Exploration and risk-taking go hand-in-hand. Man has been in the exploration game since he wanted to know what was over the next hill. It is man’s nature to know. To make life better, to find the so-called low-hanging fruit. Let’s break this down a bit further….
What are the basics in life? Food and shelter are the elements that come to mind right off the bat. So to keep stocked up on food, man had to hunt. When the game became scarce in his neck of the woods, there was always another forest to explore. Always another savanna to hunt on, always another ocean to reap. Exploration and the knowledge that comes with it is key to understanding and living an easier life.
The path of least resistance. This is man’s way. It is sometimes called laziness, but back in the good old days, and we are talking way, way back, it wasn’t lazy at all to harness the earth and to understand how it works for the purpose of a better life. It is hard-wired into man’s genes to think this way. It is called survival. Farming is a natural by-product of this type of thinking, as growing food helped keep man alive when game was in short supply. So what next?
Okay, just because the basics started to get covered, and we became better at the survival game, the genes still prompt man to explore. To want to know is the axis of our being. Knowledge and the bounty that comes with it never stops. So we looked to other lands, and other oceans to cross. Other worlds to explore.
That is where we are now. It’s been more than forty years since man landed on another heavenly body, that body called the Moon. Just being in space has enabled us to understand our planet and the way it works. We still have light-years to go, and light-years to cross. The need to know and the search for a better life will never stop. Not on this earth, not on Mars, and not in another star system.
It would be pretty boring without this exploration drive that keeps us pushing for knowledge. With that constant pushing comes knowledge as a natural by-product. We are just searching for more economical ways to explore. We can’t damage our beloved Earth anymore than we already have. We now understand that, and that knowledge is relatively new, within the past hundred years or so. Our quest has come with a terrible price, the decimation of the rain forest for example, so we need to realize a better way.
We will realize a better way, that is also hard-wired into our very fabric. The price of exploration is not cheap…..
