The hidden face of the Earth

"If capitalism works well on Earth,
there is no reason to think it will fail in space»
Bigelow Aerospace

While Artemis II was circumnavigating the Moon in strict live broadcast, bombs fell and rained miserably on Beirut, the US president announced the liquidation of an entire civilization in a flash and the IMF warned us to prepare for the worst. While we were telekinetically watching the Moon, the permanent global war accelerated its homicidal and lunatic impulses on Earth. And this, when freely looking at the Moon is a universal right all over the world that, for now, no one has managed to prohibit or commercialize. Yet. It won't be for contradictions or antagonisms, nor because one thing doesn't deny the other –or does it– nor because they steal our attention every day, the most profitable contemporary business, while they steal our wallet every night. Improbable balance, if indispensable scientific knowledge excites me with every advance, the geopolitical lunar imperial race terrifies me with every step. Words of Montaigne: "Anaximenes wrote to Pythagoras: how can I occupy my time solving the secret of the stars, if I always have slavery and death before me?".To that film titled Don’t look up –don’t look up and don’t become aware, in the era of the anthropocene, of how we are destroying the planet–, we could add Don’t look down –avoid always looking at the devastating social consequences of capitalism in its rogue, warlike, authoritarian, and sociopathic phase–. Even, they also subtly order us never to look to the side –not to worry if the neighbor is about to be evicted, if their mental health is faltering, or if loneliness is consuming them–. That is to say, almost generally, the systemic systematic order is that, between the navel and the spaceship, we look nowhere. And that we only look at the screen, where the algorithm –which already knows you better than you do– will make you happy with addictive dopamine. Without giving up any battlefield, those we choose and those we don’t, I can’t help but say this week that is ending: I wish libraries were filled more than TikTok. I wish. And if they say, as a metaphor, that Yuri Gagarin blurted out "I don't see any God up here", one wonders, down here, where the hell is God in Gaza. Nowhere?Journey to the Center of the Earth, it turns out that the urge to escape to conquer the Moon clumsily connects, in a revived geopolitical space race, with the real repeat offenders. The steppe wolves of the free market and the pimps of power – so often Martian, so often alien –. The hidden face of the Earth has nothing hidden about it: it would be not what is not seen, but what we do not want to look at. What we see every day and refuse to accept. An Essay on Blindness, Saramago would say. Artemis II will cost 93 billion dollars. 3.8% of a runaway global military budget. It is the same amount with which the UN has estimated the cost of eradicating hunger completely from the face of the Earth – not from the Moon –. Meanwhile, in space, we are doing the same as on Earth: polluting it into an infinite landfill. It is officially estimated that more than 10,000 tons of debris and scrap metal are already orbiting the Earth. A poem –A Farewell to the Astronauts– by Hans Magnus Enzensberger delves into the wound: "Only on planets / where no orange trees grow / nor walnuts nor vines / do I give little value. [...] Poor in imagination and rather conservative / I stick to older / promises: / the earth to the earth / and the dust to the dust".Neither technophile nor technophobic nor technoneutral nor technofascist, many years ago I read a small gem of sublunary terrestrial ethics called People Who Don't Want to Travel to Mars (Catarata, 2004). It was written by the good Jorge Riechmann, a philosopher, professor, and committed citizen. Today Jorge is facing prison sentences, in two trials scheduled for May in Madrid, for protesting, peacefully and scientifically, against inaction in the face of the climate emergency. Things that happen on Earth and not on the Moon, because surely there are other worlds, but I would say they are all here. In that book, which I revisit often, I read a phrase by Stanisław Jerzy Lec: "Don't try to reach the Moon. It should still last us a billion years." It is quite likely that nihilistic technofantasy makes us believe in other planets because we no longer believe in this one, and that it makes us believe in technological transhumanism because we no longer give a damn about the ambiguous and ambivalent human condition. Completely abandoning terrestrial exploration – let's say – of social justice, ecosocial transition, political democracy, or freedom among equals. Close to the ground, between the right to look at the Moon and the duty to preserve the Earth, we must radically resolve that one thing is the imperial colonization of space under the brutal law of the far west and another, very different and antagonistic, the humble wisdom of Carl Sagan. Long ago, about this pale blue dot where we still live, he wrote this, regarding the face – neither hidden nor dark – of the Earth:«Look again at this spot. It is here, it is our home, it is us. In it all of those whom you love, all of those whom you know, all of those of whom you have ever heard, every human being who ever lived, lived out its life. The sum of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and gatherer, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor or explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a speck of dust suspended in a sunbeam.Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood shed by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties committed by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel upon the hardly distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill each other, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturing, our imagined self-importance, the illusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this pale dot. Our home. That pale dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The universe is a very big place in a very big cosmic arena. Our posturing, our imagined self-importance, the illusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this pale dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The universe is a very big place in a very big cosmic arena. Our posturing, our imagined self-importance, the illusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this pale dot.Our planet is a lonely point in the great expanse of cosmic darkness. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from anywhere else to save us from ourselves. Earth is the only world known for now to harbor life. There is no other place, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle down, not yet. One way or another, for now, Earth is the place where we must make our stand. Astronomy has been said to be an experience of humility and character building. Perhaps there is no better demonstration of the folly of human prejudices than this distant image of our tiny world. For me, it underscores our responsibility to treat each other more kindly, and to preserve this pale blue dot, the only home we have ever known. Amen.