Thankfully, we are not astronauts

The American Criminal mind

The episode of the respected and excellent NASA astronaut who is now facing an attempted murder charge is interesting from many perspectives.

However, I see one particular American perspective to this matter, this is broadly a generalisation of sorts; every time there has been a serious criminal situation, the police and news people do a background analysis and most cases do not expect their suspect to be holders of college degrees, have decent jobs or be high achievers.

Generally, criminals should be genetically predisposed to vices that separate achievement from non-achievement.

An astronaut is supposed to be in the rank of the highest achievers having passed every kind of psychometric and demographic profiling to become one of America’s best.

The cult of achievement

Unfortunately, this case has besmirched the Graven Image and humongous Golden Idol of the Cult of Achievement and they who worship at the Altar of Perfect People have just realised that the astronaut is flesh and blood, human and fallible just like you and I.

However, it would appear NASA finds that unacceptable – the concept of being human, mortal and emotionally affected – that they would be reviewing from two perspectives the physical and mental assessment criteria for becoming an astronaut, as if, any tests can pinpoint with accuracy such unpredictable behaviour.

Thankfully, we are not astronauts

Something we non-astronauts would know without having to achieve these high grades of becoming cult demigods is this; none of us would drive 900 miles in diapers to achieve anything – it takes the innate quality of an astronaut’s mental prowess and genius to come up with such meticulous attention to detail.

For that realisation we are grateful but probably scared rotten that astronauts might be such a seriously calculating bunch that some unsolved issues in our communities might as well have been perfectly perpetrated by people perfectly and conveniently out of the radar range of mere mortal detectives.

I must however commend how NASA has closed ranks about its own and they way they have tried the manage the situation around the affected parties.

tags: nasa  astronauts  mental  physical  acheievement  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit