Taking things for granted

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Said Fitzgerald a hundred years ago. If I am in the history, could I alter something to alter the current?

Sometimes the voices in my mind got me crazy. Prendre les chose comme acquis. Take things for granted in French.

As I was walking on the streets in Barcelona, I noticed that people took away the apparently-forgot-stuff as if that were theirs. — — -They were literally ‘taking things for granted.’

I would presume this is an act of stealing and hence a bad thing. But hold on. Why is it bad? If they can make a better usage of the stuff, wouldn’t it be good?

Who invents things first owns it, the so-called patent, to pay back the effort made. Like Edison.

But what about Christoph Colomb?

He didn’t discover the American continent. He colonised it. Colonisation, by definition, is a neutral fact. Let me think about why I put a negative connotation about it. ‘The action of approaching a place or domain for one’s own use. ‘, i.e., the fact that using one’s dominant power to force the others to obey themselves. It ultimately brings up an issue of respect and the potential risk of exploitation regarding inequality — -the powerful and the powerless.

But would there be any other way that Colomb set up a peaceful treaty with the indigenous instead of killing them?

Not that I am aware of. Because he represented Spain intending to conquer, in this case thinking one’s culture is better than the others, and hence control the region.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.

What about outer space?

When we get to know a place more and more, we tend to want to control it, and ‘naturally’ think about what good could it do to us. I think it’s a psychological thing. Or just a human nature.

So would it be that we just explore the outer space, science, for fun? I just think, you know, in the foreseeable future, Musk is going to colonize Mars and the immigrants there. It feels so weird to put it this way, as if he owns it. But that would be just a fact.

Or else how would you want him to approach his goal?

No, human beings community fall behind him far far away. He has the most resources. According to experiences, or evolutionally, if there’s no counterpart acting against him — -the so-called pressure — -the extremist would go to another extreme, i.e., decay.

And by then there wouldn’t be anyone except for Musk to do Spatial Maintenance stuff on Mars. So Mars would be polluted.

I smell something. But I could only say, it’s all about taking things for granted. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. I don’t know.