An essay on extraterrestrial liberty

JBIS - Journal of the British Interplanetary Society

Volumn 61, Issue 7, 2008, Pages 255-275

  Cockell, Charles S ^a  

^a OPEN UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Extraterrestrial; Liberty; Mars; Space settlement; Tyranny

Indexed keywords

EXTRATERRESTRIAL; LIBERTY; MARS; SPACE SETTLEMENTS; TYRANNY;

ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS; INTERPLANETARY FLIGHT;

LAWS AND LEGISLATION;

EID: 46849084159     PISSN: 0007084X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. Plato's The Republic is the earliest exposition of a 'perfect State'. The rigidity of its proposed social order (a strictly engineered caste system) and its conception of an exquisitely planned society has made it one of the most lauded attempts at devising a rational social politics, but equally it can be seen to be a picture of a despotic State in which freedom is all but extinguished, a point eloquently explored by Karl Popper (K. Popper, "The Open Society and Its Enemies", Routledge and Kegan, 1945).
2. I use the word 'liberty' here to mean the desire for a minimum extraterrestrial State and minimum intervention in social and economic matters and the private lives of people; in some sense it is consistent with a libertarian point of view (e.g. 'libertarianism stresses the ideal of civil society - meaning a society that eschews dealing with one another by subjugation, oppression, conquest or similar coercive means', T.R. Machan, in C. Duncan, T.R. Macahan, "Libertarianism: For and Against", Rowman and Littlefield, p.5, 2005). However, although I do not address this specific issue in this essay, I do not support a strong libertarian (i.e., anti-State) position, such as autarchism. There are two reasons: 1) some type of centralized structure is necessary, and desirable, to maintain safety in extraterrestrial environments, despite the way in which this might be abused, which is the subject of this essay (although this State could still be a minimal State), 2) paradoxically, in extreme environments, the State will be the most effective way to secure the liberation of the individual from the huge efforts required in life support to maintain human existence. This paradox applies to most people on the present-day Earth because many time-consuming activities, such as waste removal, are dealt with by national or local governments, freeing individuals from these tasks. But the strength of this paradox will be much greater in extraterrestrial environments. On the Earth, it probably first emerged in early human societies when, for example, agrarian communities, in pursuing the central organization of food productivity, freed individuals from the need to hunt and gather their own food.
3. Of course, the attempt to design tyrannical tendencies out of a society is, in itself, a form of social engineering and could be viewed as a form of tyranny; but any society, particularly a democratic society, that attempts to protect freedom is in the process engaging in social engineering, which paradoxically represents the antithesis of the pursuit of freedom.
4. A further ambiguity in the phrase 'free society' lies in the observation that there is not necessarily an equivalence between the freedom of a whole society (a 'free society') and its constituent members (P. Van Parijs, "Real Freedom For All: What (if anything) Can Justify Capitalism?", Clarendon Press, 1997). As Van Parijs points out, a society might have the freedom to defend itself against a foreign power, but if this involves conscription, its individual members may not be as free as a society that does not resort to conscription. In the case of extraterrestrial societies, this ambiguity will be irrelevant until a time when separate settlements engage each other to create inter-society conflicts and agreements, such that the freedom of a society as a single entity becomes a meaningful concept (although in a looser way one could talk about the total general level of freedom exhibited in an isolated society compared to others, say, for example, on the Earth).
5. The paradox that one person's freedom will sometimes infringe another's is perhaps still best captured by historian Richard H. Tawney's overused quote: 'But freedom for the pike is death for the minnows', R.H. Tawney, "Equality", Allen and Unwin, p.208, 1938, or the equally worn, and somewhat more crass maxim, 'Your freedom of action ends where my nose begins'. From a more philosophical standpoint, the 'paradox of freedom' also applies to the more abstract idea that we cannot escape being free (at least within our own minds). The point, explicated by Jean-Paul Sartre, is that we are 'condemned to be free'.
6. Like many other philosophers Fichte's work was concerned with the conundrum that if the world is objective and ultimately predictable through scientific investigation (including our understanding of the functioning of the human brain), how can any human being be described as having 'free will' in a real sense? This question need not concern us here, since we can still proceed from the assumption that people have choices and coercion limits those choices regardless of whether the mental basis behind taking a choice is argued to derive from 'free will' or biochemical determinism.
7. See W.G Sebald and A. Bell, "On the Natural History of Destruction", Penguin Books, 2004.
8. G.W.F. Hegel, "The Phenomenology of Mind", translated by J.B. Baillie, Harper & Row, 1967 (first published in 1910).
9. It is an obvious point, but worth underscoring, that humans are the end point of 3.5 billion years of terrestrial evolution and are therefore exquisitely evolved for living on the Earth. Any extraterrestrial environment will, by default, be 'extreme'. The only exception to this would be an extrasolar planet orbiting a distant star that possesses a 21% oxygen atmosphere and an environment much like the Earth, allowing for a seamless integration (although the ethics of such an integration would be questionable - e.g., C.S. Cockell, "The ethical relevance of Earth-like extrasolar planets", Environmental Ethics, 28, pp.303-314, 2006). It follows that the relative extremes in comparison to the Earth discussed in this essay are an ineluctable part of the creation of an extraterrestrial society, although the types and combinations of extremes pressed upon societies will vary from location to location.
10. The production of rocket propellant using Martian resources is described by R.L. Ash, W.L. Dowler, G. Varsi, "Feasibility of rocket propellant production on Mars", Acta Astronautica, 5, pp.705-724, 1978. This paper established a concept of 'In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU)' for Mars. Other studies have examined a diversity of ways in which natural resources on Mars can be used to sustain a human presence, e.g., T.R. Meyer, C.P. McKay, "Martian in-situ resource use", JBIS, 42, pp. 147-160, 1989. ISRU is also a central theme in R. Zubrin, "The Case for Mars", Pocket Books, 1998. The diversity of industrial processes that could be developed on Mars is huge and schemes for the production of plastics, glass and other materials have been proposed in various journals and books. All of them, however, require the application of coordinated technological approaches and methods that are difficult for mere individuals to master without collective industrial support.
11. The analogy between Antarctica and Mars is a well-worn intellectual path. There are clear similarities which include the monotonous landscape, isolation and the inherent physical dangers in the environment (e.g., A. Harrison, Y.A. Clearwater and C.P. McKay, "From Antarctica to Outer Space", Springer, 1991). However, Antarctica is still benign in many of its characteristics compared to most locations in outer space, not least the breathable atmosphere. By contrast, it should also be pointed out that Antarctica can expose people and infrastructure to devastating storms and 'white outs'. On the moon there is no significant atmosphere and on Mars the low atmospheric pressure limits the damage that high winds can cause. This may be one of the few climatic factors in which the moon and Mars are an improvement on Antarctica.
12. C.S. Cockell, "Mars is an awful place to live", Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 27, pp.32-38, 2002. I uses the polar demographics of the terrestrial high arctic to predict a maximum population on Mars of about 3 million people, but suggest that this is likely to be over optimistic. The population density of the Antarctic is used to yield a maximum Martian population of half a million.
13. That climate would be likely to have an influence on the development of civilization is an old idea; French philosopher Montesquieu made the most deliberate point of recognizing that climate is one important factor that governs the development of civilization. In some sense, we can regard discussions on the influence of climate on society as the philosophical forebears of the recognition of the likely importance of extraterrestrial environmental conditions on future societies in space. Turgot also understood that climate would have some influence, but his historical account of the development of human society recognized that probably climate would be subordinate to the overprint of the culture and historical context of each society.
