Not Boldly, Then
With space exploration, we have to consider how we are using language, and what it carries from the history of exploration on Earth. Even if words like “colonisation” have a different context off-world, on somewhere like Mars, it’s still not OK to use those narratives.
In the pages of National Geographic, Nadia Drake and Lucianne Walkowicz competitively fret about how terribly problematic the language of space exploration is:
I think the other [word not to be used] is “settlement.”
I’ll give you a moment to process that one.
That comes up a lot and obviously has a lot of connotations for folks about conflict in the Middle East. I think that’s one that people often turn to when they mean “inhabitation” or “humans living off-world.”
Apparently, notions of our species expanding into space are “born from racist, sexist ideologies that historically led to the subjugation and erasure of women and indigenous cultures,” and must therefore be corrected by the lofty and woke. And so, “government agencies, journalists, and the space community at large” are “revising the problematic ways in which space exploration is framed.”
Numerous conversations are taking place about the importance of using inclusive language, with scholars focusing on decolonising humanity’s next journeys into space, as well as science in general.
You see, any attempts to colonise other worlds, or to explore and exploit astronomical objects, will have to be pre-emptively “decolonised” and purged of gender by the neurotically pretentious. Lest our astronauts and astronomers instantly start oppressing their black or female colleagues, rendering them tearful with the words unmanned probe, while spitting on the floor and shouting about the merits of Arcturian poontang.
Needless to say, the word frontier is also deemed “problematic,” due to “narratives… based around European settlement.”
I suppose the above is what happens when otherwise clever people are encouraged to cultivate worldviews that depart from reality, often quite dramatically, but which nonetheless convey in-group status, which they choose to value more. The implication that referring to, say, a populated outpost on the Moon as a colony or a settlement will somehow be “harmful,” resulting in distress, or the raping and pillaging of all that indigenous lunar dust, is somewhat comical and contrived; but evidently that doesn’t matter. What matters is letting your peers know just how woke, and therefore statusful, you are, at least compared to the heathen rabble.
We’ve been here before, of course. Via Orwell & Goode.
Jonathan,
Start building the ‘B’ Ark now.
WHAT??? Do you mean it’s not done yet?
Why, yes, David HAS contracted out the ranting to Pogonip, Inc.
And a fine rant it was. I expect the Guild of Evil’s
trollsaccountants in thedungeonbasement will be pleased.>I don’t see much evidence of the “erasure of women” about.
>You haven’t seen what the Trans activists are doing?
Mostly appears to be a Bruce becoming a Caitlyn–the erasure of men, not that they were particularly manly in the first place…
Can’t wait for the future woke space pioneer to try apologising for their whiteness as an alien is bursting out of their chest…
You think that was a good rant, stick around. I promise you’ll need a cigarette after the next one. 😉
Does anybody have trash recycling? I’m quite disgruntled with it.
It could always be worse. When living in another country that shall remain nameless to avoid it embarrassment I had three wheelie bins that I had to separate things into, a friend who lived in the village 3km away had five, so I had it good. None the less, one day I came home to find the garbage had not been taken away, but an orange sticker had been stuck on one of the bins.
With the help of a neighbor to translate it, it was revealed I had committed the unspeakable sins of not rinsing out a milk container sufficiently and chucking it in the wrong bin as waxed paper went into a different one than paper.
Probably the only reason you weren’t hauled out in the street & shot was it would have been too expensive to recycle your carcass. Barbarian.
Barbarian
Proud of it. A friend from the aforementioned country was over visiting over in my corner of South Flyoverlandia and both amazed and appalled that everything goes into black plastic bags and gets dumped at the curb, and stuff too big for the bag just gets stacked next to the bags. If you checked our landfill, you’d probably find Hoffa’s body.
This seems to be spreading. From February, in response to Elon Musk’s SpaceX sending a Tesla into space:
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/patriarchal-race-colonize-mars-just-another-example-male-entitlement-ncna849681
Just think of the terror the little green women on Mars must be feeling now…
Just think of the terror the little green women on Mars must be feeling now…
Was there consent ?
And it goes without saying that white people are singled out as especially problematic and in need of enlightenment..
As a friend likes to point out, it’s a physical law that only Americans are able to land on the moon. After all, it hasn’t been disproven, despite decades of the technology existing.
A corollary could be made that white people are the most problematic explorers, since as a rule they tend to, you know, leave the indigenous populations mostly still breathing…
Nadia Drake is Frank Drake’s daughter. He founded SETI.
Guess what colour her hair is.
Plus nose ring and bad tattoos. https://twitter.com/shaka_lulu/status/1058370249941282817
Last time I checked there’s no native culture on the moon.
Ah, but you mustn’t state the obvious. It’s terribly unsophisticated. Instead you must gargle on the intersectional Kool-Aid, and then bang on about how the words unmanned probe can crush the aspirations of scientists and engineers who happen to be female.
