Is There Art On Mars?

Many a Syrian gaze would have been cast down in the rubble of lost lives when Musk’s Tesla sports car orbited above their broken state to the tune of a Bowie classic.

One man’s idea made actuality implores deep reflection from those not burdened by the bad lottery of power politics. We look upwards and outwards as our greatest innovations break through the atmosphere. Our deepest hopes, fears and ambitions go with them.

The rise of humanity simultaneously falling and not falling in a vacuum is a beacon of our status as the top predators on earth. Through the lens of a 21st century telescope the instinct to maintain this status has been ignited in the face of new unconquered horizons. Musk implores us: we must take steps to become an interplanetary species.

This plea carries a much heavier burden than is initially perceived. It is a plea that is as much a product of the enlightened rationalist as it is the primal egoist.

In other words, we must come to terms with not only Elon’s how but also his why.

What does launching a car into space tell us about human emotion and motive? Like historical colonialism, power for powers sake is a cultural story that needs to be re-examined in the face of a future among the stars. Inter-planetary ambition is framed as a purely logical endeavour.

The reality is more uncomfortable. We are deeply intuitive and emotional beings. Invited or not, they play a fundamental role in our desire for space exploration and they will accompany us on the journey.

Stories and scientific discoveries in equal measure will shape progress for humanity and it is somewhere along the spectrum from fiction to reality that a seat of centralised authority is to be found.

The most urgent concerns arise when we consider that with the current rate of technological and scientific advancement the parameters of this spectrum are repositioning as we speak. The political seatbelt sign lights up; the seat of power is experiencing some paradigm shifting turbulence.

Francis Bacon told us ‘Knowledge equals power.’ In the information age, how knowledge is anthropologically contextualised could be added as a footnote to this old adage. Musk wants to take humans to Mars.

Regardless of whether he knows how, humanity will require a why. And the why cannot afford to lack emotional pizzazz. Most of us understand (however begrudgingly) that objective truth is something external to our wants and desires. That hasn’t prevented us from moulding certain truths into more resourceful and palatable forms.

Politicians do this well. Usually wonderful story tellers, they understand when it is necessary to play fast and loose with the rules of truth to gain influence. They may for example provide factually accurate statistics and yet manipulate the relevant context that underlines them. Lying accomplishes the more immediate priority of selling a soothing narrative rather than a harsh reality.

Thus, the age of the political bigot is afoot. Where science becomes ever more perplexing, the truth becomes harder to sell. Acknowledgment of scientific ambiguity is perceived as uncertainty. The majority want to hear that Schrodinger’s cat is alive or dead but not both. Musk has the unique challenge of walking the alpha walk and talking the scientific talk. We respond to displays of leadership that promote concrete assurances.

Accurate or not, we feel safer. Logical or not, we are all seduced by the selective compartmentalisation of knowledge that relates the wider universe back to ourselves. We are biologically wired to do so. Biologically speaking, human psychology is not completely on Musk’s side.

To work around this dilemma, intellectual musings theorise a future where we undertake a gradual metamorphosis into becoming more android than animal. Science fiction novels and movies are already well established in creating an imaginational platform for such an idea.

Whether a necessary transition or not, a reach for immortality seems a tragic homage to the ancestral legacy of our genetic culmination. Our most basic desires form the engine of human curiosity. When humans forget what it is to die, it will change how it feels to live.

New inventions and resourceful discoveries may not be the catalyst for progress in a species that is too far removed from the urges of their primal beginnings. The desire for territorial possession and more power is the evolutionary echo of our past as the bigger brained cousins in the primate family searching for more security from predators, sickness and starvation.

We desire to go to Mars, not only because we are unlike other animals, but because we are still animals ourselves. Like all animals, humans fear death. Unlike animals however, they can engage with an intersubjective level of reality where abstract entities such as money and ideas have power.