14. Contrasting styles of leadership exhibited by Scott and Amundsen have been a topic of controversy and historical revisionism, made more obscure by the myths surrounding the exploits of both men. An account that takes a dim view of Captain Scott is R. Huntford, "Scott and Amundsen", Putman, 1981 and can be contrasted with R. Fiennes, "Scott", Hodder and Stoughton, 2003. Regardless of one's view, the technological approach and focus on innovations employed by Scott and the approach relying on old native knowledge applied by Amundsen remains one of the most conspicuous differences in their styles of exploration.
15. 'The problem of anomie may grow into serious proportions on a national scale only in a relatively free country and in the absence of one acute specific danger that unifies the whole population in defense', C. Bay, "The Structure of Freedom", Stanford University Press, p. 119, 1958. Once freedom, however, is regarded as the cause of anomie it is a relatively easy task to use extreme environmental conditions to unite populations, if necessary through coercion, to counter it.
16. 'Basically what shaped its [kibbutz] character was the necessity for adaptation to the unusual conditions obtaining in Palestine. Hence, the peculiar social structure was necessary to ensure survival', H.F. Infield, "Cooperative Living in Palestine", Dryden, p.25, 1944.
17. The collective work ethic of a small society harbours an ambiguity in whether such an environment liberates individuals or enslaves them. For example, Spiro states 'another principle underlying the culture [of a kibbutz] is that of individual liberty; indeed, the kibbutz prides itself on being the freest society in the world', and then without the slightest sense of a possible contradiction, says one page later, 'It means, first, that the interests of the individual must be subordinate to the interests of the group', M.E. Spiro, "Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia", Harvard University Press, p.28 and 29, 1981. It is possible to write these two statements without a sense of contradiction if one believes that the egalitarian distribution of the products of individual labour, and thus subordination of individual ambitions to group work, liberates the individual from the competitiveness of a less egalitarian society. But the veracity of such a (Marxist) position is itself a matter of worthwhile debate. As one kibbutznick is paraphrased more recently, 'The traditional kibbutz assumed that if the community was successful, the individual would be secure. Samar puts it the other way round: if the individual is cared for, the community will be successful', D. Gavron, "The Kibbutz: Awakening from Utopia", Rowman and Littlefield, p.263, 2000. The tension caused in small societies by the conflicting interests of the group and the individual is evidenced in this potentially self-contradictory quote from yet another young kibbutznick, 'Real equality is'...'equality within diversity, an equal right to self-realization within the collective egalitarian framework of the kibbutz', p. 186.
18. A complete withdrawal from society will not be possible. However, the desire to remove oneself partially from the social interdependence in these environments, together with the self-control necessary to live a fulfilled life in these environments, is likely to nurture a proportion of individuals who exhibit a mixture of Stoic, Epicurean and Cynical characteristics (self-control, assertion of reason over emotion, virtue, self-sufficiency, etc.), at least seen from the classical characteristics of these philosophies.
19. In this essay I prefer to put despotism, dictatorship and totalitarianism into the same pot. A convincing argument can be made that there is in fact a distinction between dictatorship, which involves a well-planned hierarchy, and totalitarianism, which takes on the character of a large amorphous 'movement' supported by systematic terror (Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia being the most recent examples). In the sense that a despot can rule over a small group of people, but totalitarianism requires a large number of people (on the scale of nations) to generate the structures of mass control and terror, true totalitarianism is unlikely to emerge in an extraterrestrial environment because the numbers of people will be, in most locations, too small. In most extraterrestrial societies the worst form of organised control will be derivatives of dictatorship.
20. I. Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty", in I. Berlin, "Four Essays on Liberty", Oxford University Press, pp.118-172, 1988. Berlin provides a particularly clear discussion of the separation between negative liberty (freedom from interference) and positive liberty (freedom to do certain things), although the recognition of the separation between these two types of liberty precedes Berlin (e.g., C Bay, "The Structure of Freedom", p.57 and M.J. Adler, "The Idea of Freedom", Doubleday & Co., 1958). Insofar as the freedom to do a certain thing usually implies a lack of coercion against doing it (i.e., potential interference), then one can construct an argument that there is no difference between positive and negative versions of freedom, but in this essay I separate them according to the meaning of Berlin for convenience.
