Michaud, Michael A. G. 1979. The Extraterrestial Paradigm: Improving the Prospects for Life in the Universe. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 4(3): 177-192. DOI: 10.1179/030801879789768162 [taftonline]
Spaceflight and the ever-increasing knowledge of the astronomical universe raise again the age-old questions if our existence as a species has any meaning, if the universe itself is a blind deterministic working-out of physical laws, or is the meaning of existence simply hidden from us? (Michaud 1979: 177)
What is the meaning of meaning here?
Spaceflight has allowed us to look back upon the Earth, to see it as a ginite whole. For the first time, we see the Earth - and its inhabitants - in contrast to that larger environment we call space. This has had a certain unifying effect on our perception of the human condition. We are increasingly aware of ourselves as a species, evolved from a common origin, coinhabiting the same biosphere, sharing a collective fate. (Michaud 1979: 177)
Idk, Stapledon's fictional work seemed to embody all of this half a century earlier.
We face not only practical problems, but a profound philosophical and psychological problem as well: the bounds on human aspiration imposed by the finitude of the Earth and its biosphere. The knowledge of that finitude constrains our thinking about the human future, long-term human purposes, and the human role in the universe. The no-growth models of the human future, which rest on a terrestial paradigm, implya permanently closed ecology, for all practical purposes a closed universe not too different from the Earth-centered cosmos in which humans lived before Copernicus. They imply a rejection of our larger environment as irrelevant, beyond our reach, or hostile - a philosophical turning inward on a global scale. (Michaud 1979: 177)
We ain't goin' nowhere.
Since Darwin, we have come to understand much of our own emergence from a long evolutionary process extending back to the priemeval waters and beyond. We are beginning to accept the idea that life is one chemical expression of the cosmic evolution that produces galaxies, stars and planets. We are coming to think of our bodies as biological machines whose primary purpose is to assure the continued existence of genetic material that evolved chemically from inanimate matter. We see ourselves embedded in a larger cosmic evolutionary process that will drive forward with or without our own activity. (Michaud 1979: 178)
A chain of being.
These speculations centered on other natural worlds in our solar system - a planetary paradigm. Other planets could be imagined to be like the Earth, and therefore reasonably hospitable; they could even be visualized as abodes of intelligent life, as in the speculative writing of Percival Lowell about Mars. The planetary paradigm was even extended to other stars; as long ago as 1918, Robert Goddard wrote of a journey across interstellar distances to find new worlds for humans fleeing a dying Sun. Science fiction writers developed this theme, as in Robert Heinlein's 1940 story 'Universe'. (Michaud 1979: 179)
Reasonably hospitable they are not. In Stapledon's vision, markedly, humanity fails to flee the sun's expansion.
At first, space awed us, as the seas awed our ancestors. It was a vast, mysterious realm with strange and frightening powers, dwarfing puny Man; a place where humans did not belong, or were lucky to survive. Like the seas of the Ancients, space was beyond our familiar world; a terra incognita; we could imagine it with exotic lands and grotesque monsters, and fear to journey beyond the Pillars of Hercules in our minds. (Michaud 1979: 179)
Sea monsters did and do exist. Now we just have an understanding of them, names for them, and images/videos.
Krafft Ehricke has envisioned the construction in space of large human habitats, which he calls androcells, wich could move around the solar system and which eventually might become interstellar arks, leading to a planet-free society. Dandridge Cole has written of 'macrolife', self-sufficient habitats for humanity in space. Gerard O'Neill updated the space colony concept with designs for cylindrical habitats at libration points in the Moon's orbit around the Earth, and has argued the gravitational advantages of colonizing free space rather than planetary surfaces. (Michaud 1979: 181)
Living in build environments in space that produce artificial gravity by their rotation.
