A Paper by Jason Crawford
As our ambitions grow, they might reach planetary scale.
We’ve already mentioned mastering the climate by creating a system of climate control (Chapter 5). Even beyond simply controlling CO2 and temperature, we might develop technologies to control the weather, optimizing it for agriculture and for human enjoyment, and eliminating hazards such as hurricanes.⁶⁵
We might reshape the land and water. Even using late 19th and early 20th century technology, we built Suez and Panama, the Hoover Dam and the Zuiderzee; Boston created its Back Bay and San Francisco its Treasure Island. In the 21st century we should be able to do much more.
Mastery over environment would also mean being able to maintain it in pristine condition. In the bold, ambitious future, we might eliminate all pollutants, toxins and carcinogens from the air, water, and soil.⁶⁶ We might protect the coral reefs, and even create new ones.⁶⁷ We might be able to easily rescue any species from extinction, or even to “de-extinct” long-gone species, as is being attempted now with the woolly mammoth and the dire wolf.⁶⁸
And there is no reason why mastery over environment should be limited to one planet. We might develop the ability to “terraform” other planets, creating entirely new ecosystems, and doing it far faster than the geological timescales that shaped Earth.⁶⁹ There are literally whole new worlds to win.
Complete mastery over nature might enable trillions of humans living everywhere on Earth, across the solar system, or even throughout the galaxy. Compared to what we know today, it would be a life without pain, suffering, or death.
But it would not be a life without effort, challenge, and striving.
Many utopias throughout history—mythological, religious, philosophical, literary—have been conceived of as unchanging: the Egyptian Field of Reeds, the Greek Elysian Fields, the biblical Garden of Eden, the Buddhist nirvana, the Chinese “Peach-Blossom Spring.” This static utopia is a final state where we have solved all problems. In some of them, there is nothing for humans to do except leisure or worship.
But there is no utopia: such a final state can never be achieved, nor would we want it if it could. The longing for final states, the static ideal, is a fundamental mistake. Fear of population growth, a desire for “sustainability,” a general disapproval of moral and social evolution, a wish to stave off the creative destruction wrought by technological change—all are mistakes of holding a fixed world as an ideal.
Nothing in the universe is static. Not the stars, once the very definition of constancy. Not the rising and setting of the Sun, which will one day cease. Not the mountains, which drift on tectonic plates. Not the universe itself, which has evolved through stages over the eons, which even now is expanding and changing, which may someday end in a vast, scattered array of black holes.
Human progress is measured by the standard of human life, and life is a process of constant motion and growth. An ideal appropriate to living organisms, and especially to humans, is not a static ideal but a dynamic one. It is not a state, but a process, with health and success judged not by deviation from a fixed target, but by the rate of improvement.
Kevin Kelly calls this “protopia”:
I don’t believe in utopias. … I have not met a utopia I would even want to live in. … our destination is neither utopia nor dystopia nor status quo, but protopia. Protopia is a state that is better than today than yesterday, although it might be only a little better.⁷⁰
Let us then explicitly dispel the false vision of a static utopia and replace it with a dynamic protopia:
In the bold, ambitious future, people might not have to work—but they will not be sitting around idle. Such a life would be meaningless, and the greater we enhance human agency, the more we can fill our lives with meaning. Some people, a minority I expect, will still work—but only those who want to, only those for whom work is rewarding and fulfilling (and, like a successful entrepreneur on their second act, their work won’t have to actually earn an income on any timescale). Others will pursue knowledge and satisfy their curiosity; express their creative vision in art or music; travel and explore; spend time with family and loved ones; play games or sports. (There will always be a role for human players, because the purpose of games and sports is not to achieve a practical outcome but to experience and to witness human ability.)
There will still be problems to be solved and goals to be pursued—even if increasingly, these will seem from our perspective like luxuries: creating new forms of art and entertainment, exploring the galaxy and expanding ever outward as we fill up the space around us, answering every last question as we peer into every nook and cranny of the universe, optimizing our society for harmony and our minds for joy.
The bold, ambitious future will not be a world of uniformity and sameness. It will not be like the popular depiction of Heaven, full of angels with identical robes and harps where the only colors are shades of white. It will be marvelously diverse, with room for every individual preference, aesthetic and lifestyle.
The bold, ambitious future will not slow down. It will be far more fast-paced and exciting than anything humans have known. The future will look on our so-called fast-paced world as we look on the slow-moving centuries of the Middle Ages, or the repetitive millennia of hunter-gatherer times.
Of course, life might feel boring or stale after a thousand years, or a million—once a person has seen everything there is to see, learned the secrets of the universe, mastered every skill and game, heard every story and every melody, contemplated every idea. Perhaps there will be some way to reset ourselves, or parts of ourselves, so that we can relive those things as if for the first time. And if that turns out to be impossible or undesirable, perhaps people will simply choose, once they are a few eons old, to peacefully end their lives, in perfect satisfaction and contentment, and make room for a new life and mind to begin and do it all over again.
The bold, ambitious future is not a static Garden of Eden, but a dynamic wonderland, full of excitement, adventure, romance, exploration, curiosity, art, entertainment, play, and love. It is a paradise of human agency: the life we chose and the world we made.