Man will not always stay on Earth; the pursuit of light and space will lead him to penetrate the bounds of the atmosphere, timidly at first, but in the end to conquer the whole of solar space.
Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.
Tsiolkovsky
I recently watched a talk by Alex Epstein about “The New Moral Case for Fossil Fuels”, which reminded me of a though I had a while ago:
Why do some people see growth as a negative? Shouldn’t humans be … well, be “born to be kings and queens of the universe”?
Epstein’s talk is very interesting here, because he contrasts to different perspectives on humans. A non-impact-model (Earth is perfect, but humans spoil it) versus a human-flourishing-model (Earth is unstable and we humans did make it livable for us, e.g., via creating stable housing and nutrition).
I think the later one is more accurate, and more … well, likely to help humans survive a hostile environment, on earth and on other planets. If we make it there.
And yeah, the talk by Epstein starts slow, but there are some interesting nuggets in it.
Highly recommended.
