Globally, total spending on the Military Industrial Complex reached the highest point in history at 2.34 trillion dollars. I am not one to say money spent on war fighting equipment goes to waste, well except the portion spent on ammunition that blows up. That money factually went to something that stops existing the moment it is used. The results of that waste in human life and infrastructure are without measure.

We have always been told by the companies that make the arms, through the governments that buy the arms for use, that we must spend this money, always increasing for our defense. Well, yes. Sort of. History taught the United States what happens when there is a meager defense reserve after Pearl Harbor. Yes, the funds spent on military technology and research multiply and drive innovation in other sectors.

What if we invested even half the the volume of money spent on destroying each other into all things space exploration and colonization efforts? What if the engineers working to develop the technologies for weapons were engaged in developing the technologies to survive and industrialize outer space? There is so much complaining about mining on earth. What if all the mining took place on asteroids? What if we started thinking big about shifting our knowledge infrastructure toward exploration and infrastructure to support it instead of toward ways to destroy infrastructure we use to survive?

When did humanity stop dreaming about exploration and start focusing on arguing?

The James Webb Space Telescope is leaving people who have spent their entire careers looking at the heavens totally speechless and silenced. Voyager 1 and 2 are literally floating out in space beyond the reaches of our solar system and there’s little interest in that reality. James Webb was something like 10 billion dollars over 20 years. What if we spent 20 billion dollars in 1 year and built a new James Webb Telescope each year? What if we deployed Tesla’s Starlink over Mars only added the imaging lenses necessary for mapping the surface of mars as well? Why would we do such a thing? Why shouldn’t we is my response. The requirement in research and development for that task and the resultant break throughs in all sectors that would surely come from it are reason enough. The fun part is that no one dies from this task. Designing better and better rocket artillery systems are designed with the intention to destroy everything humanity with each rocket. That alone should make us pause and deeply reflect on what the sum total of our individual lives will be if we succeed at building more technology for war fighting.

Perhaps we need to do a collective pause and deeply reflect on what the sum total of our actions, choices, words, and treatment of others of the entirety of our individual life will be. We are all going to die. When that moment comes, what will be the narrative that is left behind for our descendants to learn about their ancestors? Will we be standing before God with a lengthy list terrible that makes us sad and ashamed as we reflect on how we got there? I figure at that moment, we will be grateful for God’s grace shown through purgatory. Do we honestly believe that we can live a shitty life of hurting people in all that we have done and everything will be just fine because Jesus and we will suddenly walk right through the gates and into heaven without any consequence? Three 18 year old kids threw rocks out of the back of their truck and killed a woman a couple days ago. The mess they made is going to require a clean-up job. The victim of their terrible was a 20 year old daughter of someone. Do we honestly believe that if they find Jesus in a jail cell in a couple days there won’t be any consequence in the heavens as the live out a life sentence on Earth? Yes, recieving the grace of God through Christ gets them off the list of the manifest for a long float on the River Styx, but when those who killed a 20 year old woman driving her car for their own entertainment are standing before God, do we honestly believe they get a pass without some time to clean themselves up prior to entering into Heaven? There’s a reason Martin Luther didn’t like purgatory. He knew the explaining he was going to have to do, so it was easier to throw a temper tantrum and run away from the destruction he wrought on earth.

What does the list we take to God that Christ will have to bare on our behalf look like? What does the list of mankind look like if our kings and priests shift our course away from mutual destruction to mutual growth and exploration? We all bare the cost of the actions and choices of our kings and priests, just as they bare the collective costs of the people under their responsibility.

When do we stop hurting each other?