askchapo

I'll have to stick to the specifics of the argument and context on this one. We're talking about biology and now you're talking about individual personalities wistfully dreaming of greener pastures. We're slowly drifting from the point to something far beside the point. The point was that Sagan is conflating a more modern historical and social condition with human nature. This is something that people have done for hundreds of years and part of why capitalism is sticky. The innovation of Marx is that this modern social condition is not the eternal state of humankind, but something that has changed over time and must be changed. Everything has a social and historical context. The only way to make "people just want to explore new ideas" fit in with "traveling to space is a biological imperative" and "because people long ago traveled long distances" is to have no regard for either social or historical context. You have to remove context in order to flatten it out and make it all seem on the same level.

This isn't an argument about the indomitable spirit of mankind or whether people dream of possibilities. I'm trying to view this through a socialist lens not a romantic, literary one.