On January 20 the world celebrated Dr. Buzz Aldrin, the apotheosis of our passionately Epic era, on his 93rd birthday, fêted as a living legend of aviation, and, delighting tens of millions of Twitter users by celebrating his marriage to his beloved Dr. Anca Faur, the happy couple “excited as eloping teenagers.” (Full disclosure: I was privileged to participate.)
Buzz is sometimes described by the media as “the second man to walk on the moon.” True, but that misses the bigger picture, his and her embodiment of a “new order of the ages.”
Aldrin’s life may be seen as the apotheosis of a passionately Epic era now metamorphosizing by conjoining Epic passion with the tenderness of Intimacy. Their marriage, a perfect embodiment of this grand conjunction.
Yes, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were first to land on the moon, propelling them, both, indelibly into history. That said, there’s more.
Aldrin may be the greatest living world explorer. He, arguably, may be the greatest explorer in world history.
Out to the moon? Check.
Down, in a submersible, to the wreckage of the Titanic? Check.
To the North Pole? Check.
To the South Pole? Check.
Other explorers have their own legitimate claims to fame.
Peary, controversially, with Henson, Ootah, Seeglo, Egingwah, and Ooqueah, for primacy to the North Pole. Amundsen to the South Pole.
Heroes all. Yet Aldrin, only, ran the table.
His life was not distinguished solely by deeds of derring-do. He’s also an accomplished intellectual, teased by his fellow astronauts as an “egghead.”
When once I failed to explain NFTs to him he, possessed of an ScD from MIT, replied, unfazed: “Ask me anything about orbital mechanics.” And once, when we transited from the office of Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to the White House, he left a pair of eyeglasses in the taxicab.
It proved daunting to retrieve them. I asked, “How can we put a man, namely you, on the moon and bring him back safely and not be able to retrieve a pair of spectacles from a taxi?” He replied, “Ralph, the trip to the moon was mostly handled by computers. This involves the human element … much more challenging!”
Always future oriented, Aldrin is a foremost advocate of sending astronauts into deep space, to Mars … and beyond. Buzz was the inspiration for Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear: “To infinity and beyond!”
No humans have gone into deep space for a half century. Now, with the Artemis Program, NASA soon will put boots back on the moon … likely followed — racing China — by lunar colonization.
Aldrin demands more! America might buy the charmingly neurodivergent Elon Musk a one-way ticket to Mars, leaving Earth a rather less entertaining place. Yet as Musk alluded to on Saturday Night Live, immense challenges confront that.
Why no humans in deep space? It is one of the signs that world civilization is transitioning from pure Epic — exemplified by astronauts riding a pillar of fire Heavenward — toward Intimacy: a soft landing.
As I wrote at the Transpartisan Review:
In 1910, the year my father was born, something like 80% of the world’s population lived under an emperor. That ancien régime had endured for millennia. By July 24, 1923, four of the five great empires — the Austro-Hungarian, the Ottoman, the Russian and the Chinese — had fallen. The fifth and least autocratic, the British, was in terminal decline.
The magnitude of this world political transformation is so massive as to be mostly ignored. It was the Big Bang of our contemporary political universe.
After having achieved the impossible dream of landing on the moon, making America the preeminent spacefaring nation, we revisited Luna a few more times … and then ceased. Why?
When America won the Cold War the world’s attention shifted from outer to interstitial space. America created the Internet, and (with a critical assist from a Brit) the Web.
Then came social media, soon to be succeeded by Web3 connecting people. Intimacy.
An Intimate era now is fusing with the Epic era exemplified by Buzz.
Odysseus, after helping Agamemnon conquer Troy, fought his way back to the loving arms of his sweet and clever Penelope. The Tao Te Ching, that eminent feminist classic, teaches us: “The female always overcomes the male with serenity.”
Sooner than you might expect we may master Bose-Einstein condensates and meta-materials to make low power warp drive, making interstellar exploration and galactic colonization a reality. The cosmic wheel will spin again … leading to an even more Epic era, humanity Aldrinesquely colonizing the galaxy… in peace for all mankind.
Now, let us celebrate the arrival of an Age characterized by the fusion of Epic passion with tender Intimacy, yin and yang in balance, exemplified by the wedding of Buzz Aldrin and Anca Faur.
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $94T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.
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