The Trident of TTSA: Part 1

Collin
Collin
Nov 1 · 3 min read
From ToTheStarsAcademy.com

There are three divisions of To The Stars Academy. The combination of these three divisions I refer to as TTSA’s Trident.

They are as follows:

Entertainment. Science. Aerospace.

From ToTheStarsAcademy.com

I want to say a few words about the entertainment division in this post. I have noticed the divide between those who exclusively pay attention to the entertainment division and those who exclusively pay attention to the two science-based divisions. It is rare to find someone who supports all three.

Which I think is a detriment.

It is, after all, entertainment that started To The Stars. And it is important to consider that fact. None of this would have developed the way it did if it hadn’t been for a punk-rocker who had a vision to do something bigger than selling 25 million records. (That is not to say that Tom DeLonge was the first to think of doing this sort of thing. But he is certainly the first to have as much success as he has had with it, given his prior occupation.)

It was not Luis Elizondo who had the idea for TTSA. It was not Steve Justice. It was not Dr. Hal Puthoff.

No.

It was someone who was previously known (and perhaps still known) for running down the road naked and blurting out dick jokes.

It was the work of an entertainer.

One big issue with TTSA right now is that it seems to have only snagged the attention of those interested in the science divisions of the company. Many in the UFO community, for example, are looking to TTSA for disclosure. (I talk about why this is a bad idea here.)

But I think it is a good idea to look to TTSA for ideas. That’s where the entertainment part of the company really shines. If you haven’t, I encourage you to check out some of their material.

Fictional entertainment is where we go to explore possibilities — where we test the waters of feasibility. It’s where ideas can be exchanged. And I am willing to bet that almost everyone interested in science was first introduced to science through a movie or a book — ie science fiction.

Tom mentions in Sekret Machines (novel) that fiction is the glue, but the building blocks are not. I think this is true. But it is nothing profound. Albert Camus — Nobel Prize-winning novelist, playwright, and journalist— essentially the said the same thing: “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”

The entertainment division at TTSA is also there to blur the lines between science and science fiction. Many are turned off by this strategy. But I think it is the most useful — especially when trying to communicate complex ideas to a population not privy to the science behind TTSA’s involvements.

The entertainment division also aims to communicate that the things we have always assumed are impossible are actually closer to reality than we think. That is how you get people interested — you get them to think critically about things they may not have given much thought to before.

In this way I think TTSA is on the right track. I did not know much about science or aerospace before TTSA came around. I learned about this stuff through Tom — someone I had been a fan of since I was a kid. (It was primarily through the lyrics of Angels and Airwaves.)

The idea of using entertainment to incite critical thinking worked on me. And it has worked on countless others. What separates good art (entertainment) from the bad is the ability to make people think in a way they haven’t before.

In this way, TTSA’s entertainment division does not necessarily serve the scientific community or the UFO community— it is focused on introducing the unacquainted with ideas they haven’t been exposed to before.

Check out Poet Anderson, Strange Times, and Sekret Machines!

Collin

Written by

Collin

MFA grad student. Fiction writer. Occasional scribbler of thoughts. Pessimistic/Existential philosophy. Absurdist/Metamodern lit. Political views: Pending.

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