Questioning Our Future
As many of us know, evolution is a slow and drawn out process. We often talk about human evolution as the step from Neanderthal to Homo sapiens, and how a series of changes took place in a relatively short amount of time. We look back on this topic with fondness and curiosity about our origins, but what about our future? What, if anything, about living in a new era of technological and intellectual stimulation could be a critical factor in the future development of humans — particularly as our activity in space continues to grow at an increasing and more accessible rate?
You could make the argument that we are now living in another time of rapid change for humanity, with an enormous stockpile of new ideas and the ability to make them happen, our race is exploring new possibilities with furor. Many if not all of these possibilities have seen some sort of iteration in the real world starting with grand constructs in space all the way down to a simple fracking line in Texas. All of these new advancements have accelerated technological progression to no end, but we are beginning to reach that point where our species is now advanced and capable enough to start questioning the practicality and consciousness of previously employed techniques — and not just around energy production and manufacturing.
The future of space exploration (or even settlement) lies directly in the path of these cross hairs. Will we venture further into space strictly for science, or strictly for warfare and exploitation, or can there be a blending of the two to produce cooperative engagement and even colonization? How does our sustainability or lack thereof on Earth affect our behavior in space? You could argue that self-sustainability really isn’t that important when there is such an abundance of easily worked resources available on Earth and more in space. We could continue to remain woefully unsustainable and pollute every rock we find; we could continue to exploit the labors of millions for the benefit of a few, and we could continue to use up and throw away without a second thought. Given this scenario, how many people would actually get to experience the freedoms of space in that gleaming dream we see so often in movies and TV shows compared to the number of people trapped back on a dying planet, forced to provide for those in orbit? This question suggests a grim sci-fi future, but perhaps it does not have to be so. Better questions left to social scientists, military strategists, economists and the like might lead to better outcomes. Some of these questions might be: How do people organize to cooperate versus compete? What conditions foster what kind of response? How can competition be healthy versus toxic? How can military truly be “peace-keeping” as police forces are meant to be, fostering stability rather than violence?
“The future of space exploration (or even settlement) lies directly in the path of these cross hairs.”
These questions, pertinent as they are on Earth, become more so if space exploration is to be advanced with a modicum of thoughtful planning vis a vis willy nilly old-fashioned “space races” and the like. Extra variables will include things such as the effect of living in zero/micro-gravity for lengthy periods, the atmospheres of planets such as Mars, etc. We are at a turning point in our evolution as a species; how we utilize exciting technological developments both here on Earth and over the stars into space will depend on us evolving in our consciousness past the divisive era we are living in now.