GEORGE S. ROBINSON
“Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.”
—Arnold Toynbee
We are at the point once again of a critical assessment of the directions to pursue in giving solid and durable meaning to the next steps in space exploration, discovery, and settlement.At stake is the US space odyssey, but also that of all nations on behalf of their citizens and, perhaps, even that of the species at large. If the human population is to continue its space exploration,migration, and settlement, both of near and deep space, resources must be committed to ensure its success.
All nations must become responsible in some degree for a global effort to uncover and illuminate the fundamental requirements for such a space migration undertaking, beyond reliance solely on transitory economics, strictly domestic and international partisan politics, and shifting military requirements for the protection of equally as shifting national and international interests. On February 4, 2003, President George W. Bush underscored his policy for NASA to establish a human presence on our Moon and then, ultimately, Mars by stating that “[t]his cause of exploration and discovery is not an option we choose; it is a desire written in the human heart.” Unfortunately, what the President omitted was the unsettling but critical survival imperative of humankind through space migration and settlement.
Exploration, discovery, migration, and settlement, i.e., finding new physically and culturally suitable places to live and survive, have allowed Homo sapiens sapiens and its progenitors to evolve over the millennia. Indeed, exploration, discovery, migration, and settlement have comprised some of the key components of our enduring survival mechanism since the begining of life on Earth. It is critical that the world’s spacefaring cultures be recognized as in the process of helping to structure and build an entirely new and unique civilization in space, i.e., they are pursuing the incipient design and fabrication stages that will establish, or allow establishment of, a “cradle of space civilization”—not simply a space “colony” or society, but a civilization. And yet this framework is being shaped by Earth indigent historical values, principles, and motivating factors that largely are irrelevant to societies and civilizations which exist, and will continue to exist, in the completely synthetic and alien life support environments of space habitats. In short, cultural recidivism is being relied upon to establish the legal foundation and social constructs for human and humankind evolution off Earth. This deficiency is represented in the multilateral agreement and unpublished dependent accords governing the cultural/social aspects, as well as operational objectives and control, of the International Space Station.
We seem to be giving no significant and meaningful time to investigating and assessing in a systematic and disciplined fashion the underlying values of the “why” and the “how” of humankind space migration beyond transitory interests. We are focusing only on the technologies that have allowed us access to near and deep space. Very little thought is being given to the fact that we are in the process of helping to build—albeit in a helterskelter and piecemeal fashion—a complex foundation for new civilizations. And our rapidly evolving technologies are telescoping drastically the time available to us to determine how and why we migrate to and settle near and deep space, rather than just pulling old and frequently irrelevant values and requirements along with us. We seem to be repeating all the disasters in economic, military, and cultural imperialism that inevitably result, as history has shown us time and again, in establishing colonies, the futures of which most likely will assume yet again the complexion of ongoing violent confrontations.
| Time is much shorter than Earth’s current civilizations seem prepared to recognize.Why are we dragging irrelevant values and controlling legal constructs into space simply because we know them and are comfortable with them? |  |
The human brain and its entire morphological and physiological support system (regardless of whether synthetically altered to meet the unique demands of off-Earth existence) are capable of adjusting to new, even unique, psycopathological demands and stimuli offered by a physically and socially alien near and deep space existence and survival. The technological, genetic, pharmacological, and biosurgical tools available to assist in that effort of re-adaptation to a totally different physical and cultural ambience are at hand. And yet, we are not exploring how to use them to create a new and unique civilization ideally suited to a non-Earth society embracing equally as new and evolving biological and cultural dictates. Permanently manned habitats on the lunar surface and that of Mars sound more like the establishment of military outposts or colonies than the genesis of a new civilization of humankind or spacekind. We should be pursuing unique biotechnological components of the human evolutionary odyssey.
Time is much shorter than Earth’s current civilizations seem prepared to recognize.Why are we dragging irrelevant values and controlling legal constructs into space simply because we know them and are comfortable with them? We should be pressing with great urgency to catch up with our unfolding space technology in terms of the philosophical, theological, and biocultural constructs necessary to establish a civilization that reflects not only a framework of values we wish to inculcate, at least at the outset, but, more importantly, reflect the unique demands and physical exigencies of a non- Earth life support system.At present, though,we seem to be adopting a tragic, cultural laissez-faire attitude that does not challenge our intellectual capabilities, and does not recognize the imperative requirement of a well-considered establishment of the space civilization(s) that will ensure not only that Homo sapiens sapiens and its altered descendents will evolve biologically, biotechnologically, and culturally in sensible fashions, but that they will evolve at all.
It is necessary in large part to return to step one and start helping to formulate values for this new space civilization that are responsive to the dictates not only of space habitation, but also reflect this new phase of human biotechnological evolution and the philosophical and theological constructs that might serve as the foundation to guide this phase of evolution. The undertaking will offer the ultimate challenge in cross-cultural communication, understanding, and acceptance.
Toward accomplishing the first step, i.e., identifying ecumenically shared core values and principles around which a space civilization should be initiated and allowed to evolve in situ, a global conference should be convened to formulate a Migratory Manifesto for the establishment of such a civilization. The conference and follow-on working panels to define these constructs and guiding principles should be convened to take advantage of the pivotal moment of forced reassessment of the US and multinational manned space program. It could embrace the opportunity to restate or redefine for and by the broadest international sector possible the core beliefs, hopes, biological imperatives, and socio-cultural survival ideals concerning the destiny of humans and humankind off Earth.
The results of such a statement should reflect at least in part a “declaration of interdependence” between Earthkind and Spacekind. Such a declaration might take the form of a manifesto incorporating the globally formulated fundamental principles and imperatives for moving humankind or the essence(s) of mankind/humankind off Earth: A legal framework to assist in assuring the survival of a complex and unique culture in space...a cradle of space civilization.
George S. Robinson, Editor
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