Curiosity and Consequences: What It Will Feel Like If Life On Mars Is Discovered

It will feel like the man leaving Plato’s cave in the below video.

As with one coming out of Plato’s cave, a greater vista on the truth will have been apprehended, and we will pity those who came before us and reasoned about their existence not knowing the momentous thing that we have learned. There will also be those who, for fear, will not look, or who will look at the new truth askance, trying to incorporate it into old ways of understanding. But everything will have changed. We will see ourselves, as Earthlings bound to this planet, as tragically limited; as chained; as provincial, and we’ll ask in what ways we have limited our imaginations, and how we might be unbound. As the light of the sun draws us out of doors, Mars will compel us forward to itself. It is the latest in a long line of golden calves. It is the new American continent.

About Santi Tafarella

I teach writing and literature at Antelope Valley College in California.
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