Does Anyone Have a Vision for America?

Edgar D. Mitchell (edmitchellapollo14.com)

“The first thing that came to mind as I looked at Earth was its incredible beauty. […] It was a majestic sight—a splendid blue    and white jewel suspended against a velvet black sky. […]

 Next I thought of our planet’s life-supporting character. That little    globe of water, clouds and land no bigger than my thumb was home, the haven our spacecraft would seek at the end of our voyage […] Then my thoughts turned to daily life on the planet. With that, my sense of wonderment gradually turned into something close to anguish. Because I realized that at that very moment […] people of Earth were fighting wars, committing murder and other crimes; lying, cheating and struggling for power and status; abusing the environment by polluting the water and air, wasting natural resources, and ravaging the land, acting out of lust and greed; and hurting others through intolerance, bigotry, prejudice and all the things that add up to man’s inhumanity to man. It seemed as though man were totally unconscious of his individual role in—and individual responsibility for—the future of life on the planet.”

These are the words of Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, moonwalker and visionary.  He wrote the above quote in his book Psychic Exploration, published in 1974 just a few years after his visit to the moon. After years of being out of print, this book is now available again and is a testimony to Mitchell’s vision that the world can be a better place and.....

that we can realize our human potential by being more conscious. After his Apollo trip in 1971, Mitchell moved on to found in 1973 the Institute of Noetic Sciences to support individual and collective transformation through consciousness research.

Mitchell is not only a visionary in his own right, he benefited from the vision of others, including the man who expressed this in September, 1962:

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office

That man was President John F. Kennedy. Both he and Mitchell expressed visions for America and even for mankind during the 20th century, visions with a profound effect continuing today:  travel in outer space, as Kennedy envisioned, and exploring the mysteries of inner space, as Mitchell and IONS are working on. Now that we are in the year 2011, it seems that America and the world as a whole is lacking in vision for the future and lacking individuals able to express it. What vision do we hear from Washington, what vision is executed in Wall Street, and what vision is expressed in Hollywood? I haven't seen or heard anything even close to the visions of Kennedy and Mitchell. Moving forward without vision is like moving in a dark tunnel with no light at the end: not a very confidence inspiring image, is it?