We're really at a turning point: We either go forward or we go back. By stopping and stagnating, we actually go back. I look around at the turn of the millennium and I see a prosperous, powerful, technologically unparalleled society, which collectively has no purpose but to feather its own nest. It's a goal-less, rudderless society dedicated to increasing security and creature comforts. Our children are raised in a world without heroes. They are led to believe that heroism consists of throwing a football the furthest, getting the most hang time during a slam dunk, or selling the most movie tickets with your looks and your boyish charm.
This is not heroism, and these are not the valid tests of our mettle as an intelligent race. Young kids need something to dream about, something to measure their value system again. They live in a sea of mind numbing affluence, a point-and-shoot video game world where it's hip not to care, where death and violence have no meaning, where leaders are morally bankrupt, and where the scientific quest for understanding is so not cool. Going to Mars is not a luxury we can't afford. It's a necessity we can't afford to be without. We need this.
We need this, or some kind of challenge like it, to bring us together to all feel a part of something and to have heroes again. The problem is there's no challenge on our horizon like Mars. If we rise to a challenge, we're gonna redefine ourselves, and we're gonna ratchet ourselves up another notch in the evolutionary ladder. In return, Mars will reward us with answers to profound questions and with a renewed sense of self-worth as a species.
Survival on the red planet will not be easy, but neither will it be impossible. Rather, it will be just difficult enough. Mars is a place we can just reach standing on tiptoe. To live there will be an awesome task, but one which we can meet. Mars will be the next great test of ourselves. It will test our intelligence, our bravery, our endurance, our questing spirit, our ability to cooperate, and indeed, every noble and worthy aspect of human potential.
Just as an Indian boy on the cusp of manhood walks alone in the wasteland on his vision quest, confronting Mars will be a right of passage for our adolescent children -- or adolescent civilization. It will be our collective vision quest by which we will know ourselves and find the next clue to our destiny. When the first man or woman sets foot on Mars, every human being on Earth will stand vicariously in those boots at that moment. We will all as one be uplifted and ennobled. We will be energized by the exhilaration of the accomplishment, and of being part of the greatest adventure of all.
In an age when the horizons have grown near, when the lands of mystery are as close as the travel channel, when everything seems known and tired, when all the wildernesses are conquered, the human soul is starved for challenge. Only our outbound quest can satisfy this hunger, which is a very real hunger that is at once spiritual, psychological, emotional, as well as intellectual. We do this for knowledge and to hone our technical capabilities. But most of all, we do it for our deepest hearts, which yearn outward.
-- from James Cameron's address to the International Mars Society, August 1999
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