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It's not about believing in greatness "harder" or "softer", it's about whether or not you believe in greatness at all. It's about choosing to enter the arena rather than be one of those cold timid souls who knows neither victory nor defeat.
Or for those who've been following recent internet trends, it's about "Embracing the Penguin".
To the populist right the image from Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World of a lone Penguin striking out towards the mountains speaks to deeply held beliefs about free-will, speaks to the desire to forge one's own path and to test themself against the world. It's a metaphor for a romantic heroism that not only feels increasingly absent from modern life, but in many spaces is actively derided.
To the technocrats and anti-populists the penguin is clearly out of his gourd. He's going to die before he ever reaches those mountains. Even if he does make it, what is he going to do then?
One's vision of "free-will" is the other's vision of "suicidal insanity".
People keep saying that the right lacks a positive vision for the future, but I've always thought that knife cut deeper going the other way. Sure the left talks a lot about climate change, universal healthcare, reparations, wealth redistribution, etc... but that feels more like "management" to me than "vision". And to the degree that the left does have "vision" I question the degree to which it is a "positive" one. They seem to see the frontier as something to be protected rather than explored. Growth is bad for the environment they tell us. Embrace consensus, reject risk, and you too will be allowed to eat and drink your fill. This is not a vision that appeals to me.
In conclusion, you're trying to convince people to abandon their dreams of a new frontier by appealing to material goods and comforts, but the sort of person who dreams of a new frontier is not going to be motivated by appeals to material comfort.
As for the physical difficulties, those are come down to questions of engineering and I have far greater confidence in SpaceX's ability to build a moon-rocket than I do the state of California's ability to build a railroad.
When your vision of greatness is fucking stupid I think I'm allowed to question it. There are other ways to grow on earth that don't require us to spend trillions of dollars to live in submarine for the rest of our lives.
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