Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan [138]
Such a world culture is unstable, though, in the long run if not the short—because of the speed of technological advance. Human propensities for self-betterment, envy, and competition will always be throbbing subsurface; opportunities for short-term, local advantage will sooner or later be seized. Unless there are severe constraints on thought and action, in a flash we’ll be back to where we are today. So controlled a society must grant great powers to the elite that does the controlling, inviting flagrant abuse and eventual rebellion. It’s very hard—once we’ve seen the riches, conveniences, and lifesaving medicines that technology offers—to squelch human inventiveness and acquisitiveness. And while such a devolution of the global civilization, were it possible, might conceivably address the problem of self-inflicted technological catastrophe, it would also leave us defenseless against eventual asteroidal and cometary impacts.
Or you might imagine throttling back much further, back to hunter-gatherer society, where we live off the natural products of the land and abandon even agriculture. Javelin, digging stick, bow, arrow, and fire would then be technology enough. But the Earth could support at the very most a few tens of millions of hunter-gatherers. How could we get down to such low population levels without instigating the very catastrophes we are trying to avoid? Besides, we hardly know how to live the hunter-gatherer life anymore: We’ve forgotten their cultures, their skills, their tool-kits. We’ve killed off almost all of them, and we’ve destroyed much of the environment that sustained them. Except for a tiny remnant of us, we might not be able, even if we gave it high priority, to go back. And again, even if we could return, we would be helpless before the impact catastrophe that inexorably will come.
The alternatives seem worse than cruel: They are ineffective. Many of the dangers we face indeed arise from science and technology—but, more fundamentally, because we have become powerful without becoming commensurately wise. The world-altering powers that technology has delivered into our hands now require a degree of consideration and foresight that has never before been asked of us.
Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there’s no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science. The solutions may well require more of us than just a technological fix. Many will have to become scientifically literate. We may have to change institutions and behavior. But our problems, whatever their origin, cannot be solved apart from science. The technologies that threaten us and the circumvention of those threats both issue from the same font. They are racing neck and neck.
In contrast, with human societies on several worlds, our prospects would be far more favorable. Our portfolio would be diversified. Our eggs would be, almost literally, in many baskets. Each society would tend to be proud of the virtues of its world, its planetary engineering, its social conventions, its hereditary predispositions. Necessarily, cultural differences would be cherished and exaggerated. This diversity would serve as a tool of survival.
When the off-Earth settlements are better able to fend for themselves, they will have every reason to encourage technological advance, openness of spirit, and adventure—even if those left on Earth are obliged to prize caution, fear new knowledge, and institute Draconian social controls. After the first few self-sustaining communities are established on other