Thermodynamics and the Moon's New Footprints

The goal of reaching the Moon began in the primordial seas of our planet, where the ocean's organisms were drawn to and fro each day by the Moon and Sun.  Tides carried swimming creatures on their first attempts to reach the Moon - a sense that became obvious whenever a swimming animal, anticipating the venture would be short, was interrupted by the ebb, or by a hungry predator.

Anticipation of the Moon's draw was embedded in every living animal that was hatched or born since then.  That's over 400 million years of prehistoric Moon struggle.  It's in our cells, blood, and instincts to know the Moon deeply, and go toward there, that place, whatever it was or is, where it always is in the skies of Earth. Ye Gods, the prehistoric Moon had gravity.

One physical fact, that somehow never became articulated in words or symbols until Mankind understood the phenomenon, was that the center of gravity of the Earth-Moon system lies within the biosphere of Earth.  It is to be capitalized on, as, flush with success, we now-dominant human mammals of Earth retire the instincts of the cold -blooded reptilian instincts that in ancient times founded the predecessors of carnage and plunder which underlie war.

So far, those who actually flew to the Moon were few.  They plaque placed there states "We Came in Peace for All Mankind", and gave the Moon's secrets to all human beings.  Many persons are examining Moon rocks now.  Costly alien mineral samples, the treasured specimens were distributed to many nations of the world as gifts from faraway lands.  It will be appropriate to think on these things with great care, judicious probity, patient conscience, transcendent vigilance and courage-the Moon rocks, so much the same as the familiar rocks of Earth-for many generations.

In many professions, worrying about warm-blooded and cold-blooded creatures is considered frivolous. Nonetheless it is a deeply important distinction.  It is certain to  have serious consequences for good or ill in time because it involves instincts that differ in by hundreds of millions of years.  The distinctions readily made in the flush of the first space flights will be new thousands of years hence.  They re-emerge each generations.  The implications of space flight are deeply and substantially transcendent - spanning thousands of years, with great depth.  Those artifacts from Earth on the Moon are utterly different than the Moon ever was.  They actually exist there.   For a billion years, the Moon had no high order artifacts or anything else on it made by living beings.  Now, it does.  Never in the future will the Moon ever be that, again.  It is hoped the changes taking place now in humankind are deeper than the idea of putting a mere obelisk on it.  To be sure, that would be something.  But the changes in Earth's life are more important and far more urgent.

With an internet connection, television and radio it is easy to be overconfident.  Outside of civilization it is not easy to be sure what the question actually is.  In the middle of a forest or an ocean, what is any question?

No more should Albert Alligator and Krokodil be in the inner sanctums of the human governments, or its courts, business establishments and educational institutions.  There is no time at the present to make decisions about Earth's destiny or even its immediate future, from the viewpoint of cold-blooded fishes and reptiles, the snakes, alligators, crocodiles and gila monsters.  They do not belong in the human court.

Even so, to say it brings hisses to the ears.  Protests against poikilotherm organism are likely to run into the political equivalent of jealousy at first, until human beings - warm-blooded all - begin to understand everywhere that human opinions are valued just because they do keep their bodies at stable, warm temperatures.  Being warm at all times, living human beings cultivate and value transcendent conscience as a characteristic mode of their collective species.  

Cold-blooded creatures cannot do that; they cannot evaluate their collective conscience.  It is wrong to value their judgement, for in human terms they have none.  Reptiles do not provide any kind of cute or shrewd opportunistic faculty that can do anything one wants for free.  Their errors are too monstrous.  It is time to strengthen the sanctions against cold-blooded behavior in business, law, industry, education, war and entertainment.  The consequences of failure to do so could well be increased danger of the misuse of nuclear energy for other than peaceful purposes.

Human beings, monkeys, dogs, cats, birds, mice, foxes, squirrels and other mammals are called homoiothermous.  We need them when making judgement calls in winter.  Should the horses, sheep, and cows be brought into barns in a cold spell?  Shouldn't the dogs be indoors in this cold weather.  Human beings are sometimes given considerable latitude in financing weatherproof farmhouses in places with cold winters.

Snakes, lizards, crocodiles, alligators and such creatures are called pokilothermous.
A poikilotherm is an organism whose internal temperature varies with the temperature around them. A poikilothermous organism is an ambient-blooded creature.  It cools in night time temperatures or in cold seasons or weather.  Some of them survive freezing in subzero temperatures; among these, several survive in ice water so cold that in normal water or unprotected blood they would die from ice crystals within themselves.   Those creatures cannot be trusted with human destiny. 

Blessedly good fortune, it is, that no  human being alive is actually a cold-blooded reptile. However, human beings during conditions of great stress summon every instinct possible.  Especially if they are caught in flooding waters, or if they are in danger from fire, they must use every instinct, and under those conditions people are justified in being cold-blooded.  They may have to swim like fishes to avoid drowning, flee every perception of warmth to escape flames, or avoid freezing in winter storms or ice water.  The decisions about just how people can best appropriate the resources which the cold-blooded animals represent, so valuable in unpredictable extremes, must be made by professionals in medicine, the sciences, education and government.  In that sense it is important to give our leaders encouragement to undertake to make those decisions carefully.  This invokes active legislation, informed consent, justice and other powers of formal government in making these decisions well.  The results must be consistent among human beings regardless of where they find themselves, or who they are with. It is time to come to a sense of equal rights in thermodynamics - a field of natural phenomena that were previously thought to be intrinsically independent of right.

Living thermodynamics must never be independent or ignorant of right, not in matters of judgement.  Not with nuclear weapons around.