Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.ARPA
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!CAIN
From: CAIN@SRI-AI.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Why Leave Home At All?
Message-ID: <2989@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 29-Jul-85 12:50:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.2989
Posted: Mon Jul 29 12:50:30 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Jul-85 02:31:20 EDT
Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 33

From: Ron Cain <CAIN@SRI-AI.ARPA>

	The title of Jon Pugh's message "Why Leave Home At All" is
exactly the question I throw back into the ring.  The tone of his
message is one I have heard before (and may once have believed myself)
but one which I find increasingly astonishing and a bit annoying.
	His premise is best summarized in his closing paragraph:

	> So we must look ahead, beyond our petty little ball of dirt.  If
	> Mankind is to survive, we must take to the stars.  There is nowhere
	> else to go.  It may be viewed as running from one problem into
	> another, but it is the only choice, aside from racial suicide.  Does
	> anyone want to be a dinosaur?

	Petty ball of dirt?  Please read Lewis Thomas's "Lives of the Cell"
for an outlook which might dilute those sentiments.  The view that we must
cut our losses, count the Earth as a "throw-away", and get off planet as
soon as possible to insure our racial survival is an attitude that I would
not want to see propagated into space had I the power to stop it.

	If we can't make it work on this petty ball of dirt, folks, it's not
going to be any easier on another dirt clod around some other star or in
some RingWorld.

	When we can harness energy sufficiently well to accomodate all the
people we already have (why talk about racial survival if the ones alive
right now are not counted priceless?) and can establish a homeostasis on
this ball of dirt so that it is a stable place -- then, and only then would
I say we had earned the right to leave.

						Ron Cain
						cain@sri-ai
-------