Interstellar Emigration

The subject here, at the beginning, will be life cycles. All things have life cycles. Entities come into existence by some means, they remain for some period of time, and they disappear. This is true of animate and inanimate objects. It is even true of computer programs, a purely intellectual entity.

The object of interest here is living species. That is not to say an individual, whose life cycle is well known, but rather the species as a whole. What is its life cycle? As we think about life cycles in general, we note that there are crucial moments in every life, birth, sexual maturity, procreation, and death at least. Perhaps others, as in the case of humans, spiritual awareness or rebirth, as some call it.

So, looking at a typical species, what are the stages of life for it, the whole species. Well, it comes into existence, presumably by the Darwinian method. That is it wakes up to find one day that it is different from its former peers and has to strike out on its own. The problems that it faces, at this beginning point, are its insignificant numbers and therefore tenuous hold on survival. Perhaps it has already chosen its food source and that is the reason it is no longer sufficiently similar to its former peers. In addition to its food source, the new species will have to choose an environment in which to live. This will be controlled by the availability of food and water and enough free space.

In pondering the question of food, it becomes obvious that as one widens one's diet, the space available in which to live also widens. If one can only eat Parrot Fish, then one is restricted to living where they live. This choice also extends to body insulation. If one has very effective insulation, one won't be able to dissipate heat very well and will be confined to lower temperature environments, or if one's skin requires to always be wet, one will have to restrict oneself to wet environments. So, changing one's digestive system by gradually changing one's diet, or changing the skin surface of the body by gradually changing one's environment will produce a different species because the rest of the body will have to react to these changes by making other changes, in the same way the surface against which sound impinges and reflects from, may change the sound by shortening or lengthening the waveform.

This process, body adaptation can easily be seen when a person undertakes a profession in the building trades for example. A carpenter's hand is very different from that of an accountant. In the same way, when a capability is no longer useful, the ability soon disappears. "Use it or lose it", as they say. These are the features of a self modifying program. Eliminate no longer useful subroutines so as to limit complexity and maintain flexibility, and enhance the ability of subroutines to deal with the circumstances they are designed for. That way, when a new capability arises, one can cast around for a subroutine used for some other but similar process and use that as the first iteration of the specialized routine soon to be. After that it is only a question of refinement and early refinements are only too obvious to identify and improve. Later enhancements will become progressively more difficult to identify and create.

If one's body remembers and retains some capabilities it had previously, then the range of habitation will widen as the process goes on. From this perspective, one could say that, of the currently extent species, man must be one of the oldest, having had the time to adapt to most environments and being capable of eating and digesting almost all living things. This perspective would seem to conform to the Darwinian view. Perhaps it also accounts for phrases like, "He is sly as a fox!", or, "He is a lion of a man!", or, "She is a black widow!". It is also somewhat simplistic in that some species, having perfected themselves for their chosen environment, like the alligator, seem to disable the evolutionary mechanism. Or, maybe it is just that they never find any need to alter their habitat or food source and the evolutionary mechanism just lies dormant as long as that is the case. There would seem to be two sorts of beings, those that are evolving towards perfection and those that have already arrived. Humans, among their other unique features, like consciousness, would appear to be the most rapidly evolving species on the planet.

So, the evolving species awakens one day to find that he is incompatible with his former peers, which requires him to strike out on his own. This reminds us of the Jews who conceived a new ideology and therefore religion and thereby evolved in a different direction than their Palestinian neighbors. As one separates oneself from one's former family, it will become immediately apparent that one's insignificant numbers are a great danger and that, unless the new species can multiply them rapidly, they are likely to succumb to the predations of their former peers. They are, after all, now the most significant enemy for the new species because, being about the same, competition for resources will arise. So, food and space aren't a serious problem, initially, since that will have been the basis on which the change will have occurred, neglecting ideological change. In any case the first problem is to multiply one's numbers in order to be able to compete on equal terms with one's former family. This will lead to maximization of procreative potential, and if one is successful, rapid expansion of numbers.

It should be clear from this that a basic imperative, built in at a very low level and operating at all levels of scale, is the requirement to continue to exist. It isn't absolute, suicide does exist, even outside of humans, but it is rare for individuals and even rarer for species. Apparently it exists for species, witness the Passenger Pigeon finale. It should also be clear that species survival trumps individual survival, else how to explain self sacrifice?

After some time a new problem will appear. Excessive numbers will have the effect of making food and space in which to live scarce. This will lead a species to adjust its numbers so as not to impact the survival potential of other species, especially its food source since its survival depends on that species' survival.

So, we now have a) the coming into existence of a new species, probably as a result of migration and adaptation to a new environment or changing its diet, b) the rapid growth stage of building numbers in order to compete effectively with one's former family, and c) the synchronization stage when one has to adjust one's numbers to the amount of food and space available. The next event, for most species, will be the arrival of death. Death will usually arrive in the form of dramatic alteration of the environment. Since one is adapted to the environment in which one lives, if it changes dramatically and rapidly, one must die since there will be no time to adapt to another environment. We see this happening all the time for other species, in fact we are the agency of change, so that for them we represent the bringer of the final stage of life, while for us we are just expanding our numbers according to the requirements of stage b.

