To take a leap of faith and explore new frontiers
Many see human evolution as an ever-growing expansion into new territory all the way from out of Africa to the “high frontier” of space. Frontiers, therefore, are connected to exploration, conquest, and battles against nature that are hostile.
They are a problem that can be solved with technology and in conjunction with progress in human development. However, the idea is accompanied by a significant amount of obstacles.
From the stone age to the space age?
In the past, it was said that the Earth was filled with the space humans could expand into. The Homo genus Homo spread out of temperate Africa and occupied those who lived in tundras Ice Age Europe and the islands and continents in Asia as well as Australasia.
When the climate began warming 12,000 years ago, Populations grew, and the number of people who had domesticated livestock and crops increased, which transformed the forests into fields as they went along.
On the one hand th, the frontier was controlled “culture”; on the other was wild “nature.” Humans were extremely successful in adapting to new environments with the help of technologies like stone tools, fire, and metallurgical processes.
In the 20th century, technology was enabling humans to go beyond the confined zone of temperature and pressure in which our bodies evolved to explore the deep ocean and the Earth’s poles as well as outer space. Specialized suits and vehicles allowed the exploration of these areas in which life at the extremes offered new insights into our place in the Universe.
The story is well told in a well-known scene from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, where an ancient bone tool, thrown in the air by an old being, transforms into an earth-orbiting spacecraft.
The opposite aspect of this frontier
What is often left out of this narrative is the perspective of people who live on the other side of the border. Think about colonial expansion starting from the 15th century, in which European countries sent vessels to southern Europe in search of new resources.
European invasions depicted Indigenous indigenous peoples in the form of Stone Age “savages.” They declared themselves to be the highest point of human evolution with the right to claim to Terra invisible and the terra nullius.
The retaking of frontiers across areas like the American West, the Australian outback, South America, and numerous other locations was usually bloody and brutal. The expanding front did not offer “civilisation” to supposedly benighted people. The result was more the spread of disease, genocide alienation, environmental degradation, and the abyss of poverty.
Utopia was not waiting within the New World.
However, despite the weight of evidence from history, the public continues to believe that the new frontiers of Earth could offer a refuge from the old injustices that have been perpetuated on our planet.
The Moral Imperative and Panspermia
Panspermia can be described as the belief that the Universe is brimming with life. Micro-organisms, prebiotic molecules, and micro-organisms travel through asteroids and comets between planets, thriving when the conditions are suitable.
The spread of life into all areas is believed to be a normal phenomenon that has been repeated many times throughout this and other galaxies. This notion implies that the possibility of spreading human life across the Universe is a valid argument.