21. 'Real power begins where secrecy begins', H. Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism", Harcourt, p.403, 1985. Arendt later elaborates in detail why it is that in totalitarian States the police must necessarily become an instrument of control since through them the 'atomisation' of society into paranoid individuals protecting their own interests becomes possible - later it becomes inseparable from the very existence and continuity of the totalitarian State. The control of information is one part of the development of this culture of separating humans. It also leads to the inevitable, and bizarre, paradox that the development of mass collective will embodied by totalitarian societies is only made possible by first pushing people to extremes of individualism by separating them from family and friends. From this point their isolation can be used to reunite them into a 'movement'. Seen from this point of view it is possible to see how even capitalist societies that encourage individualism and interpersonal competitiveness could fluidly make the transition to totalitarianism. The abuse of knowledge in this way is not necessarily a clear transgression of trust: 'There is probably no social interaction that is going on that does not include elements of manipulation. Most communication, if not all, includes conscious or unconscious attempts at regulating the supply of information in the interest of encouraging or discouraging certain types of behaviour', C Bay, "The Structure of Freedom", p.320. The link between knowledge and power has perhaps been most comprehensively investigated by Foucault, e.g., M. Foucault, "Power/Knowledge", Pantheon Books, 1980.
22. 'The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration of their welfare, without going the length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law', J.S. Mill, "On Liberty", Oxford University Press, p.83, 1988. This notion is dangerous because it is open to the obvious abuse, adumbrated in this essay, of individuals being singled out for behaviors or critique that is perfectly legal, but happens not to be convenient for authorities in power. Encouraging collective disapprobation by society is the most insidious instrument for subverting independence of mind and strengthening conformity. There is good evidence that in small isolated populations public disgrace is a powerful, and regarded as a highly effective, tool of group coercion. Concerning the Inuit: 'Means of enforcing peace and harmony within communities included shaming, shunning, banishment, abandonment leading to death, and execution. Public ridicule and ostracism were the most frequently used methods of social control, and generally had the desired effect of keeping people cooperative', quoted in R. Fossett, "In Order to Live Untroubled: Inuit of the Central Arctic, 1550-1940", University of Manitoba Press, p.207, 2001. And in the Israeli kibbutzim: 'Should a chaver [Hebrew for friend or companion - used to refer to other members of the kibbutz] violate the group norms, it would not only be known in a short time, but he would be openly criticized for his behavior. Such group censure, informal though it is, is highly effective' (p.99).....'The first procedure is to bring the person's dereliction to the official attention of the kibbutz at a town meeting. This is a powerful sanction, and the very threat to use it is usually efficacious in this community where people are so sensitive to public opinion', M.E. Spiro, "Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia", p. 100.
23. th century French revolutionary vision of liberalism. However, from Plato onwards, the romanticism of 'designed' free societies has a long history. The end point of such designer societies is likely to be anything but an enhancement of individual liberty (e.g., I. Berlin, "Freedom and its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty", Princeton University Press, 2002.)
24. 'Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves', William Pitt the Younger, House of Commons. London, November 18, 1783; and 'If either a public officer or anyone else saw a person attempting to cross a bridge which had been ascertained to be unsafe....they might seize him and turn him back, without any real infringement of his liberty.... Nevertheless, when there is not a certainty...no-one but the person himself can judge of the sufficiency of the motive', J.S. Mill, "On Liberty", Oxford University Press, p. 107, 1998. This view is defensible, but the unsafe bridge can equally become a convenient excuse for preventing people from crossing any bridges or building bridges to protect their own safety and the safety of others, and it is this motive that most profoundly threatens liberty in extraterrestrial environments.
