I was thinking earlier, this being around the time of the 40th anniversary of landing on the moon and all; the previous generation did some pretty impressive things. And they're all the more impressive when you consider how little we're able to do. They defeated the nazis, won the pacific, invented nukes, and strutted around the moon. We can't even re-build the Twin Towers after 9/11.
Not only did they defeat the nazis, but they utterly smashed them. To the point that today, there's no more nazis. There are only neo-nazis, and none of their organizations, as far as I know, can claim to be founded, run, or even financially supported by an actual nazis. The previous generation built up out of relatively little an army that was able to invade, not just a part of some neighboring country, which is usually the case with armies, but actually invade an entire continent. Former militiaries cracked fortresses, these folks cracked Fortress Europe. They created air commands that converted citadels to crumbling cinder. Before they finished they rescued not just one 'people', but many peoples from genocide. So thoroughly they threw themselves against the todfeind that their leader commited suicide! After all that they rounded up all their sub-leaders, put them on trial, and strung them up, practically creating an international basis for law and order in the process. And we can't even rebuild the buildings destroyed on 9/11.
This previous generation took back Asia and the Pacific, a continent and an ocean, the largest continent and tallest continent and widest and deepest ocean, from the imperial Japanese. They didn't even take it for themselves. Almost all of the land they took from the empire didn't come under American control. China isn't today a US territory, not even a single city in all of China is, whereas the British only recently gave up Hong Kong, from a long contract. Even when they took over Japan itself, a country that pushed back the Mongols, who'd themselves ruled Asia, and who's cousins the Huns practically disassembled Europe; they didn't make it their own. And us, we haven't even re-built the towers after 9/11.
The fact that they, at the same time, built nuclear weapons and nuclear power is practically poetic or mythic.The gnostics talk about the demi-urge the created the world and the devil that wants to destroy it. The Iranians talked about the good god and his equal and opposite the malevolent god. It wasn't that long ago that we were made something that could power the world, or a power that could destroy it. And now, we won't even re-build anything on old World Trade Center.
Around forty years ago Americans were walking on the Moon, collecting rock samples, setting up experiments, communicating results back to people on Earth. And not just once, but several times. We haven't gone as far or gone further since. We can't even re-build the towers from 9/11 and our best plans are skeletal looking half buildings with a glassy cheat to get to the same height. I mean, what says it more, it wasn't that long ago that we built two towers on that location of terrible height, and today we can't even build one that legitimately has the same height. When they went up, they were the tallest buildings in the world. And they're both planned, mind you, only planned, only talked about, being someday, 'hopefully someone will eventually do it', to be replaced by a smaller building.
I don't know if it shows that the acheivements in the past were really just tremendous, more impressive than we tend to realize, or that its just really difficult to actually build something, and that's why we're having trouble with the replacement.
