On spaceships and ponies ....

Looking at this entry I can't stop myself from a bit more self-reflection...

I used to like space travel, Science, Logic and all those interrelated things... until I learned how different real-world humans from characters in sci-fi (think about "Deep Range" from A. Clarke - in reality none of those higher-ranked scientists and bureaucrats were able to thrown away their career in defense of what is right both by logic and emotion). But now I come to questioning very idea about 'importance' of space travel..Was it really that good idea, back in early 20th century? Is it really best idea to be obsessed with today, 100+ years later?

It seems space travel (back then - interplanetary travel) was seen as just on edge of possibility with all advances in rockets and physical sciencies. Planets were imagined much like Earth, sometimes with their own civilizations, as place where relatively unprotected human can live as on Earth. Well, reality turned out to be much more though. No Earth-like planets in Solar system, and interstellar travel definitely much harder to even attempt than interplanetary. Even if there are Earth-like enough (and this means mostly down to same sol, same atmosphere, same gravity...no active biological antagonism) planets - they relatively rare, and flight to them definitely not easy, even with questionable FTL (faster-than-light) transport.. And most importantly, if humans just export their current political and cultural system - it will be same mess there as well it was/is here! "Martian Chronicles" definitely made this point very clear to me - if you rely on more-or-less mainstream technology to go far away from current government and human system(s) - your past invariably will catch you soon, because very same most corrupted humans have priority access to most advanced technology. Of course there were sci-fi stories about humans inventing spacetravel methods or spaceships individually, and applying those inventions wide before any govt has time to react. But I found those scenario quite ...unlikely. Worse, because ordinary humans (even extraordinary inventors!) think too much the same as everyhuman else - they will most likely rebuild same flawed society as one they knew back on Earth! So, in absence of theory of humanities (sapient beings, technological or not) humans will fail usual way. Yet, even with such theory if most humans failed to be observant of their own actions, and will have no power to correct themselves and learn from their errors - theory will be useless!!

It seems whole "go to sky" (=heaven?) thing become flying meme among specific circles, so much even so-called progressivist humans fail to see how physically moving same humans to different place will not help anyone, only create 2x more problems at great cost (of course, those progressivists often just subscribed to idea 'more is always better', so more humans, flood whole galaxy with USA humans ....)

Also, additional question I was asking myself ...why USA become USA? Why Moscow, or Saint-Petersburg, or Paris were so attractive to specific breed (kind) of humans? Partially because they hoarded previous generations of literature, partially because they fooled enough humans with their facades to come and contribute to them, and not at their native places, partially because those intellectuals were prone to human social behavior, so they needed more of the same kind .. and of course money and labour and fame and ability to select few out of millions ..this shaped our reality quite badly, because in all this racing to overpowering already overpowered everyone forgot about bigger picture.. How many blows so-called 'humanity' must face before recognizing for real they screwed up? Are they able to recognize such fact at all, or delusions take them forever, and whole world along with them?

But yeah, back to ponies...on how many levels their 'utopia' can be protected?
Level "-1" - aka cosmological level support (as championed by Chatoyance, for example). Whole structure of physical universe provide beings living there with tons of 'free' energy, materials, and transformations....
Level 0 - some sort of abstractable empathy, perhaps? Something disallowing you to just hit your enemy and walk away undisturbed, like nothing happened...
Level 1 - you just follow the herd, unlike humans they not as bad to follow most of the time without creating all sort of madness....
Level 2 - development as childhood. Whole thing centered on bettering feelings of others, and consequences of actions. Social intelligence. If so-called material production suffer - to hell material production, if pony about to become asshole genius - to hell heights of science/intellect at cost of character. And all this for real, not just pretending they try.. so, looking at cause/effect links critically, and dynamically changing if one or many specific ideas started to generate unfeeling pushers instead of normal ponies.
Level 3 - no big cliff from childhood and adult life. No-one will drag floor from under you moment you entered so-called 'adult' life. No separation between truth as told to childrens and reality, no 'asshole is only way to gain anything in this world' situations in whole adult life, as goal to strike for. Because being broken at 20 years old in the name of 'maximizing production" as total-as-fact ideology and default-and-only-way of life this way sucks damn much. To hell pseudohumanizm as practicized on Earth today ....
Level 4. Various structures and traditions expanding on ideas of connections, consequences, knowing real self of others, setting up countercurrents against more egoistical and/or closed-group tendencies ...
Level 5. Mind control by plants. Haha, I mean whole mentosphere of the planet, even if pony-centered (targeting?) for some reason. Yes, having some level of protection _above_ highest possible power level (alicorns) seems to be wise, just in case.

Humans history was such endless victory of assholess because for them it was relatively cheap road - hit your enemy at head, and no (obvious!) problems. Grab all stuff from poor pony - and nothing happens! No lighting, no sickness, no nothing! No indication you did something very wrong! Of course, abstract thinking and some self-tuning can help a bit - but civilized barbarians nearly always 'won' by hitting same nerve again and again - promising good life, and getting it for themselves, at expense of anyone else! because power ...so, if at least some types of power will be inverse-proportional linked to some specific negative characteristics ...more temperamental and least emphatic pony will get less {magical?} power, not more... of course there might be workaround, and they all will be explored by more bright idiots ....But I hope sometimes finding and implementing countermeasures in itself will be like building atomic reactor in stone (wood) age era - too many too fine materials and many odds to battle...So, it must be asymmetrical - not all ideas must be so easily implementable, and more powerful and dangerous ones must be relatively far from reach...

Ah, on false symmetries in our language - when humans say 'human (or technology) can be both good and bad' they somewhat imply (or hope! or both) process is symmetrical, like we have just as much good applications of technology and applicants themselves, as bad ones, and bad ones still can be stopped. In reality it far from this - negative uses of everything more numerous, and doing some shit today is much easier than progress away from it (like, it much easier to start dolphinarium than assemble humans who will be true friends of libre/liberated dolphins. because real strings in our world pulled by unsensitive, but charismatic beings, and other humans just play sheeple...). So, today's human world already quite negatived-out, and moving further down, not up.

And ..I apparently figured out why teleport in "Taste of grass" felt a bit like space travel without space suit. may be teleport spell just created vacuum between src and dst, and then quickly dragged teleporting bodies by gravity-like field, and stopped them by same means just as quickly... doing this in atmosphere probably not very good idea, unless you are dragon, or changeling ... Of course this limit maximum distance you can cover in one flash ... and may be I even read this idea in comments and forgot about it!