25. For example, 'That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection', J.S. Mill, "On Liberty", Oxford University Press, p. 14, 1998. Many later writers do not disagree, but attempt to define the extent to which self-defense is justified, for example 'defensive violence, therefore, must be confined to resisting invasive acts against person or property', M.N. Rothbard, "The Ethics of Liberty", New York University Press, p.77, 2002.
26. Hugo Grotius used his concept of 'natural laws' to advance propositions for a just war, in which basic rules applicable to all warring parties would apply, independent of local customs and traditions, and established by 'natural' laws, H. Grotius, "On the Laws of War and Peace", Kessinger Publishing, 2004 (first published in 1625).
27. T. Hobbes, "Leviathan", Oxford University Press, 1998 (first published in 1651).
28. 'Nothing proved easier to destroy than the privacy and private morality of people who thought of nothing but safeguarding their private lives', H. Arendt in "The Origins of Totalitarianism", p.338 describing the influence of Himmler and his activities on the development of Nazi society. The recognition that humans can subordinate their concerns about a political system bent on genocide to their own personal interests was one of the most alarming and extraordinary facts about human nature that totalitarian societies brought sharply to light in the twentieth century (although it was certainly not the first time this possibility was practically realised).
29. th century fascination with defining the 'original state of nature' was almost certainly brought about by a lack of understanding of human evolution and its links to the evolution of other primates. It was only natural, in the absence of this information, for curious intellectuals to try to define what the 'original' human society must have looked like and how its members might have behaved. In reality there was unlikely to have been an original state of nature, but instead a seamless gradation of behaviour from apes to early hominids. From this perspective Hobbes's war of all against all, and Locke's essentially benevolent people can be seen as two end member types of behaviour which humans express in varying degrees at any given time. Probably the least realistic view of early societies was Rousseau's (J-J. Rousseau, "The Social Contract", Penguin, 1976 (first published in 1762)) because humans are not fundamentally solitary creatures, although incorporating solitary behavior and our 'private lives' within the 'social contract' of collective social organisation, remains, as he recognised, one of the major challenges to the assembly of peaceful human societies.
30. Numerous small isolated societies might yield insights into the collective patterns of social organization that could emerge in extraterrestrial societies. Some isolated groups, such as those on drilling rigs or in nuclear submarines, are not long-term societies and so offer few lessons in the development of long-term political and economic systems. The Israeli kibbutz is one such permanent society (H. Barkai, "The Kibbutz: An Experiment in Micro-Socialism", in I. Howe and C Gershman, "Israel, the Arabs, and the Middle East", Bantam Books, pp.69-99, 1972) which offers an insight into the evolution of a socialist egalitarian structure. Many kibbutzim have, since the middle of the 1990s, transformed their economic behavior towards capitalism, suggesting that no system is 'natural' and that, at least on the Earth, both socialist and capitalist economic models can be adopted by the same isolated groups of people. These transitions show that it is difficult to predict meaningfully the political and economic trajectory of an isolated extraterrestrial group, and that a single extraterrestrial environment could in fact host diverse models of development. The deep social bonds found in the Inuit of the High Arctic are yet another example. The Inuit offer a particularly interesting model of isolated societies with a long history because they are exposed to extreme polar (in some respects Mars-like) conditions. All of these models, however, suffer from two weaknesses: 1) none of these societies is exposed to the collected extremities found in extraterrestrial environments, in which the peculiar political and economic style of human organization ultimately can only be determined by actually living in these environments, 2) the transition to modern technical societies in these groups has occurred through the process of external influence, in the case of the kibbutzim, primarily from the Israeli State and society. Extraterrestrial societies will start with a high level of technical competence, and although they will initially receive influence from the Earth, their extreme isolation means that their development, internally and in relation to external influence, will not exactly recapitulate isolated groups on the Earth.
