We Need You To Dream Again

I'm going to touch on a few subjects this time around that I'll get to on other weeks, but bear with me because it'll all tie together by the end, if not sooner. This is a going to be a long one.

The world is in pretty bad shape, right? We've got at least one deadly disease spreading across the world, our southern border has been all but dissolved by our corrupt federal government, we have a corrupt federal government that would make any dictator proud, there's the Russia-Ukraine thing that's ongoing, the Israel-Palestine thing that's ongoing, Antisemitism is on the rise in Europe (never a good thing) and seems like everywhere else, you have a militant Islamic movement taking over Syria and Iraq that's committing all kinds of barbarisms and atrocities against... well, pretty much everyone they can get their hands on, but mostly on the region's Christians. I'm sure that China is up to something (because they always are) and there's probably a few natural disasters running about.

But we don't have to get depressed. The future doesn't need to get worse. We can dream again.

I grew up in the 90s and the 2000s and while some distasteful things happened, I remember an overall optimism about the shape of the future. Now it is hard not to be pessimistic, isn't it?

Fixing the United States government will be hard but simple. We need to vote out the socialists and the communists (same difference) and the statists and the big government activists this fall and replace them in congress with good reliable responsible small government conservatives. Or better yet, vote in Libertarians. No matter what their personal views on social or financial issues are a good libertarian supports full freedom and the smallest government necessary.

"Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
-- Thomas Paine, "Common Sense"

Alright, I'm a little off the topic I want to discuss here. Politics is for another post. What I really want to talk about is dreaming, and the inspiration for dreaming.

I can just as easily say hopes instead of dreams. But... dreams work better. Dreams provide a goal. Dreams can be more active than a hope.

I like Star Trek. No. Actually, I love Star Trek. Star Trek followed an era where before the closest to flight we could come to was an air balloon, was replaced by actual flight, and then regular flights leading up to almost routinely putting men on the moon (and then explosions and sadness).  Star Trek was inspired by the hope and dreaming of that progression.

I don't know how many of you have read or watched interviews of scientists and engineers, but a goodly portion of them were inspired to go into their fields by Star Trek. And now we have cell phones, and 3D printers, and tablets all because one show inspired people.
The original series of Star Trek, as well as the Next Generation were conceived of as a Utopia. A point where humans had (mostly) made peace with themselves and moved beyond most material greed (the proliferation of replicators probably helped with that). The people are still human (the ones that ARE human), but they still aspire to be better and to learn and create and are everything that make humankind great.
Star Trek inspires people to be better people, as well as to create a brighter future.

I do not like Star Wars. It is a fun enough series, but... that's about it. I suppose it could have inspired some people to go into robotics (although how C-3PO could have done that I have no idea). I just... for everything that happens in the Star Wars universe, it is a very stagnant place. I guess the stories are meant to be cyclical, but it just tells me that that galaxy is stuck in a rut. Star Wars has a history spanning about 20,000 years. In all of that time, you have the story of dark side and light side repeating endlessly because after 20 millenia of mostly unbroken society obviously no one is going to learn a durn thing about curbing excess destructive tendencies.
And their technology... ugh. In 20,000 years you know what the major technological advances are? Smaller batteries for lightsabers, and the Death Star. And the Death Star was just a huge upscaling of existing things! If you took a starfighter from 5000 years before the battle of Yavin (Episode IV) and pitted it against with something from say... 7 years after the battle of Yavin (Episode VI) the performance would be extremely comparable.
No, I do not like Star Wars.

There is so much more to our world than most people realize.

One of the most important steps to moving towards a better and brighter future is cheap, clean, and abundant energy. A few years ago I watched a TED talk on liquid Thorium reactors. It was cool, but I didn't give it too much thought at the time. I think it was this one:


I don't think that he goes into it in this particular video, but Thorium is an amazing power source that, compared with everything else, produced electricity costing pennies on the dollar. That's compared to fossil fuels, solar, wind, and other nuclear power.

Thorium cannot be weaponized, or at least it can't be done easily. The liquid-salt fission reactors don't melt down and spread radiation when something goes wrong and things shut off. They are vastly smaller than current Uranium fission reactors, which makes them potentially very portable.

There was a video making the rounds for Solar Freaking Roadways! a while back that would be awesome, and I am all for that. But I see Thorium reactors as a much more efficient and economical means of meeting the world's energy needs.

With energy from a Thorium reactor, the fuel used per person per year in the United States would be about 4 grams. 4 GRAMS! That's like 2 paperclips! A handful of Thorium provides all the power you should need for an entire lifetime. I watched a video earlier that said the average person in the US uses about 57 gallons of fossil fuels every year right now. All of those fossil fuels pump out a lot of pollutants (and I'm more worried about health effects and genetic anomalies caused by that than any supposed climate change). Thorium reactors are contained in such a way that their only output into the world is energy in the form of electricity or heat.

Can you tell that I'm in love with this idea? I have a vision in my head right now of a world powered by Thorium reactors and Solar freaking roadways!

You know what makes liquid-salt reactors even more awesome? They'll be perfect for space travel and space colonies. Right now our space efforts rely on batteries and solar panels for watts and kilowatts of power... ok... but a liquid-salt reactor will provide them with 50-100 MEGAwatts! Enough to power an engine, and life support, and computers, and who knows what else.

That kind of cheap, clean, and abundant power won't fix every problem on our planet, but man will it be a step in the right direction. There are so many amazing things going on in the world. Support them, and please don't dwell on all of the bad stuff. Act when you can, and things will start looking up.

Thanks for reading. I'll just leave you with a few more Thorium videos and links.



Taylor Wilson: My Radical Plan

Thorium Documentary Summary