banishment, ecology, frontiers, drugs, space travel, garbage, prisons, the internet and money

f.noose--- in regards to "...post some of those ideas you and Mr. Layne discussed about prisons etc..." I've been running this over and over again in my head for the last couple of days and to be honest, it scares me. My private thoughts on this subject are not so well formed that I feel confident sharing them in print, to be scrutinized on the internet. I know that when I feel scared in this way it is a thing I must confront. I guess this GARBAGE ON THE MOON project holds a fascination for me precisely because it deals with these subjects; ideas which have hold of me yet refuse to resolve themselves in some easy way..... here goes.

banishment
In the past, when human population had not covered the earth so densely if a person committed a crime so horrible that they could not be tolerated to live amongst their fellows, they would often be banished. "We don't care where you go but if you ever show your face around here, you're dead." All the other traditional forms of punishment are still with us today (prison, excecution, fines, public humiliation) but banishment has no place among us today because there is simply no more room on the planet.
ecology
The fact that there's no more room on the planet is the underlying notion of the green revolution which is really a huge shift in global human spiritual conciousness. This began maybe as early as the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species and definitly by the time Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962. Enlightened humans now understand that they themselves are just one small part of an interrelated system. The spirtual imact of this on the Christian world is to prove false the notion that God gave man dominion over the plants and the animals- now men must see themselves within a fragile ecology. Mankind's role is not to lord it over the others but rather to live responsibly within a system.
frontiers- (drugs and space travel)
By the early 1960's many people were realizing that the planet was crowded to the point that there were only two frontiers left worth dreaminng about- outer and inner space. The Apollo space program put a man on the moon and the beatnick's LSD blasted minds to the moon. Due to the prohibitive cost of space travel and the government's war on drugs, these frontiers have been effectively closed.
garbage
Unwanted waste is an inevitable problem in any discussion of ecology. The more we talk about garbage, the more people will independently come up with the idea of permaculture.
prisons
Without the ability to banish criminals, society must build more and more prisons. Every year our per capita prison population increases and a higher and higher percentage of those people are incarcerated on non-violent drug offences. When prison riots occur the first thing that happens is that everyone on the cell block spontaniously launches all their garbage through the cell bars.
the internet and money
People can just do crazy things. As long as nobody's getting hurt, we don't need no stinking government. We can all pay as much as we want and hire the job done. No need to wait for NASA or congress just write some HTML, trade some links, open a paypal and it is happening. The revolution is only a right click away.