31. The development of extraterrestrial society may in some ways recapitulate the history of human civilization on the Earth, from small early tribal networks to nation-States, as the scale and complexity of extraterrestrial infrastructure increases. Just two of the many brilliant expositions of the nature of liberty and its correlation with the state of human civilization in different stages of development can be found in R. Muir, "Civilization and Liberty", Jonathan Cape, 1940 and the earlier and more remarkable, given the circumstances under which it was written, Cordorcet, "Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind", Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1955 (first published 1795). There are two obvious distinctions to outer space, however: 1) extraterrestrial societies may be comparatively a blank social canvas since detached from the Earth they may have more freedom to attempt new experiments in social organization, 2) they will have access to the accumulated technological prowess of human society on Earth and will begin these 'early' stages of civilization with great scientific and technical support.
32. 'Is one therefore to conclude that economic centralization aiming at social security must sweep away spiritual freedom?', J.L. Talmon, "The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy", Frederick A. Praeger, p.255, 1961. The relationship between economic and political freedom is ambiguous. Friedman states 'economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom', M. Friedman, "Capitalism and Freedom", University of Chicago Press, p.8, 2002 (first published in 1962), and in the updated Preface in the 2002 edition, states that 'political freedom, although desirable, is not a necessary condition of economic freedom' (ix). Hayek has little doubt that a centrally planned economy, simply from the necessity for central organization, will erode democracy, F.A. Hayek, "Economic Control and Totalitarianism", in "The Road to Serfdom", Routledge, pp.91-104, 2007 (first published in 1944). It is not clear how political and economic freedoms can or will be linked in extraterrestrial societies. Indeed, if the enclosed spaces of extraterrestrial environments are places where corporations find fertile ground for cartels and wealth accumulation at the expense of an enslaved population, then the centralized control of the distribution of wealth may even be desirable.
33. The character of capitalism itself may be contingent on historical circumstances (M. Weber, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", Routledge, 2007 (first published in 1904)). It is likely that given the need to survive extreme environmental conditions, the puritan sense of 'duty' would be manifested strongly in extraterrestrial capitalism, but that the undercurrent of collective social responsibility caused by these environments might dampen the drive for individualistic acquisition of wealth for its own sake, as exemplified by small communities on the Earth. Any attempt at extraterrestrial capitalism could easily end in a type of 'subdued' capitalism underpinned by a strong collective work ethic.
34. 'Everywhere do I perceive a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage under the name and pretext of the commonwealth', the words of Sir Thomas More, quoted by J.A.Hobson, "Imperialism: A Study", Cosmo Classics, 2005, p.46, (first published in 1902).
35. It is disingenuous to attack hard working civil servants who work for the benefit of their country and its population, but it remains an irrefragable fact that this branch of society has the most administratively useful potential to an emerging tyranny.
36. I. Carter, "A Measure of Freedom", Oxford University Press, p.29, 1999.
37. Mars experiences both volcanism and earthquakes. However, neither occurs, at least in the present-day, with the devastating consequences seen on the Earth. It is an unlikely observation that freedom is connected to plate tectonics, but in certain realms of life it is. Mars is comparatively free of the physical dangers associated with moving plates compared to the Earth, and consequently the specific systems of administration, oversight, warning, and evacuation associated with earthquake and volcano-prone regions of the Earth will not be required. However, this release from the politics resulting from one form of extremity will be overshadowed by the systems of administration associated with the lethal atmosphere.