It may be no coincidence that science fiction writers have, to a remarkable degree, developed a consensus scenario of humanity's future in the universe. Donald Wollheim calls it 'the full cosmogony of science-fiction future history', and describes its stages as (1) initial voyages to the Moon and the planets, and colonies there; (2) the first flights to the stars, and colonies there; (3) the rise of the Galactic Empire; (4) [|] the Empire in full bloom; (5) the decline and fall of the Empire; (6) the Interregnum; (7) the rise of a permanent galactic civilization; (8) the challenge to God. (Michaud 1979: 182-183)
An imperialist age dreams of a galactic empire.
Science has convinced most of us that we live in a universe which is not centered on the human species, its expectations, or its fate. It is now possible to argue that the universe is neither friendly nor hostile to our successes and survival, but supremely indifferent. Our understanding that we emerged from tangible processes of chemical evolution removes the supernatural quality from our perception of our origins, and therefore of our destiny. It is increasingly difficult to perceive any intelligently predetermined long-term purpose for our existence, or any purpose at all other than the survival and evolution of our genetic material. (Michaud 1979: 184)
And yet religiosity has not disappeared. Most of humanity still cling to comforting stories of a supernatural parental being.
But, while scientific discovery suggests a certain order to the universe - or at least the functioning of certain physical laws - that might be attributed to a supreme being, it does not reveal to us any purpose other than evolution, change, and the gradual loss of structured energy through the process we measure as entropy. Only life and its evolutionary product, intelligence, create an opportunity to reverse entropy on at least a local scale, and to impose choice on inevitability. (Michaud 1979: 184)
Mind over matter: only mentality (intelligence) can create "free will".
Some of the people most concerned about the limits to growth on Earth argue that we must solve immediate problems and wait until the platform of the Earth is 'stabilized' before embarking on any large-scale extraterrestial ventures. (Michaud 1979: 185)
Humanity still not united, still warring, still in hunger, more polluted than ever, on the brink of environmental collapse. We ain't going nowhere any time soon.
There is an argument that Man must not inflict himself on the larger universe until he has solved his problems. Some believe that space colonization would simply extend human conflicts and wrong-doing outward, and that humans should not expand until they learn to live in peace on the Earth. (Michaud 1979: 186)
Yeah. Going to space just to shoot down humans of another nationality. Crabs in a bucket.
There is posed a philosophical choice between a bounded and an unbounded future. But that choice may exist only in a narrow window of opportunity, before a resource crisis, the acceptance of a no-growth paradigm, or coercive redistribution makes extraterrestial growth infeasible. (Michaud 1979: 186)
Get to space and invest in getting resources (energy, minerals) from there before it becomes impossible... It looks like we missed the (space)ship.
Industrializing space, setting up a complete satellite solar power system, or mining the Moon and the asteroids are projects measured in even longer time scales. If we reach farther out and attempt larger projects, such as mining comet nuclei or terraforming Mars and Venus, the time scales from planning to realization may reach beyond human working lifetimes. The extraterrestial paradigm could thus lead us toward accepting longer scales of social commitment and societal endeavor. (Michaud 1979: 186)
It took Stapledon's Fifth Men some 300 years merely to figure out the vehicles to get to Venus.
Coupled with a physical dispersal of humans into a variety of habitats beyond the Earth, this could eventually lead to a biological rediversification of the species, which might strengthen cultural rediversification as well. (Michaud 1979: 187)
The Eighteenth Men have thousands of nations on Neptune alone.
Human expansion might be delayed for long periods or halted permanently if the species should suffec a self-inflicted disaster, such as a species-wide conflict or a terminal laboratory experiment. This is an argument not only for controlling conflict and dangerous technologies, but for spreading out the species. (Michaud 1979: 187)
The First Men (we) destroy ourselves with some fancy deep earth mining technology. Only a scientific sailing vessel in the Arctic escapes it.