And then congratulate yourself for being so brave and speaking truth to power.
A frontier is simply an edge.
During British rule of India, the area along the Afghanistan border was the “Northwest Frontier”. No one was marching across it to homestead in Afghanistan.
The fighting along the French-German border in the first month of WW I is called “the Battle of the Frontiers”.
And speaking of “decolonising” terribly oppressive things:
Expectations of punctuality are so unfair.
See also this demented farce, in which “social justice theorist” Riyad A Shahjahan insists that we abandon expectations of punctuality and general competence, which oppress “indigenous and subaltern individuals,” and instead embrace “tactics of resistance,” like burning herbs in class and pondering our knees.
And it goes without saying that white people are singled out as especially problematic…
This is why non-white people are fleeing white countries by the million……
All this space talk can be problematic. Lord only knows their view on Uranus and re-entry And while we are at it let’s not forget that spacecraft will likely need to maintain the rigidity with flanges.
See also this demented farce,
I despair.
I despair.
You have to wonder just how flatulent and ruinous such posturing has to become before the clowns mouthing it are finally, belatedly, shown the door. In terms of “social justice” idiocy, there doesn’t seem to be any mechanism for self-correction.
I’d send them both a copy of “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” but the title alone would give them conniptions.
“Speech police.”
I just don’t see that anywhere on the jobs list for our first settlement in our moon colony.
Nor do I see any listing for “gibbering jackass.”
So sorry! Please apply again.
My hypotheses about why Antarctica has not been colonized are: 1 It has no indigenous culture to subjugate; 2 It is already white.
This is why non-white people are fleeing white countries by the million…
I suppose I will have to report for regrooving for noticing that there was no mass non-white pipo fleeing from former colonies when those places were colonies. Why, it almost implies a cause and effect, and we can’t have that.
Semi-related, it looks like the lot of us are going to be unwelcome at Aussie universities, being the violent bunch we can be be.
‘When the “Chair of Astrobiology at the U.S. Library of Congress” sees her job as indistinguishable from that of an Assistant Facilitator for Student Diversity & Inclusion at a community college’
https://twitter.com/St_Rev/status/1062358153399070720
To that crowd, those words are exactly that [i.e., incantations].
“We need to not be carelessly using narratives that are still the source of harm to a lot of people,” insists Ms Walkowicz. These “narratives” – a term used no fewer than 14 times – are actually the words colonise, settlement, (un)manned and frontier. These, then, are the spells with which Old Whitey can inflict devastating harm on the apparently tissue-like minds of women and minorities.
It’s Planet Woo.
Those Aussie universities need a fresh mascot, preferably something indigenous, that better symbolizes their newer, woker attitude.
But what?
The above pic was an ostrich with its head in the sand. I guess it broke a copyright algo or something.
It’s Planet Woo.
Planet Woo ? I suppose you are going to pretend that you don’t know that Woo is an alternate colonial spelling of Wu which is the wypipo colonial spelling of 吳 and you are displaying typical appropriation of Asian culture by the Great White Hegemon.
Planet Woo?
I denounce myself.
[ Stands on stool of shame with hot rocks in either hand. ]
I denounce myself.
Move over, I denounce myself for triggering you with my violent sarcasm.
In terms of “social justice” idiocy, there doesn’t seem to be any mechanism for self-correction.
Reality corrects, and harshly, when it’s time approaches. It’s time has a name: Too late. This name makes up the most wretched and destroying pairing of words in the English language.
Its not it’s, damned auto-“correct”.
the raping and pillaging of all that indigenous lunar dust
The rocks never gave their consent to be mined, you see.
shouting about the merits of Arcturian poontang.
Extra points for that one. 🙂
Extra points for that one. 🙂
It seemed suitably absurd.
Okay.
This is a parody.
It seemed suitably absurd.
I don’t see why, once you have seen that Arcturian poontang shake their Boötes you’ll know why they say once you go Fornax, you’ll never go back.
I don’t see why,
As someone who watches quite a few astronomy programmes, I’m now trying to picture the array of featured astronomers and physicists – most of whom use the terms colonise, settlement, manned and frontier on a weekly basis – being scolded by the ladies above for being “lazy,” unenlightened, and using “old-fashioned verbiage.”
…I’m now trying to picture the array of featured astronomers and physicists…
Wait a minute, I thought we were talking about the Arcturian poontang and their Boötes.
Wait a minute,
I’m elevating the tone in the subtlest of ways.
I’m elevating the tone in the subtlest of ways.
Right, next I suppose the red Solo cups are gone and the Night Nurse will be served in tea cups.
I’m a smooth operator.
I’m a smooth operator.
That, and/or EU regulations.
Oops.
Oh-oh.
It stops. And it stops right NOW.
Gee, this is fun.
[ Muttering can be heard, but not quite made out. ]