Elon Musk has been a tremendously creative and successful entrepreneur, but his most driving ambition, to spread humanity out onto other planets, probably pushes an interesting idea way beyond its usefulness.
By Edward Banfield’s definition of “class,” Musk is an ultra-high-class person. Banfield defined “class” in terms of people’s time-horizons rather than incomes.
His “lower class” people couldn’t see beyond their noses and couldn’t postpone immediate gratification to get a better future. “Middle class” people looked further ahead and were more patient.
“Upper class” people focused on the long term, accepting less now to invest for long-term gains.
But is it possible to overdo on investing? As Lord John Maynard Keynes famously said, in the long run, we’re all dead.
Actually, this is what Musk is trying to avoid.
Musk’s logic is impeccable. It is not hard to imagine that Earth could soon become uninhabitable. But maybe the human race could survive on Mars.
And ultimately, our sun will go out or blow up and destroy all life in our solar system. If the human race has not spread out to planets around other stars, it will be doomed.
This reminds me of a joke I “inherited” back in 1965. During my first year at Adrian College, an esteemed colleague who taught the astronomy course died in the middle of spring semester. None of the science faculty knew anything about astronomy.
Having taken an excellent astronomy course as an undergraduate at Willamette University, I volunteered to take over the class for the rest of the term. Dean Darrell Pollard, himself a political scientist, accepted my offer, graciously noting that I was better than nothing.
The joke was in my deceased colleague’s lecture notes: An astronomer gives a lecture. Afterward, a woman approaches nervously and asks, “Did you say the world will end in 5 million years?”
“No madam,” he replies. “I said billion years not million.”
“Oh,” she says. “I’m so relieved!”
Actually, worrying about what might happen in millions, let alone billions, of years may be too optimistic. After all, at least two distinguished scientists — Stephen Hawking and Frank Fenner — have thought that at the rate things are going the human race may only survive another hundred years.
And ironically, Elon Musk’s rockets, which he hopes ultimately will allow him to migrate to Mars, may be contributing to the early demise of our race by pouring tons of additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every time they launch a load into space.
Although being far-sighted is generally considered desirable, it may make us unable to see things and people that are close to us in space or time. Musk’s focus is on survival of humanity in general rather than the welfare of the specific people with whom he currently shares our planet — the only known inhabitable planet to which current technology gives access.
I don’t know if this is true of Musk, but it brings to mind Charles Schulz’s Linus, who exclaims that “I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand!“ Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov has a character who echoes this idea.
Willingness to injure current people in the name of providing for the long-term survival of the human race is probably not a virtue. It would seem to violate Immanuel Kant’s rule against treating other people as mere ends to our goals rather than as valuable ends in themselves.
And this is especially true when we are injuring real people to bring about a desired result billions of years in the future.
Musk correctly thinks that the human race needs a challenge. But perhaps the real challenge is to live as well as possible in the only world we have, rather than risking destruction of that world by measures taken to affect life a billion years from now.
I wish that Elon Musk would turn his attention to this challenge, one which calls for the kind of creativity and imagination that he has in such abundance.
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. Read Professor Paul F. deLespinasse’s Reports — More Here.
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