restoring the dream

> I can certainly pass along resistance where I see it. But my own
> impression is that the failure you mention isn't a conscious ethical
> decision, but rather, just the logical result of several common (and
> probably invalid) assumptions:
>
> 1. The future will be pretty much the same as today.
> 1b. In particular, we'll never have the means to live off Earth.
> 2. People are trying to kill us (e.g., Twin Towers incident).
>
> Actually, these two assumptions alone are enough to drive investment in
> the war machine. If we were in fact engaged in a zero-sum game, doomed
> to stay cooped up forever with organized homocidal maniacs, then
> investing in defense would probably be our best option.

Niel Stephonson published a relevant argument ... http://johniac.posterous.com/innovation-starvation-world-policy-institute

That we're also suffering from fear of risk, and no coherent stories for what we want.