happen will never allow any sort of progression. Then again, it wouldn’t be called ‘progress’ otherwise. That doesn’t mean things are always going to change for the better but attitudes and acceptability have never stood still. At heart, we just don’t like to stagnate. Even when we’re treading water so to speak, there are always minor tweaks.
People will always claim that an earlier era, less clustered with so much information that we have now, a few decades ago was better than today but was living in ignorance any better? However, looking at some of the celebrity despicable revelations in the UK that happened back then, would they have gotten away with them today? I’ve commented in earlier editorials that each one of us lives in a microcosm, filtering in things we only want to hear and disbelieving anything that we aren’t that close to. With the potential for even the likes of the Internet to be manipulated that way, by software bots than actual people far worse, which is really why there needs to be viable hardcopy newspapers out there who will do investigations, providing that they do so within the confines of the law or at least answerable to it if they are found to be wrong. There is always a responsibility to seek the truth but no one is ever above the law, including reporters. Obviously, if a law is wrong then it deserves to be changed and in most countries there are the means to do this. Accountability is for all, not just the few who think it’s an avoidable club.
Accountability is the means to keep a sense of responsibility for everyone. The world about us is changing quickly all the time now and turning ever more into a Science Fiction reality that none of us in the genre have really written a parallel. Some things, like medical advancement with super-drugs and even cyborgs, are getting pretty close though. Whether this will extend to commercially driven spaceships has yet to be discovered, although seeing the price of getting a man to the Moon that way, one only has to hope that in line with modern technology, the more people who want to use it, the cheaper it will become. The prospect of asteroid mining will undoubtedly parallel Science Fiction, although more for using the materials in orbit than bring to Earth, which would reduce the cost of taking metals and like up there immensely. It is very important that exploring space will pay for itself out of its own resources and one has to wonder if it is possible to collect all the debris in orbit around the Earth isn’t amongst these. The days of purely scientific investigation have probably past. The only hope is that we will not destroy the Solar System in exploitation as we have with our own planet.
The ability to think and plan for the future seems to be the domain of the sentient. I mean, animals might recognise the change in the seasons and some might well migrate to sunnier climes but there’s no real forward planning in any of it.
Looking at all possibilities before picking out the right choice is always going to be difficult. I mean, do you pick an option because it suits you or is good for the community or can both be served by the same choice? It’s a difficult call, especially when it relates to basic necessities like eating and a roof over your head as witnessed by the changes in the third world where jungles are turned into cultivated land for commerce. There has to be moderation as well as practical solutions for all to have a happy life.
Too often we see the end product, rather than the steps leading up to it. Cause and effect should really have been drummed in to us all from school age. It’s what makes the world go round. It makes for good science. It makes for good thinking and in a world that is changeable as today, is that a bad thing?
Looking at this editorial, I can’t help but see that so much of it applies to so much in all kinds of things. Then again, being multi-ordinal, I tend to look at the world in that way. After all, thinking that can be applied to one thing can also be applied to other things. Maybe we need more multi-ordinal thinking?!
Thank you, take care, good night and think first.
Geoff Willmetts
editor: SFCrowsnest.co.uk
Last month, even though I hadn’t left an active link to my email address, it got solidly attacked and then blocked from everyone, including myself. By necessity, having a form of open contact to me comes as part of the editor’s job, so alternative means have now been set up to contact me. We still seek reviewers and new material.
A Zen thought: A feast for the eyes becomes a brief snack with a blink.
