"Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been."
— Kurt Vonnegut
Today the world spends around $1.5 trillion a year on the trappings of war. Can there be a more futile waste of money than that?
What if we had really taken the lessons of WWII and said never again?
Well we would have had around $99 trillion [at today's rates] to spend/invest otherwise.
I often think what we could have achieved if our focus had been different, that instead of dreaming of power; we had dreamt of discovery.
The sheer waste of time and materials consumed by the industry of war is stunning, could we have spent our energy more wisely?
Was it just military sabre rattling and national pride that made us land on the moon, or did it stop us in our tracks from going further?
What would have been the fate of the millions that have died in senseless conflict if we hadn't been so intent on destruction, did we lose the greatest mind in a generation to violence?
Our solar system contains all the energy and materials we could ever need, yet we fight over them on earth.
Can we change direction or are we doomed through fear to continue merrily down our blood soaked path? I would say the signs are not promising, how sad it would be to look at the stars and not have the resources to reach them.
What if...
A morning muse
Brought on by
Follow Yuri Gagarin on the first human space flight
From 7.07am BST on Tuesday, the film First Orbit will track Yuri Gagarin's space flight as it happened 50 years ago. This page will display communications between Gagarin and ground control as the mission unfolds
Updated by LaFeminista at Tue Apr 12, 2011 at 08:34 AM CEST
One small ray of sunshine