Without a frontier from which to breathe new life, the spirit that gave rise to the progressive humanistic culture that America has represented for the past two centuries is fading. The issue is not just one of national loss—human progress needs a vanguard, and no replacement is in sight.
The creation of a new frontier thus presents itself as America’s and humanity’s greatest social need. Nothing is more important: Apply what palliatives you will, without a frontier to grow in, not only American society, but the entire global civilization based upon values of humanism, science, and progress will ultimately die.
I believe that humanity’s new frontier can only be on Mars.
But why not on Earth, under the ocea or in a remote region such as Antarctica? It is true that settlements on or under the sea or in Antarctica are entirely possible, and their establishment and access would be much easier than that of Martian colonies. Nevertheless, at this point in history such terrestrial developments cannot meet an essential requirement for a frontier—to wit, they are insufficiently remote to allow for the free development of a new society. In this day and age, with modern terrestrial communication and transportation systems, no matter how remote or hostile the spot on Earth, the cops are too close. If people are to have the dignity that comes with making their own world, they must be free of the old.
Mars has what it takes. It’s far enough away to free its colonists from intellectual or cultural domination by the old world, and unlike the Moon, rich enough in resources to give birth to a new branch of human civilization. As we’ve seen, though the Red Planet may appear at first glance to be frozen desert, it harbors resources in abundance that can enable the creation of an advanced technological civilization. Mars is remote and can be settled. The fact that Mars can be settled and altered defines it as the New World that can create the basis for a positive future for terrestrial humanity for the next several centuries.
WHY HUMANITY NEEDS MARS
Everything has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode of living, a new social system; here they are become men.
—Jean de Crevecoeur,
Letters from an American Farmer
, 1782
The essence of humanist society is that it values human beings—human life and human rights are held precious beyond price. Such notions have been for several thousand years the core philosophical values of Western civilization, dating back to the Greeks and the Judeo—Christian ideas of the divine nature of the human spirit. Yet they could never be implemented as a practical basis for the organization of society until the great explorers of the age of discovery threw open a New World in which the dormant seed of humanism contained within medieval Christendom could grow and blossom forth.
The problem with Christendom was that it was fixed—it was a play for which the script had been written and the leading roles both chosen and assigned. The problem was not that there were insufficient natural resources to go around—medieval Europe was not heavily populated, and there were plenty of forests and other wild areas—the problem was that all the resources were owned. A ruling class had been selected and a set of ruling institutions, ideas, and customs had been selected with them, and by the law of “Survival of the Firstest,” none could be displaced. Furthermore, not only had the leading roles been chosen, but so had those of the supporting cast and chorus, and there were only so many parts to go around. If you wanted to keep your part, you had to keep your place, and there was no place for someone without a part.
The New World changed all that by supplying a place in which there were no established ruling institutions. On such an improvisational stage, the players are not limited to the conventional role of actors—they become playwrights and directors as well. The unleashing of creative talent that such a novel situation allows is not only a great adventure for those lucky enough to be involved, it changes the opinion of the spectators as to the capabilities of actors in general. People who had no role in the old society could define their role in the new. People who did not “
fit in” in the Old World could discover and demonstrate that far from being worthss, they were invaluable in the new, whether they journeyed there or not.
The New World destroyed the basis of aristocracy and created the basis for democracy. It allowed the development of diversity by allowing escape from those institutions that imposed uniformity. It destroyed a closed intellectual world by importing unsanctioned data and experience. It made progress possible by escaping the hold of those institutions whose continued rule required continued stagnation, and it drove progress by defining a situation in which innovation to maximize the capabilities of the limited population available was desperately needed. It raised the dignity of workers by raising the price of labor and by demonstrating for all to see that human beings can be the creators of their world. In America, from Colonial times through the nineteenth century when cities were rapidly being built, people understood that America was not something one simply lived in—it was a place one helped build. People were not simply inhabitants of their world. They were makers of it.
A TALE OF TWO WORLDS
Consider the probable fate of humanity in the twenty-first century under two conditions: with a Martian frontier and without it.
In the twenty-first century, without a Martian frontier, there is no question that human cultural diversity will decline severely. Already, in the late twentieth century, advanced communication and transportation technologies have eroded the healthy diversity of human cultures on Earth. As technology allows us to come closer together, so we come to be more alike. Finding a McDonald’s in Beijing, country and western music in Tokyo, or a Michael Jordan T-shirt on the back of an Amazon native is no longer a great surprise.
Bringing together diverse cultures can be healthy, as it sometimes results in fusions that produce temporary flowerings in the arts and other areas. It can also result in very unpleasant increases in ethnic tensions. But however the energy released in the cultural merger is expended in the short term, the important thing in the long term is that it is expended. An analogy
to cultural homogenization is that of connecting a wire between the terminals of a battery. A lot of heat can be generated for a while, but when all the potentials have been leveled, a condition of maximum entropy is reached and the battery is dead. The classic example of such a phenomenon in human history is the Roman Empire.
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The golden age produced by unification is frequently followed by stagnation and decline.
The tendency toward cultural homogenization on Earth
can only accelerate in the twenty-first century. Furthermore, because of rapid communication and transportation technologies “shorting out” intercultural barriers, it will become increasingly impossible to obtain the degree of separation required to develop new and different cultures on Earth. If the Martian frontier is opened, however, this same process of technological advance will also enable us to establish a new, distinct, and dynamic branch of human culture on Mars and eventually more on worlds beyond. The precious diversity of humanity can thus be preserved on a broader field, but only on a broader field. One world will be just too small a domain to allow the preservation and continued generation of the diversity needed not just to keep life interesting, but to assure the survival of the human race.
