Global citizens and space colonization

[phalaris]

spice mentioned our mammalian urge to fight for territory as an obstacle for space colonization.

I think so too, but maybe is it an obstacle that can be tacled ?

what options do we have to overcome our selfdestructive behavour ?

To begin answering that, we should try to know what the largest group of people can be in a certain geograpic area without wars. (density & group size).

within a group of people ,who feel they belong to the same culture, it is less likely to come to war. Humans are great at using ruthless violence to achieve goals, but that suddenly changes if the victims become aquintences. Even warlords like bush and comrades would think twice to invade Boston. This Boston just happens to be located somewhere outside the USA and is named differently.

The size of a culture is eventually determined by the distance a human can travel with a certain amount of effort. Traveling a few days in the ancient times I count as the same as traveling, say, 8 hours nowdays.

The internet has decoupled information exchange and traveling in person for the first time in the history of humankind.

But great for many things as the internet may be, meeting in person with friends/others is as important as ever. This means the information radius has become global, but the personal/social radius remains limited to a few hundred kilometers. Cultures can span several social radii, but there is a limit. (factor of 30 ?)

Making traveling by plane affordable for the majoraty of people would increace social radii, and so support a larger culture radius.
When that culture radius enveloppes the planet, we can colonize into space, without wars hopefully.

...
just some thoughts.

ps, I realLy would like to be able to travel to Ma-Huang city and viSit a frienDs place for a cup of thea, and be back for work the next day.

 

[Guest]

I don't think a lot of people are ready yet.
We can't even keep the peace on this planet.
Even some neighbours want to kill each other, war is not likely, but hate is still even bad.

 

[alice]

Silastic Armourfiends of Striterax
The Silastic Armourfiends were an insanely aggressive race who lived on the planet Striterax approximately twenty billion years ago "when the universe was young". They were extremely keen on fighting - one of the best ways to deal with a Silastic Armourfiend was to lock him in a room by himself, since he would beat himself up sooner or later. They wrecked the surface of their planet in constant wars, and the whole population lived within bunkers deep below the surface.

In an attempt to deal with the problems their violent nature created, the Silastic Armourfiends passed a law that anybody who had to carry a weapon as part of their normal work (including policemen, security guards and primary school teachers) must spend a minimum of 45 minutes each day punching a sack of potatoes. It was hoped that this would allow them to work off their surplus aggression. This plan worked only until the Silastic Armourfiends began just shooting the potatoes instead.

During one of their more unpleasant wars, the Silastic Armourfiends asked the great computer Hactar to design the ultimate weapon for them. The computer complied, creating a hand-held bomb which would connect the core of every major sun via hyperspace, destroying the entire universe. The Silastic Armorfiends attempted to use the bomb to blow up a munitions dump, but fortunately Hactar had built a dud weapon since it could not conceive of any occasion when the use of the real thing would be justified. The Silastic Armourfiends disagreed, and pulverised Hactar.

Eventually the Silastic Armorfiends destroyed themselves.

from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

alice