I see Yuri as a symbol of the soviet worker, reaching for and achieving the stars.
It's more than hero worship. He represents everything the soviets strove for and achieved. And he is pure, untainted by any propaganda, just absolutely and wholly good. He's the perfect symbol to promote and maintain the USSR's image.
He's just a normal dude who got chosen for a space program. he's not perfect, He's not some grand hero who overturned history. He's just a normal guy, skyrocketed to great heights by collective teamwork and human ingenuity. It is not hero worship we are doing here. If there's any 'worship', any religion, it is the religion of humanity itself. A religion too many have fallen away from. In a sense, the Tower of Babel may not have existed, but in another sense, it's story was very much real. Together, as a species, or even as a small group, we are capable of escaping not only our own limits as individuals but the bounds of the very earth itself. God may have abandoned us but we, we will always have each other. And in a very real and material sense, we will always have Yuri. And I know if humanity falls, it will not be because we were not up to the challenge, but because we did not have enough faith in each other.
I look into our past and I can see that we could have been the species, or can still be, the species to break the 'Great Filter'. Humanity's strength as a collective rivals the power of the actual gods we created thousands of years ago in our stories. I think if we are all exterminated and are found by other, space-faring life, that life will both breathe a sigh of relief that our worse side did not expand beyond our planet, followed by the regret that could only be created by seeing one of the brightest sources of potential in this gravitational cluster become extinguished and fade under it's own cynicism.
I don't like hero worship but Yuri Gagarin is someone I look up to immensely.
:yuri:
I see Yuri as a symbol of the soviet worker, reaching for and achieving the stars.
It's more than hero worship. He represents everything the soviets strove for and achieved. And he is pure, untainted by any propaganda, just absolutely and wholly good. He's the perfect symbol to promote and maintain the USSR's image.
He's just a normal dude who got chosen for a space program. he's not perfect, He's not some grand hero who overturned history. He's just a normal guy, skyrocketed to great heights by collective teamwork and human ingenuity. It is not hero worship we are doing here. If there's any 'worship', any religion, it is the religion of humanity itself. A religion too many have fallen away from. In a sense, the Tower of Babel may not have existed, but in another sense, it's story was very much real. Together, as a species, or even as a small group, we are capable of escaping not only our own limits as individuals but the bounds of the very earth itself. God may have abandoned us but we, we will always have each other. And in a very real and material sense, we will always have Yuri. And I know if humanity falls, it will not be because we were not up to the challenge, but because we did not have enough faith in each other.
I look into our past and I can see that we could have been the species, or can still be, the species to break the 'Great Filter'. Humanity's strength as a collective rivals the power of the actual gods we created thousands of years ago in our stories. I think if we are all exterminated and are found by other, space-faring life, that life will both breathe a sigh of relief that our worse side did not expand beyond our planet, followed by the regret that could only be created by seeing one of the brightest sources of potential in this gravitational cluster become extinguished and fade under it's own cynicism.
Same, I think we're allowed at least one.