Flat world

look up, behind, diagonally

Your descendants, those who come after you, should take to the air, and spaces beyond.

Just study this map of star systems around us, above and below. You are so used to forward, often diagonally or hard left and right, and find it hard to go backwards. But while you know how to go downwards, you struggle with travelling diagonally backwards, up and even more so down.

Humans lazily think and live in a forward flat plane. But in the skies, as a plane, you think in a sphere all around you, extending indefinitely outwards. In space, moving with such perception is even more critical. Where then are forward, backward, your right and left?

In space, our star the Sun is forever relative to others in position. If we take ourselves as the starting centre, and the centre of our Milky Way galaxy as due north, whatever that really means, then our nearest Proxima Centauri is northeast, and slightly above.

But then, a further neighbour, Ross 248, will be quite west to our left and below us, whereas southwards behind, a closer Lalande 21185 is far higher! Confusing, right?

So I say, get your kids into the air, and your apprentices into space. Beyond your flat sheet of paper existence, reality stretches in all dimensions.