Why does Elon Musk want to escape to Mars?

July 2023

Why? I have no clue and, frankly, have no interest to know. But his peculiar intent verges on another question. Why do we humans go such distance to separate ourselves from nature? Why do we want to escape from it? Why does it seem that, as regards our relationship to nature, our actions tend to be such that we want to have complete control over it? My hunch is fear.

Vegetables that never set their roots in soil. Cultured meat. Robo-waiters, robo-chefs, robo-pets. What's next? Will we be placing orders for genetically engineered kids? (Looks like Ken. Check. IQ above Einstein's. Check. Flies like Superman. Check.) Will we learn how to move gestation out of the womb into some hydroponics-like gizmo? Do we want each of us to end up in some Odyssey 2001-esque pod in space, self-sufficient in a sterile clean environment, completely alone? I am not against progress - heat pumps keep beer cold and houses warm, computers can do a whole lot of useful and fun stuff and I would never trade the safety of a modern car for something barely half a century old, which would wrap around you like a can of sardines in the event of an accident.

But regardless of the fact that as a collective we are able to spit out a shit ton of glitzy and extremely powerful stuff per nanosecond, we are not above nature. We are well part of it. If you break a leg, hospital staff tends to the wound, sets the bone straight and puts a cast on your leg, but it is ultimately the body that does the healing of the soft tissue and the regeneration of bone structure. No technology can do that for you. And why would we even seek to achieve to be able to do so? The ability is already there, the result of gazillions of generations of life forms endlessly permutating in the need to find yet another successful new trick to add to their survival toolkit. Mind you, the ability is embedded, free and available to everyone, at any time.

Control it, if you can't love or you fear it.

Nature is endlessly complex. In the few billion years things have been happening by guesswork on this planet (ie. evolution has had time to shape life here), innumerable idiosyncratic connections, reactions and causal relationships have sprung up that ultimately produced an immensely complex system. We humans can't even predict weather properly (despite the enormous computing and brain power) so how can we even begin to hope to understand all implications stemming from all connections in the natural world. And so our brain - out from the same survival mechanism that we share with all life on the planet - in its effort to protect its two legged carrier from the dangers it perceives in all directions, starts to exert control on the outside world. After that it's only a short way to hunting large predators to extinction, stone fortifications, management of river beds, agriculture based on pesticides, laws to protect the haves from the havenots … while some wish to altogether leave the planet for an artificial world. Because something sterile, built by humans from the ground up, is understandable, controllable and predictable at all times. Less threat for the nervous monkey inside the skull.

I have no memory for poetry verses whatsoever but there is one poem that found a steady place in my mind, Dog, by Charles Bukowski:

a single dog
walking alone on a hot sidewalk of
summer
appears to have the power
of ten thousand gods.
why is this?

Similar to the jist of this poem, to me, is the sense of these words from the Bible: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not..." But unlike the dog and the lilies, we seem to have lost the grace and the pride that come from being rooted in nature, being continuously connected with its endless flow of plenty. We worry, we fret and strive, we cannot relax or stand still.

I like the vibe of the commotion on the deck of Star Trek's Enterprise. I very much enjoy the atmosphere and the ecosystems of gadgetry in Star Wars, Galactica, Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express, Cowboy Bebop, Robotech (or Macross, if you will) … hell, I've probably let my mind float in one too many fantastical worlds as a kid (wonderful moments!), but I'll tell you, when I step into a forest, my face settles into a smile and, once engulfed by the thick shade of the calm tree trunks... a sigh of relief. Home.

Ivo Makuc, 2023
byguesswork@gmail.com