Kononov A.A.

Institute of Systems Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia

Disastrously unpredictable environment - the source of existential risks for mankind

 

Many discoveries in astronomy and earth sciences, made within the past decades, turned to be the ones of new threats and risks to the existence of humankind on the Earth and in Space [1], [2], [3], [4]. Lending itself readily is a conclusion of that our civilization is existing and evolving in a disastrously unstable environment, which is capable of destroying it any time, and only a fortunate coincidence (luck) allowed our civilization to develop up to the current level. But this “luck” will hardly be everlasting.  Following below are a list of main groups of threats of global catastrophes and several examples of the threats.

 

Natural:

Disasters resulting from geological processes. Supervolcanos, magnetic pole shift, earth faults and the processes running in deeper strata of the Earth

Disasters resulting from potential instability of Sun. Superpowerful solar flares and bursts, potential instability of reactions providing for solar luminocity and temperature supporting life on the Earth

 Disasters resulting from Space effects (asteroids, comets; a possibility of a malicious intrusion of an alien civilization cannot be ruled out either)

 

Engendered by civilization

Self-destruction. Resulting from the use of weapons of mass destruction.

Environment destruction. As a result of man-made disasters.

Self-extermination. The choice of an erroneous way of civilization evolution, say, the one limiting the pace of building up civilization’s technological strength. Given civilization existence in a disastrously unstable environment such a decision may turn to be a sentence of civilization’s self-extermination – it will simply have no time to prepare for the upcoming catastrophes. Many other theories, bearing upon the choice of directions of civilization evolution, also can, given a lop-sided non-systemic application thereof, inflict a heavy damage and prevent civilization from appropriately resolving the tasks, which would have enabled it to manage the potential disasters. Even the idea of civilization’s indestructibility, presented herein, carries a risk of justifying super-exploitation (sacrificing the living generations) for the sake of solving the tasks of civilization’s indestructibility. Hence, importance of the second part of this ideology – raising the culture of keeping the family and individual memory. Remarkably, this culture may act as a defense from a variety of other risks of dehumanization and moral degradation of civilization.

Provoking nature instability. For instance, initiating greenhouse effect and climatic changes.

Threats of civilization destruction endangered by new technologies and civilization evolution (civilization dynamics). These are threats which humankind must learn to handle as new technologies emerge and space developed (space expansion). For example, the emergence of information society gave rise to a whole industry handling security problems (cyber security) arising when using computer and telecoms technologies. The necessity of diverting huge resources for solving security problems associated with new technologies is an inevitable prerequisite of progress. It must be understood and taken for granted that solving the problems of security of each new technological or civilizational breakthrough (e.g., creation of extraterrestrial space colonies) may come to be many times as costly as the price of their materialization. But this is the only way of ensuring security of progress, including that of space expansion.

 

Threat of life destruction on a space scale

These are largely hypothetical threats, but the known cases of collisions and explosions of galaxies are indicative of that they may but be ignored. These are:

·     Threats of life destruction in the part of the Galaxy, where the Solar system lies;

·     Threats of life destruction throughout the Galaxy or in a cluster of Galaxies, which the Milky Way is part of;

·     Threats of destruction of the Universe or life in the Universe;

·     Threats of life destruction in potentially existing structures, which our Universe may be part of.

 

Indestructibility as civilization’s principal supertask

The presence of a huge number of threats to the survival of civilization makes civilization’s indestructibility to be the main task, and sooner, with regard to the scale and importance, the central supertask. The other global civilizational supertasks and tasks such as extension of human life, rescuing mankind from diseases, hunger, stark social inequality (misery, poverty), crime, terrorism largely become senseless and lose their moral potential, if the central supertask – civilization’s indestructibility – is not being handled. Ignoring this supertask implies a demonstrable indifference to the fate of civilization, to the destiny of future generations, thereby depriving the living generations of an ethical foundation because of immorality and cruelty (to the future generations, thus doomed to death) of such a choice.

So, what potential ways of solving this central supertask of civilization are available?

Generally speaking, the current practice of responding to the threats suggests looking for ways of guarding against each one of them. But the quantity and scale of threats to civilization destruction as well as fundamental impossibility of defending from them in any other way but only by breaking the dependence of civilization fate on the places where these threats exist, render a conclusion that a relatively reliable (in relation to other possible solutions, say, by creating protective shells or arks) solution of the task of civilization’s indestructibility can be provided only by way of space expansion. Yet, keeping in mind that there are no absolutely safe places in all of the Universe and, probably, across the Creation, the task of civilization salvation  comes to a strive for a maximum distribution of civilization, maintaining unity, across a possibly maximum number of spaces along with possession of considerable evacuation potential in each one of them.

