Going to Mars Won’t Dismantle White Supremacy
Why we need to check ourselves before we eject ourselves
I love space, don’t get me wrong.
I think it’s amazing what humans can do: explore and understand the universe outside of our planet.
But in the same way, I think it’s amazing for me to sit at home in a meditative state and explore the internal world.
<At their deepest levels, aren’t they really the same anyway?>
I take issue with the motivation underlying the recent developments in the privatization of space travel — and I’d like to take a moment to evaluate it:
Are private space travelers going to Mars for exploration and understanding?
Or, are they going to Mars… to colonize and exploit the resources on Mars?
Let’s be honest. If we realize it’s the latter then we need to ask a vital question — is this the same sh*t all over again?
Yes, I’m referring to the White man colonizing territory that does not belong to him.
Let me be more direct with my question.
Is male, White supremacy currently pushing to privatize space and potentially colonize land — this time in the form of a planet — that is NOT his, all over again?! And, is it happening (again) through oppressing people who do not have as much money and resources as that White man does? Maybe even, once again, at the expense of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color?
Because if that’s happening — then sound the alarms!
History is repeating itself!
But this time — in outer space.
Check Yourself Before You Eject Yourself
Let me tell you a little story. It may seem off-topic, but I promise: there is an underlying moral that relates to the dangers of space travel privatization.
(trigger sensitivity warning: references to substance use and depression)
I hope this story is relatable. It is about a deeply wounded girl who couldn’t figure out life. So, she did the only thing she knew that might help — she traveled long and far to leave it all behind.
Leaving You Behind
This girl was terribly depressed. She had drinking problems, self-esteem issues and could not seem to emerge from a dark vortex. She blamed her friends. She blamed her city. She blamed the weather; the rain, the snow, the cold.
She thought that what she felt must be situational. That, if she could get out of the place where she was and into a fresh new place far away — her problems would magically disappear.
One day, she up and moved thousands of miles away… to a beautiful new tropical world. One with more sunshine and daylight, soft breezes with laid-back vibes.
There were new people everywhere. She felt fresh and vibrant. The winds of change were moving.
But it was short-lived. The drinking, self-hatred, and the darkness quickly crept back.
How is it that her plan did not work? Why could she not catch a break?
One distraught day, she cried and cried until she finally collapsed into a heap on her bed. Then a deep, wise voice emerged out of the silence and snapped her awake.
The voice said: You can’t run away when what you carry is inside of you.
It stunned the girl. She stopped breathing and thinking. She ceased all movement as time stood still.
And then it clicked. Everything sped back up. Life began anew.
Her life had irrevocably shifted. She suddenly understood the most pivotal lesson of her life:
“I have to change me. The issues that I’m running from are not in the places I live, the people I’m friends with or the weather patterns. The issues I’m running from are inside of me.”
She checked herself into counseling to work through what was living in her. It was years before she fully understood what had happened. But one thing was clear — changing her surroundings would only change surface-level stuff. She could not run away from what existed inside of her — even if it was scary. Especially if it was painful.
It moved with her wherever she went. Not even one hundred thousand miles could distance her from what she carried deep in her. Nor did she want it to because, after all, that was her stuff: the stuff she was made of.
And she was finally learning to love it.
The Moral of the Story
You need to check yourself (into therapy) before you eject yourself (into another territory).
Otherwise, it is a ‘history repeats itself’ paradigm. Again and again.
Deep-seated problems don’t go away because you leave your town, your country, or even your planet. They don’t live there. They live within you.
You have to change YOU first before you can expect your behaviors to truly change. You have to understand what’s happening, what’s driving these behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs. You have to reckon with your past. That may involve pain, grief, sadness, anger, and the rest of the emotional human experience, which is why it’s sometimes avoided at all costs.
You must understand where and how this all lives in you before you can effectively live somewhere else with any sense of a different outcome.
A Non-Ego Race to Mars Would Look Very Different
And that is why I’m pretty sure this whole race to Mars isn’t going to end well.
Because the top two space-race leaders are, yet again, wealthy White men who come from a world still struggling to be equitable. And they’re not just wealthy like I-have-a-bit-more-money-than-other-people wealthy.
They’re wealthy like, there-are-millions-of-people-suffering-racial-and-income-inequality-while-I-hoard-absurd-amounts-of-money-that-cannot-even-be-counted-in-20-lifetimes, wealthy.
They are but-I-want-to-get-to-Mars, wealthy.
I love that humans are safely moving around space— for the sake of exploration and discovery. But isn't it important to check ourselves as we do so? Don’t we need to be really careful about our egos and our pasts since those may unknowingly (or knowingly!) be carried forward to our futures — even off the planet?
Just because we abandon oxygen and gravity doesn’t mean we abandon our egos and prejudices.
They come along for the ride inside of us.
It’s a slippery slope to not fall into the ways of our past — even after we have done deep internal and emotional work! So, if we eject into space without having done any of that yet, then we are really only solving one piece of the human-potential puzzle: external exploration.
But the deeper and arguably more difficult exploration is the one that’s inside each of us: internal exploration. How do I know it’s more difficult?
Because humans have walked on the moon.
Because we have landed a rover on Mars.
But somehow, police can’t stop killing unarmed Black people in the streets and in their homes!
But somehow, we cannot close the disparity gaps in wealth, income, employment, and health care inequality between White and Black Americans.
That tells me… White folks (myself included) have a lot more internal work to do — down here, on Earth — before ejecting into space aboard private vessels for what could otherwise be a 21st-century repeat of the White folks greatest hits: dominate, colonize, oppress, resource extraction, REPEAT.
Thank you for reading my opinion. It is just that, an opinion. If my opinion completely clashes with your own, then let’s have a dialogue about it so we can learn from each other. I know I’m not perfect and I have much to learn.