Other changes in the environment that can have this effect are dramatic changes in the weather, asteroids, volcanoes, and new species. So, since new species are one of the bringers of death for existing species, the natural reaction to their discovery would be to wipe them out. We can be seen to be experiencing this phenomenon right now in the AIDS virus.

In fact, the normal thing for a new species to do, if it can, will be to exterminate it's former family. If that is not possible, then migration will be the only answer. Otherwise one's former family will certainly exterminate you. Thus, we, for example, have exterminated all of our ancestors, and that accounts for the lack of evidence of the chain of existence through which we passed, except for skeletal fragments. For example, those humans incapable of learning to read have long since been killed off and bred out.

This brings us to the next big requirement placed on us by some higher power, genetic or otherwise. We must migrate when the opportunity arises. This should be obvious, especially to Americans from our experience in the recent past of filling the western hemisphere with our cousins. This is an imperative. If we discover a new place, suitable for habitation, we must go there and exploit it as soon as possible. This is because that is a fulfillment of the requirement to continue to exist at the species level.

Other species are non threatening and even desirable, if they exist at a suitable remove from one's own environment and therefor are not a competitive threat. Thus we are inclined to say that we are all humans, after all. This does not continue however when the same space is required. So, a new species is defined not only by its differences from its neighbors, which is to say that a sufficiently different animal from all neighbors where sufficiently different is only roughly defined, is a new species, it also depends on self identification and proximity. To, for example, the Palestinians, the Jews are a different species, not so much due to their physical differences, if there are any, but due to their ideological differences which allows them to self identify other members and their proximity. This is also true in Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia.

This realization also allows us to identify another problem with overpopulation. It will have the effect of dramatically increasing the numbers of human species variants due to proximity, which will lead to strife internal to the species, always a problem for our particular species due to the willing acceptance of ideological change. If you doubt the willingness of humans to accept ideological change, think about the acceptance of feminism.

So, we can say that, as with individuals, the life cycle of a species will include birth, growth, the end of growth, and death. Growth of the species will be somewhat different, since it can occur in spurts whenever a new possibility for migration becomes apparent. From this it should be apparent that the investigation of outer space as a possible migration destination is a genetic imperative that we have no choice about. It has nothing to do with scientific fulfillment or expanding man's knowledge, it is a means of planting man's seed in a new place and therefore assuring survival of even the most drastic occurrences on earth, such as large asteroid impacts. This leads to the conclusion that the Aldrin book, Encounter with Tiber is, if not great literature, still of overwhelming importance to the species, since it makes clear that emigration in space is not only possible but nearly practical. The fact that a suitable planet is a long way away and probably means a one way trip, is not significant. Most emigrations for most humans have been one way trips. The only requirement is some assurance that the trip is going to be successful and that at the end of it is a survivable environment.

That is not yet the case. We don't yet know of a survivable environment off the earth outside of the artificial, which we don't know how to maintain in the long term. But, we probably will, before long. Obviously, that is the main purpose of the Hubble telescope. When that happens, the need to emigrate can be expected to give the project a life of its own, as the saying goes (this means that some other agency is in charge, our genes for instance, or God).

Of course, if emigration is an imperative for us, it will be for other species on other worlds too, if there are any. It is certainly unlikely for objectivity to arise in a species and even more unlikely that it will survive, even if it does. None the less, with billions of chances it will in millions or at least thousands of cases. So, why aren't they here checking us out? Well, perhaps they are. But, if the number of objective species in the galaxy is small, and the environments in which they arise sufficiently different, it may be no small matter to find a suitable destination, even if, as seems likely planets are common and the only requirement is to be at a sufficient distance from its star and of a suitable mass. If it is also true that the survival duration of such species is short, the likelihood of chance hits could be small indeed. On the other hand, if interstellar travel is possible, then it would likely have already occurred and the expectation would be that growth of numbers of civilizations would be similar to the growth represented by the computer game called Life. This, of course, leads to the suggestion that we are such an experiment. That is, we might be a seed planted by some parent who will be back one day to see what has grown up.

These thoughts are certainly not unique to me. They have been current for quite some time, already. But, the point I am trying to make is that it follows in a causal way from the mixing of objectivity with the rules of life for any species that can be seen to exist on our planet.

These reflections have some ideological implications: objectivity is the result of two factors, a large brain and masculinist ideology. This is explained elsewhere in my writing. That being the case, it will be necessary to retain a significant commitment to masculinism in order to develop the means of interstellar travel. Since the western world is committed to the development of feminism in modern circumstances, which will produce a different sort of feminism than has formerly obtained, the only apparent way to retain a commitment to masculinism would seem to be in the feminist east. That is, as we feminize our culture, eastern countries, Japan, China, etc., will need to develop a more masculine orientation to life. This can be seen to be happening already. Eastern countries are adapting to western attitudes as rapidly as possible, with the most notable progress being made in the smaller isolated cultures, particularly those on islands. This will be because of the isolation and smaller numbers of people and institutions that need changing.

They are not yet particularly creative, the west continues to fulfill that function, but they are adopting the methods, and the requirements of economic competition will lead them to alter their cultures to allow for creativity soon enough.