So civilization space expansion ought to imply surmounting civilization’s dependence on the habitats, which may be destroyed. And the first task along the line implies surmounting mankind’s dependence on the living conditions on the Earth and on the Earth fate. It may be solved by a purposive colonization of the solar system. That is by establishing technologically autonomous colonies on all planets or their moons, where this is possible, and by creating autonomous interplanetary stations, prepared for full technological independence from the Earth.

This must be accompanied by a gradual shift of manufacturing operations, critical for the fate of civilization and hazardous for the Earth environment, beyond the limits of our planet and distribution thereof across the solar system. The planet of Earth shall be gradually assigned the role of environmentally sound recreational zone designed for vacations and life after retirement

Solution of this task, i.e. establishment of colonies technologically independent upon the Earth and shifting critical operations beyond the Earth boundaries, can apparently take about 1,000 years. Though the history of the 20th century showed that humankind is capable of producing so many technological surprises within a mere 100 years! Note that this was done in spite of the fact that its smooth development, during the 100 years, was impeded by 2 world wars, disastrous in terms of their scale, numerous civil wars and bloody conflicts. Technological breakthroughs, given peaceful and goal-oriented activities, will probably make it possible to handle the tasks of severing civilization’s dependence on the fate of the Earth, solar system, etc. at a much higher pace than can be imagined now.

Try to define individual phases of potential space expansion, implying a marked upsurge in civilization’s indestructibility.

Upon surmounting the humanity’s fate dependence upon the fate of the Earth, next along the line shall come the task of getting over the dependence of civilization’s fate on the fate of solar system. This task will have to be coped with by colonizing spaces at a safe distance from our solar system. The expected time of accomplishment (given no incredible, from modern perspective, technological breakthroughs) spans scores thousands of years.

Then come the tasks of severing civilization’s fate dependence upon the fate of individual intragalaxy spaces and on the fate of Milky Way and Metagalaxy. The possibility of solving  these tasks will, apparently, be determined only by a potential emergence of new technologies unpredictable today.

Same applies to solving the next tasks, say, doing away with civilization’s fate dependence upon the fate of the Universe. It seems now that solution of this kind of tasks will be possible through the control of all critical processes running in the Universe, or through discovering technologies enabling transportation to other universes  (if any of these exist), or by way of acquiring technologies for creation of new universes suitable as new backup (evacuation) living spaces of civilization. 

An absolute guarantee of civilization’s safety and indestructibility can be produced only by the control of the Creation, be it is achievable and feasible in principle. But it is precisely this option that any civilization in Cosmos must strive at so as to be absolutely sure of its indestructibility.

Assume that Humanity is not the only civilization setting the supertask of indestructibility. What will happen given a meeting with other civilizations setting similar tasks?

It would be safe in assuming, at this point of reasoning, natural occurrence of an objective law, which may be referred to as Ethical Filter Law.

Ethical Filter Law: it is only civilizations with a rather high ethical potential, barring them from self-annihilation given availability of technologies capable of turning into the means of mass destruction during intra-civilization conflicts, which can evolve up to the level of civilization capable of space expansion on interplanetary and intergalaxy scale.

In other words, civilizations with high technologies at hand but failing to learn to behave are either destroyed, as any inadequately developed civilizations, by natural disasters which they are incapable of managing because of the lack of appropriate capabilities, which they had no time to develop probably not least because of wasting efforts and allocated time on self-annihilation (wars).

Given two and more space civilizations, which strive towards indestructibility and which managed to get through the ethical filter, probably the most productive way of their co-existence can become a gradual unification thereof for solving the tasks of indestructibility of all civilizations, which managed to get through the ethical filter.

We may leave room for the existence of totalitarian civilizations capable of bypassing the above filter for they did not face a problem of self-annihilation because of their primordial unity. But, as is seen from historical experience of humankind, totalitarian civilizations (regimes) are more prone to undermining their own, nominally human potential due to the repressive mechanisms keeping them afloat, and are not capable of generating effective incentives for a progressive development, primarily technological one. That is, they are unviable in principle.

The potential specific principles of interaction with such totalitarian space civilizations must therefore be developed upon the emergence of this type of problems, if it becomes clear that they really can arise. Meanwhile we may treat the possibility of meeting such civilizations, which may turn to be hostile towards humankind, as any other space threat, whose repulsion will be dependent upon availability of sufficient civilization capacities required for handling this kind of tasks.

 

REFERENCES

1. Lefevre V.A. Space Subject. Moscow, Kogito-Centr Publishing house, 2005, 220p.

2. Nazaretyan A.P. Civilizational Crises in the Context of Universal History. 2-nd ed. Moscow, Mir Publishing house, 2004, 367 p.

3. Hvan M.P. A Violent Universe: from the Big Bang up to Accelerated Expansion, from Quarks to Superstrings. Moscow, URSS Publishers, 2006, 408p.

4.  Narlikar Jayant "Violent Phenomena in the Universe", Oxford UP, 1984, 246 p.