38. 'The world operates a certain way, according to causal laws, and the constraints imposed by nature are the foundation for human choice, not a barrier to it', D. Kelley, "A Life of One's Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State", Cato Institute, Washington, p.69, 1998; Philippe Van Parijs incorporates the recognition that natural barriers to freedom cannot truly be recognized as restrictions to liberty in his concept of 'real freedom', P. Van Parijs, "Real Freedom For All". Real freedom requires that the individual actually has the capacity or resources to carry out their will. From this perspective extreme environments, on Earth or in space, although they restrict many freedoms such as movement, cannot be considered as real restrictions to freedom because no political or personal will can overcome them - they are simply realities of the environmental conditions in which one lives. Nevertheless, these physical conditions can still cause restrictions in political and social freedoms, either by directly restricting people and their ability to move, for instance, or encouraging restrictive social policies and practices. The link between the physical environment and restrictive social and personal freedoms they create may become so intimate that in outer space Parijs's distinction becomes moot - individuals will consider the outside physical environment, no matter how unchangeable, to be a contributory architect of tyranny. This distinction does not mean, of course, that we cannot expand our opportunities for social and political freedom by overcoming natural or physical restrictions - "We may give the name 'physical freedom' to the mastery over non-human obstacles to the realization of our desires", B. Russell, "Freedom and Government", in R.N. Anshen, "Freedom - Its Meaning", George Allen and Unwin, p.231, 1942. We can even use physical phenomena that usually threaten liberty to expand it, for example Malinowski's perceptive comment, 'The contribution of fire to freedom consists in that it extends the range of human action', B. Malinowski, "Freedom and Civilization", Indiana University Press, p. 113, 1964 (first published in 1944). But the inability to overcome physical barriers does not constitute a denial of liberty.
39. Weapons of mass destruction are prohibited in outer space by United Nations agreement, but as we witness the difficulties of controlling the proliferation of these weapons on Earth, how are we to police their spread in outer space? The number of asteroids in our Solar System greater than 1 km in diameter on which a chemical or biological weapons factory could be hidden, or a nuclear weapon stored, is estimated to be much greater than 1.1 million. Ultimately colonies in outer space, particularly those on planetary surfaces, isolated and at the mercy of malevolent individuals and groups hidden in the vast tracts of interplanetary and interstellar space, may be more prone to devastation at the hands of other human societies than we have witnessed on the Earth. The threat of annihilation in the infinite un-policeable expanses of space may itself yield a quite unique culture of suspicion and paranoia which would fuel a culture of control.
40. I. Brant, "The Bill of Rights: Its Origin and Meaning", Bobbs-Merrill, 1965.
41. Friedman states, on parental responsibility and children: 'But reality has its own discipline. The alternative to parental authority is and should be freedom . . . Experiencing the real world directly - learning to survive in it - is not as pleasant a way of growing up as being taught about it by one's parents. But if the parents are unwilling or unable to do the job, it may be the best substitute available', D. Friedman, "The Machinery of Freedom", Open Court, p.94, 1995. On a planet where the behaviour of miscreants, and even the physical damage they may choose to cause, can be absorbed into society, this solution is attractive. But it is a luxury that a small society surrounded by an instantaneously lethal atmosphere can ill afford to have when errant conduct is more likely to be fatal.
42. The extremity of extraterrestrial environments and the difficulty of moving around in them coupled with the lack of the diversity of goods compared with the Earth (at least in the early stages of extraterrestrial settlements) will nurture a form of asceticism in social and individual conduct. Many individuals may, if they are allowed to, combat this social environment by deliberate attempts to expand their social freedom and their acquisition of goods, but these environments will provide a stage for the flourishing of ascetic religious beliefs as a means to come to terms with the environment - almost a form of religious resignation.
43. J. Locke, "Two Treatises on Government", Everyman Library, 1993 (first published in 1689). Locke's view that land can become private property by working on it was suggested as an approach to encourage people to settle otherwise barren and unattractive extraterrestrial environments, since the possibility of converting land into one's own private property is one of the few tangible incentives that can drive people to settle desolate environments (C.S.Cockell, "A Simple Land Use Policy for Mars", in J.D.A.Clarke, "Mars Analog Research", American Astronautical Association, 111, pp.301-311, 2006). Bertrand Russell correctly pointed out that Locke's ideas have lost meaning because corporations and individuals can claim ownership of land without actually working on it themselves (B. Russell, "History of Western Philosophy", Touchtone, p.636, 1967). They can even sell it on without using it for anything productive at all. However, we might wonder whether, as a general policy, Locke's ideas might have some value in outer space. If individuals or corporations were required to work on land in a very real physical sense before being able to acquire it as property, it would prevent a solar system-wide armchair 'land grab', and force organizations to expend the effort to develop human settlement in space prior to their ability to claim land. In addition, the principle that once people have worked on the land, then they have the right to develop it, would provide a strong incentive to explore and settle space.