Contact with an extrasolar civilization would imply a limit on human expansion, at least in one direction. Contact with a more powerful species could terminate our evolution if conflict were to occur, or might lead to a cultural synthesis that would end human civilization as a separate phenomenon. Even if we encountered a less powerful species, we might choose to limit our expansion for ethical reasons. (Michaud 1979: 187)
There is some buzz that the Apollo 11 crew saw a bunch of huge extraterrestial spacecraft hovering around a crater, defending some sort of moon base. There have been numerous news stories debunking this in the past years but the claim itself is much older than these debunks claim it is. See Alien Moon Base (sacret-texts.com) or an inaccessible scientific paper, "Turning The Page" (Lupino; Harris 2008): Google cache reads "according to NASA astronaut. Armstrong, aliens have a base on the Moon and clearly told “us” to go away and stay clear".
The idea of extraterrestial intelligence has gained growing scientific credibility during the past 20 years because of discoveries about the possible patterns of the chemical evolution of life on Earth, and about the existence of clouds of organic molecules in this galaxy and others. The idea of chemical evolution suggests that life is a natural result of processes that could occur throughout the universe, and that evolution to intelligence and technological power may be numerous. (Michaud 1979: 187)
See Stapledon's gaseous Martians.
But some nonhuman species may choose to expand their presence and influence in the universe to increase their power over events, to gain control of entropy in ever larger parts of their macro-environments, to shape more of the universe to their design. Each expanding intelligent species would form a realm of consciousness - a noosphere. (Michaud 1979: 188)
Only some (40-60), according to Stapledon's Last Man: "In our own galaxy there have occurred hitherto some twenty thousand worlds that have conceived life. And of these a few score have attained or surpassed the mentality of the First Men."
The ultimate goal of such a collective consciousness might be to place intelligence in command of all things - all matter, all energy, all space, all time. The end result would be a conscious universe, the ultimate macro-intelligence, supplying the point of its existence and determining the fate of the universe. Such an entity would be indistinguishable from some concepts of a universal supreme being, or god. (Michaud 1979: 188)
At the end of Last and First Men the Last Man waxes poetic about such a universal spirit who might unify all intelligent beings across space and time.
If modern science is right, the universe either will cease expanding and collapse back inward on itself, destroying all of evolution in the infall and the new primordial explosion that may follow, or it will continue expanding outward indefinitely until entropy runs its course, leaving a scattering of dead stars and random heat. Either eventuality suggests that eternal existence for life and intelligence may not be possible. Either destiny could engender a sense of fatalism and pointlessness among human beings. This might be particularly true if the reality is a cyclic creation and destruction of evolutions, each of those cycles producing intelligences which become aware only to be destroyed. In the face of such an implied termination of evolution and consciousness, the organized intelligences of the universe may attempt to escape that fate, by isolating controlled regions of the universe from the rest of space-time and universal evolution, by transferring themselves to another point in time, or by escaping this universe, perhaps to another, younger one. (Michaud 1979: 188)
Here's a hypothesis for those extraterrestial craft and their infinite variety: a bunch of migrants from other universes, each in turning checking out if this nice wet planet of ours is already inhabited by intelligent beings. Each in turn flash their sensors above a city, go "Yeah, looks like this one's taken" and move on. Beings advanced enough to jump universes have moral sense enough not to start eradicating billions of loud apes.
Space colony proponent Gerard O'Neill has stated that it would have been impossible to plan for space colonization until the Apollo lunar samples were returned for analysis. Testimony before the Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications of the Committee on Science and Technology, US House or Representatives, 23 July 1975. (Michaud 1979: 190, n 32)
I guess the analysis did not yield positive results.
Freeman Dyson has expressed concern that we may first encounter a civilization in which technology is out of control, a sort of technological cancer spreading through the galaxy. (Michaud 1979: 191, n 102)
The Borg.
The Editor drew the author's attention to the fact that some of the ideas discussed in the present review were the subject of W. Olaf Stapledon's two great classic works: Last and First Men (Methuen, London, 1930) and Star Maker (London, 1937); jointly republished by Dover Publications, New York (1968). (Michaud 1979: 192, n 110)
Good Editor.
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