Will our Descendants Feel the Same Way?
Watch a video, film or documentary about people from 50 or a 100 years ago. Do you feel connected? Can you understand how they feel? Do those long dead people have any idea what life is like for you?
Now imagine you are on a spacecraft traveling through the void of space. This little world is all you have known. It's all your parents have ever known. It's all your grand-parents have ever known. And it's been this way for hundreds of years.
You have no interest in what's outside your little world, because, for hundreds of years there has been nothing but void.
How can you maintain an optimistic zeal to explore when faced with that tiny world for your entire life? How can you engender excitement in your belligerent, cantankerous teenage children? And it's not just your life, you'll be fighting generations of history.
Traditions and aspirations change with each generation. And I find it difficult to believe our descendants will know, care or even understand why we sent multi-generational spaceships into the void. And if they do, will they thank us or hate us for condemning/committing them to that life?