Evolution Roars into Space—The Ultimate Survival of the Species

The overriding reason to establish a colony on the moon is humanity’s survival: Darwin achieves liftoff.

—William E. Burroughs

The threats that China may pose strategically and militarily notwithstanding, there is a final major compelling reason why China is reaching for the stars. This is a reason that not only lies at the very core of The Coming China Star Wars but also speaks to the ultimate survival of the species and under which political system the human species will live.

Long before economics was declared the “dismal science” by English historian Thomas Carlyle—and ever since—experts have been warning of impending doom. The end may come by overpopulation, resource depletion, economic failure, nuclear war, some high-tech biodisaster, or environmental depredation.

Each of these disaster scenarios (and most others) depend on the basic Malthusian theme that the human race, which has evolved to compete ferociously for resources, is trapped on a planet growing too small to support its rapidly expanding population. Like too many rats breeding in a cage, the end result is destined to be a truly ugly one.

Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step on the moon, and John Barnes make the point clearly in their sci-fi novel Encounter With Tiber: “There’s not a place in the universe that’s safe forever; the universe is telling us, ‘Spread out, or wait around and die.’”

Regardless of which doomsday scenario you might worry about, each can be neatly resolved by opening up human migration to the moon, space stations, and other solar bodies. From this perspective, the Earth could benefit in much the same way that Dickensian England did. This small island country once featured “dark satanic mills” and cruel and crushing work conditions not unlike in today’s China. However, England was at least partly transformed back into a “green and pleasant land” through the growth of Britannia’s overseas colonies, which had the corresponding benefits of a safety valve for overpopulation and access to global resources and trade. Today, the colonization of space offers precisely the same virtues.

In fact, space exploration gives us a golden opportunity to expand in a nonconfrontational manner for the first time since the first humans crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. This land bridge, which existed over the Bering Strait during the ice ages, allowed these first discoveries of the Americas to behold an unspoiled continent of vast riches. Through this Darwinian lens, the ongoing evolutionary conflict on Earth between various countries, religions, and political ideologies is about to approach a literal quantum leap in the selection process.

One of the “fish”—likely the United States, China, or Russia—is going to crawl out onto the shore, and the others will be left behind in the muddy pond. The question is which society and political organization will be representing humanity in the cosmos? To frame the question another way, do we want a human diaspora based on diversity, tolerance, and the Jeffersonian ideals of liberty? Or, do we want an amoral, neo-Maoist vision from China’s central planners?