The Other Choice \ Goren Gordon

Human beings as a specie is standing now at a crossroads, a T junction viewed from the side: we can either continue with our way of living and into oblivion, or we can make a huge right turn and succeed to develop further into a better society. The question whether we take this turn has been asked for several years now, but the considerations for both options had been false. It had oriented on the wrong problems with which we must deal.

The first option is to stay on Earth, shrivel up and die. This is a pessimistic view shared by many people due to highly discussed  issues that seem to stand on the highest order of priorities. I believe these are the wrong problems to be worried about, though they should be taken care of  as soon as possible.  These problems are mainly the environmental issues. These problems are diverting the attention of the decision makers from the real issue, like a nail in the toe diverts the pain from a headache. The environmental difficulties are temporally localized and can be dealt with already existing science and technology.

The main problem, according to my opinion, is the social one. By that, I mean the poverty that governs all the countries throughout the world, nor the wars that demolish entire cities, nor the homophobia that has arisen lately in western countries. However, I am discussing a more fundamental problem then that, the declining of modern mentality of the human race, its inclining desire to kill itself and its growing apathy to the rest of the world. I believe that these unhealthy actions and thoughts are originating from a single component, from just one major predicament that is, for some questionable reason, overlooked: Earth. I don’t mean the environmental issue, nor the planet, but its roll as the nurturing place for the human race. I believe that all of us, all over the world, in developed and undeveloped countries, are bored with it, tired of it and we want something new. The evidence for such a claim is best shown in scientific development, or rather the lack of it. In the last century or so, according to my opinion, there has been no significant scientific development, with one or two exceptions. All the new theories are just trying to explain what is known with better accuracy, they are not discovering new things. The few exceptions are, of course, with quantum mechanics and the relativity theory, although their main purpose was only to explain known things better, but in that process they have discovered superconductivity and elementary particles. I believe we have learned all there is, or almost all, about this world and we need the change of  environment to both check our current science and to invent and discover new evidences and new testimonies of the Universe. Another example that shows we are tired of this place is that no social advances have been made in the last half a century. We only degenerate in that aspect of science, accumulating more wrongdoing and more misgiving in our organizational management of our compatriots. I think that no improvement could or should take place while we remain on this plant, because it will only give us the illusion of a real solution and therefore expedite the arrival of our doom. The only way to solve this problem conclusively, is to move out.

Throughout history, and prehistory, Man has developed and improved himself through emigration, departing his previous known world and moving onward to a new and undiscovered country. Homosapiens has originated, as scientists tell us, in Africa, and then migrated to Asia. Only then did he begin to develop his social and organizational abilities. The first known civilization that developed writings was the Babylonian, and Mesopotamia had ruled their region for hundreds of years. They were then overcome by a new force – the Macedonian and later Greece and Rome. Only when a new place was introduced to the political arena did the human affair improved. And then again, Europe was stuck in its wars when ‘The New World’ was discovered, and the United States of America was established. As you can see, there is a recurring pattern in these events. The present situation was undesirable, and a change was needed. The early man migrated to find better resources and a better place to live, Mesopotamia was stuck with its unwise regime and was thrown by better rulers, and the social underdog, the persecuted man and women fled to find a new home for themselves. The reason has changed during the development of human affairs, but the solution remained the same – they all found a new home, a different and refreshing environment to live in. I believe it is true for the present situation on Earth. It has become a single and united country for humanity and now it has frozen and can develop on its own no more. There were attempts to change the world from within itself, and new social theories has arisen in the last century and a half, namely Communism, Fascism and Nazism, and they were beaten not because  Capitalism is better or because the ‘good’ forces had better armies, though yet again the U.S.A has shown us its superiority in social and economic abilities. Even if any one of those social schemes had won, we would have still been in this present situation – tired of this place and desiring a new home. Earth is like a human, it has developed since childhood, but it has got to its maximal social and organizational capabilities, and now it requires a new body, a child of its own, so it could teach it everything it knows until the child overcome its parent and continue to develop on its own.

And where should we go? That is of course obvious, toward the stars. However, the stars right now are a little farfetched and we should discuss more approachable destinations, i.e., the Moon and Mars. We now have the scientific and technological knowledge to colonize these celestial objects, but we don’t. And why is that? Because the decision makers are still trying to solve their petty problems of social and economic difficulties within their country instead of trying to solve the world’s problems conclusively. There is always the nagging question of who will go and who will stay. Most people now think the rich and powerful people will rule those places and then nothing will change, but they are wrong. The people who will go are the underdog, those who are abused by the current administration and those who have nothing else to lose. Like the big transition to America, no one with power wanted to go, because they everything they wanted, so whey stayed there and died. The poor and persecuted back then, rule now the entire world. So it will be with the colonization of the sky, there will be no influence of the old and bad social states of current life, but there will be something new, something only the imagination of those emigrants can foresee and only what the unexpected environment will allow. We, those who today live on Earth, must not intervene with the mass transference of Man to those new and undiscovered countries, but we must enable them to start their miraculous voyage. We must change are order of priorities and so to hasten their departure from this old and degenerated planet, but there is a bright side. Unlike the discovery of America, the stars hold no limit, they have more than enough place for all the inhabitants of Earth. Only those who are too narrow-minded to go, should stay and the others would go to different planets, each forming his desirable social conditions and eventually, the ultimate group of people would develop and thus Man will come to its foretold destination.

Only through emigration to other places, beside Earth, can Man achieve its highest developmental stages and only thus can it improve itself. Other problems will probably arise during the way, but they will be solved by later generations, as this one will be eventually solved by us. This is the only other choice Man has, and we must make that choice now, before it will be too late.