Astronauts

Astronauts are the one thing capitalism can’t quite ruin. You can slap any product on them—deodorant, cars, energy drinks—and they still somehow represent something real. Space travel is the last frontier we haven’t completely turned into content and engagement metrics.

What gets me is the simple math of it: you’re ordinary, you get selected, you go to space, you come back extraordinary. Not because anyone made you famous but because you actually did something most people never will. You have real stories, real photographs, real evidence that you’ve been somewhere else. That matters in a way that’s hard to articulate in an age where everything’s a performance.

Buzz Aldrin and the whole space program mythology built something that still has weight. Everything else capitalism sells us—money, status, influence—these things we’re supposed to want but nobody actually believes will make us happy. Space is different. Going to space might actually be worth something.