The pursuit of power and the maintenance of its authority soothes our fears and we feel better under the protection of ‘certainty.’ Many people find this through religious institutions via a Church or Mosque and in between the pages of a bible or the Quran. Our ancestors wanted to believe in the safe certainty of tomorrow. For all his eccentricities, Elon Musk is quoted as sharing similar sentiments:

“If you get up in the morning and think that the future is going to be better, it is a bright day.” – Elon Musk.

It is emotionally inconvenient that some scientific truths refuse to submit to the human desire for order amongst the chaos. To rigid societal structures that rely on a cooperative majority they can even be dangerous. Widespread propaganda is the best insurance in such cases.

Truth and power have rarely existed harmoniously side by side. For this reason life is never easy for the highly idiosyncratic types among us. And yet it seems that to value our genetic continuation by exerting personal power is fundamental to progress.

Without competition or ambition between individuals and societies alike, nothing would change, nothing would move forward. We would have no desire for space exploration.

But we are not facing rival tribes or an aggressive sovereign state full of other earthly biological adversaries. We are facing the foes of space and time. The greatest challenge to humanity emerges when we cannot distinguish our comforting fictions from reality or AI creations over animals.

The rules of the universe are apathetic to our human displays of power and dominance. Our cultural narratives won’t get us to Mars. Not unless they coincide with what science can deliver.

Therein lies the conundrum. Science doesn’t make for a great orator or leader of mankind. Its allegiance is to truth, not necessarily persuasion. It cannot rally the troops of progress with the anticlimactic methods of logic.

In retrospect, the grandiose rise of Trump and his tall tales of tall walls was the chink in the armour of the cold hard logic of an increasingly globalised world that is prone to neglect the grass roots of our existence: We feel.

Pleasure, pain and every emotion along the spectrum are powerful tools used by those who know how to tell stories. Politicians will present them on a silver platter as absolute truths, assuring us of their ability to move forward and plant a victorious flag of knowledge on the land of new horizons.

Ever the undefeated predator. Yet when we are presented with any paradox that science so commonly offers, its very nature defies earthly ownership. It is the universe and its laws refusing to be conquered. It provides not a solid foundation of safety or security but an eternal balance.

A constant state of logical purgatory. We cannot dominate its truths or bend them to our will through a telescope or a microscope. But we can in our imagination. We can grasp power at the point where the pen touches the page. Where the paint brush sweeps the canvas. We can describe reality with words and brush strokes. We can also mould it. One step further, we can creatively change it.

Along with scientists, an interplanetary future could honour the artist. A feat that humans have more often than not failed to do on earth. Art of integrity doesn’t feign absolute all- knowing to simply gain influence or make us feel better. It turns our eager gaze into the stark light of the hand of reality dealt to us.

Art born of artistic genius is not merely used as social monopoly money but approximates both objective and subjective meaning so convincingly that its currency doesn’t aim to consolidate established power but to humble it.

The truly great can imitate life so brilliantly that their creations will continue to humble humanity long after we are gone. Such is the power of human imagination. The ability to reason as close to the purest form of truth without losing ones’ powers of emotional engagement is the height of intersubjective prowess. A trademark of what is distinctly human.

There is a rising voice rippling through the avenues of social media that we need to become something other than what we are if we are to explore the possibilities of a colonised solar system. We might not be able to inhibit our instinctual response to power while human, but we can choose what power looks like. From Trump to Musk, society is holding up a plethora of divisive options about what sort of power dynamics we choose for ourselves.

You, the reader, may have noticed that the inclusion of women in these social paradigms is eerily quiet. We have much more imaginative work to do for a fully intersubjective commitment to Musk’s ambitions.

Our fictions as well as our facts have the power to shape space exploration and our artists could be the compatible companions of science if we take care of them. Projects such as Space x and Tesla are not just scientifically revolutionary. They are our stories that narrate where we next want to stake our claim as a species.

The red sports car on its trajectory through space provides the analogous fists beating against the chests of our most formidable alphas. We roar our superiority into the void in defiance of who we are to the future spectre of what we will become.