It's very rational, it's always been mocked and looked down upon to be optimistic. But through the ages it has been proven to be true that we achieve much more than we imagine.
However the pessimism built in to most people probably helps this drive and is actually a good thing.
Is that new reality going to end up being a shinier version of Office Space for everyone, everywhere, forever?
If so you can keep all that shit.
I believe the first paragraph except colonizing space, at least not without hundreds of years of new technology at the human pace of invention.
We humans cannot even minimally adequately care for one another or this habitat, the one we evolved from, the most accommodating, self-correcting(to a point), resilient habitat that humanity will EVER know by far, and we've been fucking this easy situation up like breathing. Earth isn't even the "enter your name" part of the interstellar civilization test, that would be colonizing our local moon. No, failing the Earth test is basically taking the test to the bathroom assuming it to be toilet paper.
Everything else in non-multigenerational reach will be completely and totally unforgiving. Even in the best circumstances, one person going stir crazy if we're talking about sending real people can literally get everyone else killed, one major failure everybody dead, one major accident everybody dead.
Sorry, I know most of us are deluded into believing salvation comes from reckless attempts at ready fire aim growth, but if we don't get this world fully squared away from the consequences of our reckless actions, find homeostasis and successfully meet the needs of the humans here on easy mode Earth, the idea that we can make colonies of hundreds or thousands on our Moon/Titan/Mars is a bad joke.
We can send 5-20 HIGHLY TRAINED perfect specimens to Mars or Titan to plant a flag and grow potatoes for a few years, and I'm all for that as a human rallying achievement, we really need one of those, but that isn't the same thing as developing a true, sustainable presence on another world. We'll have either long since decimated this habitat or pulled out a miracle of finding equilibrium with it long before we're ready for that.
I believe none except colonising space... The others are so far off that we don't even know for sure if they're even possible, what's going to go wrong or whether we're looking in the complete wrong direction, meanwhile you're dismissing the only realistic one in the next 250 years because we're close enough that we actually know how hard it is.
There's something to be said about chasing after things that are impossible as the possible seems too hard, but I'm not enough of a philosopher for that.
Knowing how hard something is can be a larger barrier than not knowing. But the main barrier preventing space colonies is the same thing preventing ocean colonies — "Why?". What motivation is there to settle space? Exploration and experimentation can be done for motivation of seeing if we can, but settling needs known payoff both for the settlers and the funders.
Asteroid mining is the only current suggested motivation for such a thing. And it's very possible that by the time we figure out asteroid capture, we won't need humans present for that work.
Asteroid mining and space industry is a huge reason, and it's the next logical step for humanity, especially since it means we can put dirty industry where nature and life doesn't exist.
There are absurd amounts of resources in space, a lot of which are difficult to access or rare on earth. In addition, space can give opportunities for new forms of manufacturing, from being able to control the level of gravity due to weightlessness, to being surrounded by vacuum. Two things which are either very difficult or impossible to recreate on earth.
You don't need to "capture" asteroids. You mine them in place and build heavy industry and everything you need in-situ. It's a hell of a lot easier to launch a new vessel off an asteroid than Earth. For some reason, people always think we'll be bringing these resources back to the surface of the Earth. That's wasteful, why do we want to throw them back into a gravity well?
We don't even need fancy fusion tech or anything for this to work, regular fission reactors can power things just fine. And the bonus is, you don't have to worry about where you put the waste. Just designate another asteroid in a clear orbit where it's most likely to not hit anything else for the next ten thousand years as a dumping ground, and mark it on the maps.
Hopium. There's far too much "evil" force in this world for there to ever be an edan or unity. Overall chaos is what got us to our current state of humanity. Chaos will always be.
Don't read that as me saying humans are shit though. It's more like humans don't want to take their lack of "power" seriously. Which is natural or whatever... I know it all sounds negative, but I don't mean for it to sound negative. Chaos is the only constant, order comes from it, but chaos is always dominant from the present moment to the future. You can't stop the universe, including human society from changing and growing. You can learn about it and create from it but it always owns you. No matter who you are.
None of the things mentioned here that we could achieve would require an absence of evil or need the whole world to cooperate. Hell we've been doing the last one for quite some time in the form of books, movies and video games.
If it weren't for the thieving class and the people who fall for their bullshit, I'm convinced we'd be having serious discussions about what it means to live in a post-scarcity society by now.
I’m especially cynical when it comes to the “cure all human diseases” part.
You want to manage a disease. Make it tolerable and survivable. That way, you’ve got a ~~patient~~ customer for life, and you can milk them for decades.
Edit: I’m talking from the point of view of an asshole capitalist, folks.
I don't disagree with any of these things, we just don't know when they will come to be and its going to be a rough ride. Old and new systems fighting, the history and the future all happening at once. We are experiencing something that has never happened to any species on earth, or maybe in the entire universe ever, so we're flying blind, ready or not.
Methium .
Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
I agree! We just need to kill capitalism for that to happen.
I'm sure we could do all of these things if we weren't biased towards consolidating power into the hands of a few biased individuals.
Of course, I'm just quoting Fourth International Posadist rhetoric, but Posadas may have a point.
I can confidently say we won't do any of these things until we can kill capitalism and trends towards autocracy.
I can confidently say we won't do any of these things until we can kill capitalism and trends towards autocracy.
So basically never. The appetite of the regular person to revolt is nonexistent, unfortunately.
Never is a long time. The common people are tiring of what capitalism has wrought and the ongoing drive to force people to do more for less and discard those who are sufficiently useful. Our appetite to revolt may well be fueled by this push. A greater danger is the tendency for successful revolutions to turn into serial dictatorships, each overthrowing the previous one until everyone is dead tired of war. France took around a century to sort itself out from monarchy, and today is still capitalist.
On the other hand, the climate crisis might drive us to extinction, and if it doesn't, is estimated (by the few who dare to estimate it) to reduce the population to below 500 million. If we end up migrant tribes again, we might be able to tackle the trends towards feudalism early.
And the climate crisis is not the only great filter we're being confronted with. Personally, I don't hope anymore so much as look soberly at where we are now and try to guess at where we'll go. And for now the best we can do in the US is hope we can obstruct and delay the steady march towards autocratic fascism until the desperados running the Republican party can't keep it together anymore.
I know that's not inspiring, but if someone is saying something to inspire us, they're taking us for marks.
Ugh. So many places in the world already have abundance that is hard to imagine; but that's only the case because of extreme hoarding of resources and wealth.
Capitalism.
It's a character flaw called "wishful belief" - that is, failure to distinguish between what you predict that'll happen and what you hope that'll happen.
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