Reaching the Stars

The Making of Progress in Civilisation, Science, and Humanity

The Heart’s True North

For thousands of years, our ancestors have never quite ceased to look up the sky and look to the stars, so much so that we’ve mapped out the constellations, left our footprint on the moon, and it won’t be too long before we go on to settle on Mars. 

Why is it that we are so drawn to the light from afar? 

Perhaps deep down, we all desire the far-off, the high-above, the most divine ideal. 

Deep down, we all crave to move forward, to go upward, to transform into a better human, and to transcend above the vicissitude of our mundanity. 

With our divine gift of consciousness, we humans have been—despite and thanks to the countless sacrifices and detours—doing exactly that.

By walking into the unknown with courage, we’ve created knowledge and put it to test again and again, bearing the risk of death for the hope of a more fulfilling life. 

Isn’t that the apparent secret of our impalpable humanity?

We orient ourselves towards the heart’s true north, and with love and courage, we sail into the unknown and undiscovered, with the knowledge left by those who went before us in hand and in mind, and the knowledge we are yet to create residing in the depth of our collective consciousness.

Such is the inheritance and the constant renewal of our civilisation. 

The Light of Science

Science is often revered and mystified almost religiously especially by those unfamiliar with the craft.

Nevertheless, science, by definition, is diagonally opposed to reverence and mystification. The scientific method is grounded on the perpetual acceptance that we are only ever going to be infinitely close to the truth of the universe, but never quite there. 

This acceptance manifests as even the thinnest sliver of doubt on every definitive statement made by men.

As Karl Popper puts it, for a theory to even be considered scientific, it must be able to be tested and conceivably proven false. 

For instance, let’s come up with a theory that “all horses are brown”. 

Can it be tested? Yes, we can observe all the horses we can possibly find.

Can it be falsified, i.e., proven false? Yes, the theory crumbles the moment we spot a horse that isn’t brown. 

That, in essence, is science—or more precisely, the scientific method.

You come up with a conjecture with your imaginative intuition. And then you set up tests and experiments to prove it wrong in every way possible. 

If one of your conjectures withstood the test of both time and consciousness, then it is considered the best explanation of a phenomenon you could find—but only for the time being—until it’s overturned and replaced by a better explanation.

Only starting from the Enlightenment, the scientific method has become increasingly mainstream in our way of thinking, and consequently grown more sophisticated in the explanations it produces. 

Having come so far, we’ve therefore taken theories that are easy to test for granted—such as “not all horses are brown”—and poured billions in both economic and human capital into investigating the most elusive of problems. 

Now, in physics, the most intelligent people are stuck for decades on quantum theory, blackhole, and dark matter, etc.

In computer science, for example, the generation of truly random numbers remains an unsolved problem—although essentially, that’s also a problem in physics. 

Nevertheless, with science, humanity finally embarked on the fast train of exponential progress, so has its light of reason and critical rationality radiates towards every possible realm of humanity—in ethics, in governance, and in arts.

Even though it's already been short of 500 hundred years since the Enlightenment launched humanity into exponential progress by the way of science, we are only at the beginning of infinite possibilities.

The Demon in Our Own Nature

To many moderns, life feels meaningless. 

If everything is made of atoms and I am simply a slump of randomly moving atoms, then how am I fundamentally different from a chair or a potato?

Existential inquiries of the like are not just musings done by philosophers, but also meditations of our own unconscious, given that roughly 95% of our behaviour is governed by our unconscious self.

Nihilism—the belief that life is meaningless—as Nietzsche predicted, has become the hopefully temporary by-product of science.

Nevertheless, just as when Moses was up on Mount Sinai, against God’s commandments, the Israelites started worshipping a golden calf of their own creation, is nihilism the golden calf of our own creation in the abandonment of all pursuit of truth?

Is it the likewise sweet yet temporary relief from all responsibility and ordinances the dark side of our nature surreptitiously craves?

Reaching the Stars

When all is supposed to be rational, where does that leave the emotional and the transcendent?

Will the abandonment and renunciation of all the irrational forebode ever more progress and prosperity for humanity? 

Perhaps not, but then again, we need more knowledge in science, arts, and morality to answer that question. 

We need more daring theories, followed by intricately designed experiments and reasonings. 

Because that’s how we explore new territories.

That’s how we reach the stars. 

We aim at where we want to be. 

We absorb scrolls of knowledge left by those who have been through part of the journey. 

We take on one quest after another to get closer and closer to that aim by correcting old knowledge and creating new knowledge.

And just one step at a time, we’ve invented cars and aeroplanes, we’ve reached the moon, and now we are soon to settle on Mars before we launch humanity into the outer galaxy. 

But what if I want to stay on Earth? What if my aim is to learn a new language, to become an engineer, or to just live a happy life? 

Well then, let that be your be symbolic star. Gravitate towards it all the same.

You’ll still have a frontier filled with potential and the unknown, with a wealth of knowledge readily available at your fingertips. 

AstraUni

AstraUni, beyond this newsletter, is also a tool and a platform.

AstraUni imitates the necessary elements of civilisation building, scientific discovery, and knowledge creation. 

As a tool, it's a map builder for you to reach the star of your dream.

You aim at an Astra—a goal, a mission, or a dream. 

And then you take on one Quest—an action—at a time.

If you ever need it at anytime, you can also pick up an Atom—a minimal token of knowledge—to stand on the shoulders of those former explorers and leap forward from there. 

As you get closer and closer to your Astra, you will create new Atoms of knowledge from your Quests. You will also get inspired by the Atoms you pick up to take on new Quests. 

As a platform, it’s a dot connector for you to be inspired and supported by your fellow explorers.

Along this journey, you will find people who are just on the same Quests as you, or learning the same Atoms as you, or even aiming at the same Astras as you. 

They are going to be your comrades, your partners, your mentors.

Perhaps you’ll team up, or you’ll share your knowledge and wisdom, or you’ll simply tell stories of your adventures.

Regardless, you’ll be reigniting the Enlightenment of the our age. 

You’ll be a contributing member of a force of goodness to once again launch our shared humanity into infinite heights.

Closing

AstraUni is only getting started. If you’ve read thus far, then more than likely you’re just the practical idealists we’re waiting for.

We will build communities for the earliest and most active explorers on AstraUni, just to make sure that even if you’re doing hardest the thing on behalf of humanity, you’ll never be truly alone.