44. 'Planetary protection' embodies the concerns about the contamination of other planets either hosting an indigenous biota or capable of hosting one ('forward' contamination) and the concern about the infection of the Earth's biota with a pathogenic or potentially environmentally pervasive extraterrestrial organism ('back' contamination).
45. Perhaps the most notable early assertion that social interactions are motivated by human vices (particularly self-interest and greed) was developed by Bernard Mandeville in his satire "The Fable of the Bees", Liberty Fund, 1988 (first published in 1705), although Mandeville went further and proposed that many of these vices lead to benefits to the general public (hence the subtitle of his book 'Private Vices, Publick Benefits'). I am not suggesting here, however, that the drive for power is necessarily motivated entirely by self-interest or greed, but my thesis here is that it primarily stems from a personal desire to achieve something significant - itself motivated by a fear of mortality and insignificance.
46. 'Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must recognize that the advance and even the preservation of civilization are dependent upon a maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen', F.A. Hayek, "The Constitution of Liberty", Routledge, p.27, 2006.
47. A developed discussion on the relationship of ancient Greeks to their environment and how that relationship was fashioned by the major philosophical schools is found in L. Westra, T.M. Robinson, "The Greeks and the Environment", Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. Aside from the fact that there was no globally-encompassing environmental 'crisis' for ancient Greeks to recognise, fundamental philosophical tenets unpinned a very different view of Nature, not least the ancient Greek view that things were unchangeable and fixed, challenged only by Heraclitus's assertion that everything is in flux. In a world where the environment's destiny is either fixed or controlled by god(s), there is little reason for humans to care, or even need to care, about their insignificant impact. In that sense early Greek and later European societies, even beyond the Enlightenment, despite their imperial ambitions, were too humble and modest in their assessment of the power of human industrialization to recognize its ultimate possible impact on the environment.
48. The journal, Environmental Ethics, has become one of the primary means of scholarly discussion on the ethics of our treatment of the environment, although the number of books on environmental ethics is also very large. In the US, forester Aldo Leopold is generally recognized to be one of the founders of this awakening (A. Leopold, "A Sand County Almanac", Oxford University Press, 1949), although it is equally likely that it was as much caused by a simple pragmatic recognition of the environmental damage being done by the sheer scale of human industrial activity manifested as insecticide poisoning, forest clearing, etc.
49. 'It is wherever man reaches beyond his present self, where the new emerges and assessment lies in the future, that liberty ultimately shows its value', F.A. Hayek, "The Constitution of Liberty", p.340.
50. The 'open plain' of intellectual adventurism in extraterrestrial environments will necessarily still be bounded by what is practically possible in outer space. A pertinent example is Nozick's minimal or 'night-watchman' State (R. Nozick, "Anarchy, State, and Utopia", Blackwell, 2003). The minimum apparatus required to construct a State will be defined by the minimum set of systems required to ensure individual safety and the implementation of commonly agreed laws. However, if the errant behavior of one individual has the potential to threaten many more people than on the Earth, then the minimum extraterrestrial State would necessarily be larger because the State apparatus necessary to minimise the chances of criminality must be more extensive to achieve a correspondingly equal chance of effective enforcement. Thus, although extraterrestrial environments will yield new opportunities for thoughts on social organization, they will at the same time be ring-fenced by the realities of the environment, and some conceptions of the State may be more restrictive than on the Earth.