Without the opening of a new frontier on Mars, continued Western civilization also faces the risk of technological stagnation. To some this may appear to be an odd statement, as the present age is frequently cited as one logical wonders. In fact, however, the rate of progress within our society has been decreasing and at an alarming rate. To see this, it is only necessary to step back and compare the changes that have occurred in the past thirty years with those that occurred in the preceding thirty years and the thirty years before that. Between 1906 and 1936 the world was revolutionized: Cities were electrified; telephones and broadcast radio became common; talking motion pictures appeared; automobiles became practical; and aviation progressed from the Wright Flyer to the DC-3 and Hawker Hurricane. Between 1936 and 1966 the world changed again, with the introduction of communication satellites and interplanetary spacecraft; computers; television; antibiotics; nuclear power; Atlas, Titan, and Saturn rockets; Boeing 727s and SR-71s. Compared to these changes, the technological innovations from 1
966 to the present seem insignificant. Immense changes should have occurred during this period, but did not. Had we been following the previous sixty years’ technological trajectory, we today would have videotelephones, solar-powered cars, maglev (magnetic levitation) trains, fusion reactors, hypersonic intercontinental travel, reliable and inexpensive transportation to Earth orbit, undersea cities, open-sea mariculture, and human settlements on the Moon and Mars. Instead, today we see important technological developments, such as nuclear power and biotechnology, being blocked or enmeshed in controversy—we are slowing down.
Now, consider a nascent Martian civilization: Its future will depend critically upon the progress of science and technology. Just as the inventions produced by the necessities of frontier America were a powerful driving force on worldwide human progress in the nineteenth century, so the “Martian ingenuity” born in a culture that puts the utmost premium on intelligence, practical education, and the determination required to make real contributions will make much more than its fair share of the scientific and technological breakthroughs, which will dramatically advance the human condition in the twenty-first century.
A prime example of the Martian frontier driving new technology will undoubtedly be found in the arena of energy production. As on Earth, an ample supply of energy will be crucial to the success of Mars settlements. The Red Planet does have one major energy resource that we currently know about: deuterium, which can be used as the fuel in nearly waste-free thermonuclear fusion reactors. Earth has large amounts of deuterium too, but with all of the existing investments in other, more polluting forms of energy production, the research that would make possible practical fusion power reactors has been allowed to stagnate. The Martian colonists are certain to be much more determined to get fusion on-line, and in doing so will massively benefit the mother planet as well.
The parallel between the Martian frontier and that of nineteenth-century America as technology drivers is, if anything, vastly understated. America drove technological progress in the last century because its western frontier created a perpetual la
bor shortage back East, thus forcing the development of labor-saving machinery and providing a strong incentive for improvement of public education so that the skills of the limited work force could be maximized. This condition no longer holds true in America. In fact, far from prizing each additional citizen, anti-immigrant attitudes are on the rise, and a vast “service sector” of bureaucrats and menials is being created to absorb the energies of those parts of the population whose participation in the productive parts of the economy is no longer needed. Thus in the late twentieth century, and increasingly in the twenty-first, each additional citizen is and will be regarded as a burden.
On twenty-first-century Mars, on the other hand, conditions of labor shortage will apply with a vengeance. Indeed, it can be safely said that no commodity on twenty-first-century Mars will be more precious and more highly valued than human labor time. Workers on Mars will be paid more and treated better than their counterparts on Earth, and education will be driven to a higher standard than ever seen on the home planet. Just as the example of nineteenth-century America changed the way the common man was regarded and treated in Europe, so the impact of progressive Martian social conditions may be felt on Earth as well as on Mars. A new standard may be set for a higher form of humanist civilization on Mars, and, viewing it from afar, the citizens of Earth will rightly demand nothing less for themselves.
The frontier drove the development of democracy in America by creating a self-reliant population that insisted on the right to self-government. It is doubtful that democracy can persist without such people. True, the trappings of democracy exist in abundance in America today, but meaningful public participation in the process is deeply wanting. Consider that no representative of a new political party has been elected president of the United States since 1860. Likewise, neighborhood political clubs and ward structures that once allowed citizen participation in party deliberations have vanished. And with a reelection rate of 95 percent, the U.S. Congress is hardly a barometer of people’s will. Furthermore, regardless of the will of Congress, the real laws, covering ever broader areas of economic and social life, are increasingly being made by a plethora of regulatory agencies whose officials do not even pretend to h
ave been elected by anyone.
Democracy in America and elsewhere in Western civilization needs a shot in the arm. That boost can only come from the example of a frontier people whose civilization incorporates the ethos that breathed the spirit into democracy in America in the first place. As Americans showed Europe in the last century, so in the next the Martians can show us the path away from oligarchy and stagnation.
There are greater threats that a humanist society faces in a closed world than the return of oligarchy, and if the frontier remains closed, we are certain to face them in the twenty-first century. These threats are the spread of various sorts of anti-human ideologies and the development of political institutions that incorporate the notions that spring from them as a basis of operation. At the top of the list of such destructive ideas that tend to spread naturally in a closed society is the Malthus theory, which holds that since the world’s resources are more or less fixed, population growth and living standards must be restricted or all of us will descend into bottomless misery.