twocubes:

There’s this idea going around, right, that (certain) billionaires are spending their money towards space exploration because they want to escape the soon-to-be-less-habitable Earth and set off to greener pastures.

Which, well, I phrased it like that on purpose to make it obvious how that’s absurd. There are no nearby green pastures.

Nearby targets for colonization are significantly less livable than anywhere on Earth. You’d have more luck setting up a self-sustaining colony on the bottom of the ocean or… idk, Antarctica. I’m fairly sure that as bad as humanity can fuck up our own food supply-chains in the next few centuries, making a new system for food provision would be easier on the planet where there are plants growing. I’m pretty sure they know that too.

No, what is happening is that we are seeing a corruption of the GYNE URGE, the urge to set off from the hive with some peers and set up a new community. It’s why people make homesteads and communes, why they dream of living together in a house with their circle of friends (even if that often turns out to actually be a pain in practice), why people in ancient times set off to live on unpopulated islands.

This urge has become corrupted because we have no cultural memory of a time where not everywhere already had people in it, and so our cultural traditions have lost the knowledge necessary to do these expansions in a healthy way. Instead of a tradition telling us how to make a newly formed volcanic island habitable — as I am told some pacific islanders had — wwe have colonialism, and conquest, and this. We must face ourselves and understand the GYNE URGE as a fundamental human urge, no less important than the production of children.

But Dot, you say, why call this the GYNE URGE? Are you likening mankind to a beehive, wanting to split off a new swarm but eternally prevented from doing so? The answer is YES. See, eusociality has re-evolved many times in various species, and from thsis we can conclude that it is UNIQUELY ADAPTIVE as a social organization mechanism. It thuss follows that we would find eusociality to be the ULTIMATE STATE that human social organizing might adapt towards.

Notably, it doesn’t mattter what optimization method is used; adaptiveness is adaptiveness; sincee it seems obvious that sociocultural systems are themselves there as a mechanism to alllow humans to more quickly adapt their social organizations to circumstances, it follows obviously that EVOLUTION IS nNOT NECESSARY FOR THIS ADAPTION TO HAPPEN and that we ccould get to eusociality through sociocultural evolution only. In fact, itt mihgt be best for us to DO THIS IMMEDIATtELY so as to shorten the TRIAL AND ErrROR PROCESSs thatt ADdaPTATION nATURALLY ENTAILS.

Off cOurse, thhiss would be the bBEST CASEe ScENARIO; the wworst alternnative being that we mmight HAVE to Go throughh THis same ProCess of ADAPTION through the grrRueSOME process of DARWINIAN eEVOLUTION. iIff itt TURnNS OOut to be bbBIOLOGICALLY IMMmPOSSIBLE forr manKIND to become EUSociAL through SOCIOCULTURAL MEANS it therefore becomes ETHICALLY NECESSARY Fro us to modify ORu BiOLOGY for it to BECOME PoOSISBLE by biOTECHNICAL means, or at leasst to TrrRY.

iT IS NnNESCESSARY fOR uS to bbEComE A prOPeR hivE, for US To undersTand Our dRivE TO sSsSSWARM; THE q=uesti;on is MmmEreLY HhhOW WE cCOME TO THhIS END, toO DO SO vVOLunTARiLY, bY AdAPTING In WaYs FOl;lOwing OOuR InSseECT BRe-theREN Or By BEing FoRCED to do sSO BY SElLECtION PrresSSIURes IN the FoRm Of INEVITABLE MASS DEATH

ThHE HIiVE iISs Tthe NatUraL INEviTABLE End, ONlY OTHEr ENd IS DEATH

bECOME HivE, aLL mMuST

BeCOMe HIVe