(Yep, another repost from my Traveller far future RPG blog)
A good song, with fits into the Traveller ethos well.
It’s disappointing, though, that modern young men don’t want to step up and lead the charge. They should.
Yes, it’s just art: and young men like to look at young women. However, I get a sense that eyeballs and clicks aren’t the only reason for the plethora of women warriors — and, more notably, the lack of masculine imagery in battle/exploration.
My intuition tells me that young artists (most of whom are men) feel spiritually/ethically inferior to women: you know, just as they are taught to feel in the public schools. And the mysterious lack of adult men worthy of being called heroes — with not just physical strength, but spiritual and intellectual stature as well, worthy of respect in the public eye — feeds into this.
And the blame for that absence doesn’t lie in the public schools.
Actual physical reality is one thing: but dreams and imagination and art also matters. Even games and songs and pretty pictures… as such subjective realities shapes our reality as well.
The abdication of men does not lead to women gaining the strength of men, regardless of what the government legal code says, or the schools, or the grant-seeking scientists, or the media noise machine. It merely leads to more injustice, more lawlessness, more slavery from distant and unaccountable masters.
More fear and despair.
More poverty and ignorance.
And in time, more sterility and death too.
You’ll always find men eager and ready to take command of the state, and use and weld power over the public for any and every justification, religious or racial or military or democratic or medical.
You won’t always find men ready to sacrifice decades of their life to raise a family, or even tie themselves down to just one woman.
Instead of running away in shame, men — old as well as young — need to repent, and turn to the Law of God for guidance and strength.
If you want to be lead, and be worthy of respect, you must earn it. If you want to command, first serve.
The older men — pastor and politician and judge and scientist and soldier alike — in their intense hatred of accountability and responsibility and law, have lead the way to where we are.
The younger men will have to do better than their elders did.
Amusingly, this in no way makes it impossible or even unlikely for young women to operate huge and powerful machines, as depicted in the image.
It merely means that their fathers will be doing a good job in training them, and in maintaining the machines, and in insuring that they are treated and rewarded justly for their work. And that their orders are worthy of their spirit, building and strengthening their hearts instead of poisoning heart and mind and soul.
Many daughters would love to have a way to make their fathers proud. Their fathers should open a way for them to use their skills well – be it child-raising or machine-controlling, or even exploration – and so successfully make their fathers proud.1
A just social order — which, by definition, isn’t far from the Kingdom of God — doesn’t just pop up naturally. It takes work, and sacrifice, and patience, and time. Even the guidance of the Holy Spirit, as well as humility and faith and love.
This implies that those huge machines they are standing on are not war machines. And that’s fine with me: I get no pride in war, and I get no joy in killing others and smashing/stealing their stuff.
It’s also more realistic: mecha are fairly easy to defeat in the battlefield — too easy to spot and topple via artillery — but there could be many constructive use for walking working machines.
1 Building on a theme:
To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
Genesis 3:16, English Standard Version
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
This is the curse that subjugated women to men.
But Christ came to set us – both men and women – free from the curse.
Already, much of the pain of childbirth is gone, as well as the risk of death. And it is only natural that the power of men – even the husband – over their women would be increasingly restricted as well.
Just as most (not all) men don’t actually sweat in the fields, to earn their bread, fighting thorns and thistles.
We will have to wait longer before the curse of death is removed, though. At least many centuries.
But eventually — at least for those who love God — we will, indeed, be welcomed to the future.
A better one than Traveller depicts.
Acrosss the Stars 