A Hero's Legacy

You'll have to indulge me here. I wrote this a few years back on the anniversary of Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. I dug this out Saturday night on learning the news of Neil Armstrong's passing. Nowadays it doesn't seem to take a whole lot to have the title "hero" put in front of your name. But, for me, Neil Armstrong was an old school hero. RIP Neil Armstrong.

I can’t sleep tonight and the light of a nearly full moon floods the bedroom making it all the more difficult.  And as I lie awake I think back over forty years to a summer day in 1969 when two Americans landed on the moon and each went for a walk on the lunar surface.

That event was the culmination of a pledge made by our President not quite a decade prior.  It was the ultimate demonstration of intellect, technological savvy, and good ol’ American know how and will.  That event occurred 12 years after my birth.  It seemed fantastic, it seemed to portend our national omnipotence taking flight both literally and figuratively.  It was grand on a scale that, at least to a 12 year old boy, gave one the confidence that man can do anything.

In 12 years my life had evolved from John Glenn to Neal Armstrong; from smoky four engine propeller driven airliners to jets which cut travel times by halves and thirds.  Planes were in, trains were out.  Color television was in, black and white was out.  Everything seemed to be getting faster, stronger and better.  And America seemed to be getting richer and we were, in spite of those noisy but ne’r do well Soviets, we were powerful—and you can make that a capital P.

Now I lie awake and I think about those first twelve years and compare them with this last forty.  The launch of the Apollo missions correlated with the arrival of a new era of technology; the tools which promised to make all things possible and all problems solvable were finally at our door step, ready to be unwrapped and put to use.

In the last forty years that is what we seem to have done.  We Americans have unwrapped those packages and put them to work.  All over the world, mankind has done the same, racing to mine all the many benefits of our great achievements in science and technology.  

Here in the U.S., forty years after this great event which filled us with pride and confidence and hope, we live in a country which no longer manufactures a whole lot of anything.  Our steel manufacture is gone.  Our auto manufacturing has withered into near oblivion.  Clothing, textiles, household appliances, Schwinn bicycles, Tonka Toys; all of these items have been shipped to overseas manufacturers.  Global communications, shipping and tracking systems have allowed us to export all manner of drudgery affording us all so much more leisure time—time with which we can now spend improving our lives and those of others. Just what we wanted.

The information highway has evolved to where we can share all types of scientific and technical information to afford people the world over knowledge and insights to create better ways of doing things in providing food, shelter, education, and health to every man, woman and child on the planet.   Cellular technology allows us to communicate instantaneously across a broad reach of the planet, again allowing us to aid and assist and care for one another.

Unfortunately, the export of production has left us with hundreds of thousands looking for work.  The export of jobs leaves many of us struggling to find a place in this life, in many cases unable to help ourselves let alone help others. 

And the electronic wizardry birthed in the moon mission has, indeed, given rise to a new era of electronics.  Unfortunately, much of this technology leaves us isolated and withdrawn from life as we spend hours absorbed in meaningless video entertainments.  And the information highway, when not used to provide access and instruction in the manufacture of roadside bombs and illegal and socially destructive drugs, can be used to sit mindlessly scanning page after page of celebrity gossip, pornography, sales of things we neither want or need, and all other sort of entry which is creatively labeled news or entertainment. 

And the tool that would be the cellular telephone somehow struggles to rise above the probable millions of text messages which are sent each day, most of which qualify as the inane distractions of the millions who have nothing better to do or can’t pay attention to what it is they should be doing.  The cell phone has become the Saturn Rocket of a generation that is totally distracted.  But it’s not all for naught, cell phones can be used to order pizza, take candid pictures someone will later regret, and detonate roadside bombs.

The United States has become like the 18-year-old son of the man who has everything and all the money in the world.  We are flush with opportunity and well endowed with means.  It just seems we can’t stop going to parties, don’t know what we want to do when we grow up, and really, we just don’t care- because we don’t have to. Not exactly the giant leap Neil Armstrong was referring to.

All that aside, man! Wasn't it great in 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the lunar surface and spoke that incredible line?  "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."