Different animals have different strengths and talents. Some have incredible hearing skills, others have an incredible sense of smell. Some develop very weird ways of perception. Dolphins and bats use echo location to help form their picture of the world. They can see with sound.
All of the myriad skills and sensitivities help them in their common mission: Survival.
The first and most important tool of survival is eating. The need for fuel is manifested as the sense of hunger. Hunger is a very physical need and a very physical sensation. But, also, it drives the brain, the animal's psyche, and it's desire to satiate those physical pangs. Animalia look to feed themselvia. (Ouch, I know.)
What distinguishes us from the animals is that our most developed sense, or organ, is not our ears or our eyes, but our brain. Our eyes like to be dazzled, but that is not the end, only the means. Our ears like to be soothed, but that's not the goal, only the path. We feel hungry, but our prey, as a result, is not just something to satiate and nourish our bodies, but to satisfy the organ that regulates our hunger. In short: The brain knows too much. And, if there's feeding involved, the brain will not be late for the frenzy.
And so we hunger. Not just for food, but for Knowledge. We spend our lives and treasure blasting towers of fuel and simulated habitats into an alien environment not because we're looking for a more comfortable place, but because we're looking for a different place just because it's different.
"What's on the other side of that mountain?" That's all we need to ask before we pack up and go to find out. "What will we discover there? What will we learn?"
Our surroundings may, at many many times, seem strange to us. But I suspect that our hunger seems even stranger to our surroundings.
Some philosophers believe that man has no Choice -- that we are only effecting causes that began in a long ago and distant epoch. To them I say that they can choose to believe that or not. Do they think they can? I don't know. Whatever.
Me? I believe in dreams. I believe in Choice and I believe in exploring what Is and what might Be. I choose to believe that and I choose it freely.
Well, I believe that I do, anywho. I'll leave the second guessing to the even more confused... ;)
Having scaled the highest mountains and probed the deepest of the deep in our own world, we turn our gaze to the stars. Just as breakfast will not stave off the need for lunch, and lunch will not prevent a craving for dinner, we'll keep feeding our hunger for knowledge and exploration. Not satisfied with the crumbs of the mundane, we must move outward or starve our spirits.
And because this is who we are, we'll explore strange new worlds. We'll seek out new life and new civilizations. This is our calling; to go boldly where no man has gone before!
I scribbled this down after watching the final episode of Enterprise. Captain Archer's speech, at the end, to the delegation at Starfleet Command seemed wanting to me, so I decided to write what I kept wanting to hear.
And Jolene Blalock was right. This episode was kinda rediculous.
First of all, it wasn't an Enterprise episode, it was a Next Generation episode. The Enterprise crew were only holodeck characters.
Secondly, Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis were playing Riker and Troi 12 years younger than they are. Yeesh!
Thirdly, they killed off Trip Tucker! BOO!
Oh, well. We'll always have reruns.
Posted by Tuning Spork at May 13, 2005 10:55 PM