29. Why it's good for humanity to become multiplanetary
29. Why it's good for humanity to become multiplanetary
An exercise in viewing our personal goals in the context of a multi-generational aspiration
What is your life like when viewed in a sci-fi context?
Since the space program's inception many decades ago, space exploration has been a polarized issue. I have never understood why this should be the case.
Space exploration is worth doing, just like any exploration is worth doing, whether it's a person traveling to a different country, diving into a lifelong creative project, mapping the oceans, exploring your emotional landscape and sexual depths, or making a career change. What are we here for if not for growth, enlightenment, transformation, connection?
Throwing shade on the space exploration argument would seem to be about money. But it’s not.
Imitation-based voting
With questions that have a global scope, such as whether humanity should become a spacefaring race, everyone feels qualified to weigh in, which is great except when we are merely letting the beliefs of others be spoken from our own voice. More on that later.
Space exploration, the realm of astronomy, inherently deals with things that are astronomically large.
So, the argument goes, "How about we fix our problems down here before we go up there?"
"Can’t those billionaires help me out rather than building rockets?"
How expensive is space exploration? Let’s do the math. Let’s look at the NASA budget in comparison with some other figures:
The US defense budget is $815 billion a year. NASA’s is $24 billion.
In comparison with these figures, the cost of a new 747 seems to range between $250 and $367 million. If I’m ever in the market for one, I’ll let you know the sticker price I get personally. $250M seems like a ton of money, right? Well, it came out as 0.0% when weighed against the US defense budget. Compared with my income, the money spent on launching jellyfish into space is a lot of money. But compared with other items on the US budget, it’s not.
The thing is, working to become a spacefaring race does positively impact things “down here.” Besides, in light of some genuinely depressing social and political issues, isn’t it nice to have other options? I don’t just mean having the ability to escape tyrannical regimes. Whether or not you have anything to do with launching rockets, when you see others working to widen the pie, it helps give backing to more abundant ways of relating to each other.
Scarcity thinking will not help anyone do anything. I can try to decide how a billionaire should spend their money, but what good will that do? I’d rather work to fully inhabit my own life.
We need more ‘yes-and’s
This image of Earth from the moon was taken in 1968. What did that image do for the consciousness of a generation?
We need to be inspired again.
And again. And again. AI and social media aren’t cutting the mustard. But you know what never ceases to fill me with wonder, gratitude, and joy?
Co-creating. Whether it’s building something out of nothing or transforming something that already exists, there’s nothing more fulfilling than a shared enterprise.
I love solo creativity. It’s what I devote most of my energy to.
But as time goes on, the beauty of the collective enterprise beckons me. That doesn’t mean I need to have anything to do with launching rockets, just that I want to live in a world where things like that happen.
Launching rockets into space and eventually building space colonies will require a lot of collective action. Because such endeavors are not “practical,” people will participate because they are pursuing a shared vision.
Being too earthbound and terrestrial in our thinking has immense negative downstream effects. As a habit, it makes life dull. Over time, the sediment of experience occludes other options, and better possibilities no longer seem to exist.
Very few things are in truth ‘either/or.’ Why can't we fix things on Earth and explore space?
It would help progressive politics and environmentalism to have myriad streams of development moving towards greater possibility and sovereignty.
Where will you be in 247 years?
Enough of the space debate for now.
Here’s an invitation to apply a futuristic perspective to your own life.
How does what you do now feel when held from the sense of a distant spacefaring future?
Yes, we’ll all be dead in 247 years. But how does this shifted vantage point (the possibility that one day, humanity may also be living and exploring space) affect your worldview?
It puts me more in awe of things as they currently are. It matters more to me that I experience the simple things.
It’s humbling to the inner technocrat. After all, I could no longer presume that I live at the apex of civilization, or that my current situation is really the correct logical destination for me. It's where I am right now. I'm here because my actions brought me here. It leaves me with pregnant questions:
How does what I want mesh with what I have, and how does it not?
How much of what I desire is just learned behavior?
What the future says about the past will surprise us
If you put yourself in the perspective of someone from the year 602, you might conjecture that certain agrarian values are universally true for all times. You will simply not be able to envision something like a Zoom call. Not because civilization has improved since then as much as it has simply… advanced.
Our current cultural obsession with improvement—the cult of optimizing everything— says more about how we dwell in obsessions of inadequacy rather than how we inhabit our actual experience.
I tend to be most keenly aware of the parts of myself that I struggle with. I believe this is true for most people. I know that I lifted weights yesterday because those muscles are sore right now.
As someone writing a science fiction novel, I get inspired by how a drastically different possible future might shape human consciousness. I’m an advocate of openness—the most essential human muscle to flex. The force of unconscious routine and the conformance to various norms are dark mental games that shortcut us from becoming more ourselves. Becoming yourself doesn’t have to look like advancement or improvement.
The quest isn’t for the correct life, or even a complete life, but an inspired and connected one.
In a few billion years, the sun will supernova and burn up the Earth, along with all traces of the agrarian optimizations we made in 602.
You matter. It matters that you wake up and write those 5 pages. It matters that you yourself burn brightly.
In Steinbeck’s words, “None of it is important or all of it is.”