Space colonization as a symptom

Abstract

This paper utilizes space colonization projects as a lens to contemplate the prevailing cultural framework. This framework imbues these projects with sense and meaning, yet it exhibits a misalignment with the material conditions that define our current historical context. While that cultural framework relies on a technological approach to address any problem that may arise, a growing disparity is becoming increasingly evident between the scope of this approach and the depth of the social and environmental issues that have emerged over recent decades due to the ecological overshoot excesses of our economies. We explore this disproportion through the Hubbert curve and the thermodynamic evaluation of resource availability, thus verifying that the current state of industrial civilization bears disquieting similarities to the keystone in the solution to the Fermi paradox recently explored in the astrobiology of the Anthropocene. Finally, we argue that, regardless of the empirical adequacy of this theoretical proposal, it is feasible to identify in these similarities orientations for analysing significant deficiencies in the prevailing cultural framework.