Be Fruitful, Multiply, Take Dominion Over the Cosmos

 The question before us here is whether this injunction in the title of this post is valid and consistent with universal lawfulness. Certainly we, as a species, can evoke such a principled passion, inclusive of intellectual and emotionally artistic capacities, to undertake this mission. This is now beyond mere conjecture.

Yet we instead, childishly, insist upon dealing with our rather miniscule grievances and animosities in the very face of such a vast purpose as somehow taking precedence. Isn't that rather irreverent folly? Why should we expend any more effort attempting illusory control over the fancied lifeboats called nations on this pale blue dot? 

Each of us has embedded within our consciousness the tools to prove this ineluctable truth. Which is to say that our existence, as we know it, is purely potential for humanity to overcome whatever problems we face. And therefore an ultimately ongoing good. On the other hand, the forever unknown state, if it be that, of non existence, if not the opposite of good is not worthy of wringing our collective hands over. Thus, we can only not acknowledge a universal good of continuing creation in our relationship as a species with the harmony of universal development through a sheer perversity of will. 

So, we can sing with Beethoven in his last great string quartet the tune of "It Must Be" as a paean to immortality and a fugue of coeternal harmonic human universal development:

The Stretto in Dante's Paradiso: A Perspective

 Dante's great Commedia truly "came home" as all proper comedies should with Beatrice leading him on an imaginary tour of the known solar system and universe. This occurred as it must by analogy to the rhythmic cycles of the human singing voice cantata. For by overcoming the apparent insoluble dilemma of how to imagine our species as occupying the vantage point of interplanetary travel would necessarily elevate the language culture of the common vernacular in Dante's Italy. It is you see a matter of mental perspectiva. Much in the same way that Brunelleschi overcoming of the construction of the grand dome in Florence was to have been afterwards. 

Here then is the representation of the great Florentine artist Botticelli of Dante and Beatrice in "heaven."--

And here is the actual footage of the moon (our moon) circling, orbiting our very own Earth from the perspective of the Galileo spacecraft.--

It now is necessary for you to shift your perspective to the framework of humanity's new opportunities to take upon ourselves the wonderful mission that befits our potential to bring about great good for our posterity. This is the perspective of all great art and science that we can be certain will outlive our mere mortal existence as isolated individuals. This is the enduring challenge as juxtaposed to distopia of forever wars in the muck and mire of this planet...

Leibniz, Verbiest, Pascal: Religious Wars or Conciliation of Missions?

 I came across a posting recently about Ferdinand Verbiest, the Jesuit polymath who became a central figure in the Chinese court of Emperor Kangxi. It turns out that Verbiest invented a steam powered car during this period. Here is an illustration of his invention. This was apparently invented around 1672.

By Unknown author - 18th century print. Reproduction in [www.automotogaleria.pl/historia.html], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3988454

 Now it is also the case that at the same timeframe Gottfried Leibniz was engaged in promoting an opening to China based upon reconciling the philosophy of Confucianism with his own Platonic Christianity. Leibniz also was instrumental in promoting Denis Papin's steam engine design from the very same time. Here is an illustration of his "steam digester" from 1679:

By http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/thurston/1878/Chapter1.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11079399

Now it is also the case that Leibniz and Papin corresponded about the potential use of this invention to power a carriage: 

"The method in which I now use fire to raise water rests always on the principle of the rarefaction of water. But I now use a much easier method than that which I published. And furthermore besides using suction, I also use the force of the pressure which water exerts on other bodies when it expands. These effects are not bounded, as in the case of suction. So I am convinced that this discovery if used in the proper fashion will be most useful .... For myself I believe that this invention can be used for many other things besides raising water. I've made a little model of a carriage which is moved forward by this force: And in my furnace it shows the expected result. But I think that the unevenness and bends in large roads will make the full use of this discovery very difficult for land vehicles; but in regard to travel by water I would flatter myself to reach this goal quickly enough if I could find more support than is now the case .... It gave me much joy to find that you also have some plans to put the moving force of fire to use, and I strongly hope that the little test you told me of succeeded to your satisfaction."

Papin to Leibniz 1698.

Leibniz was at the same time endeavoring to bring China into his grand design to liberate via scientific progress humanity. The Jesuits who were more than willing to bring scientific revolutions to people regardless of their religious beliefs as a sort of means to an end. This is why Leibniz put it to them thusly: that the highest development of mathematics at the time being imaginary numbers as a proof  or rather instantiation of the Logos. 

It is interesting that another of Leibniz' predecessors in the development of yet another such instantiation, the infinitesimal calculus, Blaise Pascal was probably largely responsible for the dismantling of these very same Jesuit missions. Pascal published a very popular condemnation of them called Letters From a Country Gentlemen on behalf of a internecine Catholic rivalry known as the Port Royalists.

It is very unfortunate that Leibniz' vision for China was thusly never realized. However, the spirit of bringing the planets population into a concordant endeavor to improve the human condition has of late reemerged. The fact that humanity currently stands poised to lift itself off of only inhabiting this lonely planet together with the great peoples of the world is in fact just one more confirmation of Leibniz' dictum that the life force is good and therefore indestructible.  

China's plan for a mega space station

Coda: Leibniz' claim about the imaginary numbers representing the Logos may be appreciated in the role of the complex plane give us the geometrical degree of freedom heretofore thought impossible!! Viz. a quality stretching inherent in space. And a rotational degree of freedom. Today, two conundrums are paramount to the apparently insoluble axioms of astronomy. The Lamba stretching of space itself, referred to as dark energy and the rotational anomaly of galactic motion caused by an unknown supposed dark matter. So Leibniz was not far off the mark at all, don't you think?

The UnAmerican Empire

 As far as this article goes, it is unobjectionable. However, it needs to be to put into an overarching context of what exactly motivates the "adults in the room." Most, like Greenwald, would have it that simple explanation is that the greedy military/industrial complex seeks forever wars to keep the funds pouring into their coffers. Certainly there is an element of that for many in the environs of the beltway bandits. Yet, there is another much more pernicious explanation that uneasily unites the neocons and the humanitarian "regime change" zealots of right and left in their quixotic globalist presumptions. It is the doctrine of imperialist geopolitics. It was this that motivated "Great Game" the arming of al Qaeda as a bulwark against the former Soviet Union during the Reagan administration. It is still this that motivate the Bzrezinskiite Democrats to attempt to encircle Russia today with "Color Revolutions." If the "American elites" suppose that we are the heirs of the British Empire, there is nothing but the chaos of collapse and decay forthcoming...