This article is written as a comment on a Facebook post that was posted by Prof. Vasyl Taras, who introduced Project X-Culture. A token of gratitude to Prof. Taras for sharing such a thoughtful topic to write about. The link to that post is here.>
So NASA is trying to colonize the Mars. I guess as big scientific and technical project this is, it is also a social project in itself. Human kind have succeed to evolve as a social species on this planet but we have failed as a society over and over again. Slavery, racism, WWI and WWII are the glaring examples of our failure. Also note, that these were caused because of social problems. We don’t want ‘Mars Wars’ (like world wars) on that planet after 1000 years of its colonization, do we?
To stop that we must do it right at the first time, from the very beginning.
We must understand that peace on Mars in the future can be maintained only by people on earth in the present. NASA or whichever institute trying to colonizing the Mars should make this project as inclusive as they can. Of course they will try and send people representing as many race as they can. But doing so may cause some initial problems like Seniority fluid or Groupism. Readers please be assured that the writer is not raising this concern from the lessons learnt from reality shows like ‘Big Boss’ (because he does not watch them :P).
Human brain is very unpredictable. We get inspiration from not only what goes around us but also inside us. We can’t regulate every single brain that goes to the Mars. We can’t even regulate one. Also in different atmosphere (oh yeah, I know they are gonna stimulate an Earthly atmosphere over there but it’s not the same), different food, different sun-light exposure, different gravity our body will work differently. So it is even hard to predict what will happen when we send some humans over there. (Our bodies will definitely won’t go ‘John Carter’, but ‘The Martian’ had some real deal!)
Humans as a Social Animal has basically six flaws (1) Anger (2) Jealousy (3) Greed (4) Lust (5) Arrogance (6) Attachment.
Sometimes one of these, some of these or all of these flaws take over the mind. People do overcome such flaws but every single human has her/his own way and time limits to overcome these feelings. NASA should choose the team members who takes minimum time to take over these. No one can expect that the team members will never face these emotions for their entire life. So we better hope that they take minimum time to recover themselves from it.
The level of empathy in all the team members should be just right. Empathy is the ability feel emotions of other without experiencing them. Why just right? Because they may fall seek physically or mentally. The other team members should understand the pain of that sickness just as much as they be inspired to help them. Low empathy may make them leave the member behind, more of it may make them feel the same way, exposing the team to more weakness. Also empathy helps enjoying others’ achievements which is like cure to jealousy, which brings me to my next point.
Everything that they do over there, is gonna be first time any human have ever done. Anywhere they go, whatever they see, however they experience the Mars. It will the first time ever. So obviously their entire lives are gonna be ‘the History of Firsts’! Also all of them are going to be selected by rigorous selection process and it will not be a news that all the team members are going to be highly competitive human beings. Now on the Mars, no discovery should be more or less important than other. But some day someone somehow is gonna feel that he/she is less of an achiever than others. This feeling is the start of the jealousy. Every member must, not only understand but realize that whatever they achieve there is result of a team effort and not a result of any favoritism or luck or being at the right-place-at-the-right-time kind of things.
Greed is the tricky one. Unlike anger or lust, we can’t spot this right at the beginning. For people in general, it is very difficult to differentiate between greed and ambition. Ambitions can lead to achievements, Greed on the other hand leads to arrogance which comes right before the fall.
I am avoiding to write about lust and attachment because ‘lust’ is so easy to spot and NASA will never send someone with this flaw. Since they are already leaving their beloved planet earth forever so nothing to say about attachment either.
At the end of the day the voyagers must know that the time that we have, can be spent in two manners- 1) We either die a little bit every moment or 2) We live a little bit every moment.
All these problems that I tried to discuss are personal problems. They will face some issues as a team. Such being outsiders from like 7 billion other people. Or they may start feeling home-sickness. As they are colonizing the Mars, we can and should expect new members in their colony. As a scientist and a team member, every person on Mars they will have certain priorities. But as parents their priorities may change. We will have to think how the new Martians shall be raised and what (and whether) the Martian parents will do in upbringing of the Martian kids. Things like math and science is easy to teach but liquid subjects like social studies or humanities will definitely gonna be a challenge as there will be no first hand example of issues like poverty or income difference on the red planet. And these are the topic that makes us the people that we are today.
Team may start feeling like prisoners over there and fall in to depression. Knowing that there is no turning back will become terrible if they start feeling like this.
This article does not look like it is gonna end soon. So I am putting a hold over here. Readers are always welcome to keep the discussion on in the comment section. Writer will try to find new perspectives to write about this topic.
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