the habitability of extraterrestrial environments, and human space exploration. He has worked for NASA and the British Antarctic Survey and spent many seasons in Antarctica and the High Arctic. He received his doctorate in molecular biophysics from the University of Oxford and his BSc from the University of Bristol. As well as over 300 scientific papers and numerous popular science books, including Space on Earth, which made the case for the indivisible links between space exploration and environmentalism, he has written a number of papers and edited books on the subject of extraterrestrial liberty.
Cockell applied the “Page 99 Test” to his newest book, Interplanetary Liberty: Building Free Societies in the Cosmos, and reported the following:
Can there be any freedom for the individual on the Moon or Mars where even the oxygen you breathe may be controlled by someone else? On page 99 of Interplanetary Liberty: Building Free Societies in the Cosmos I explain how centralized power in settlements constructed beyond Earth is not only inevitable, since a state of anarchy will lead to disaster in an instantaneously lethal environment, but is beneficial. Good organisational structures in space will more effectively ensure safety for everyone and success in environments in which people will be utterly dependent on technology for their air, food, water and every other commodity required to exist.Follow Charles Cockell on Twitter.
Page 99 captures the essence of the book – the tension between the need for collective organisation, yet the desire to build societies where individuals have some semblance of personal liberty. In any extreme environment where there is a high degree of inter-dependence, there is a tendency for conformity and regulations to take hold to the point of making that society tyrannical. I draw on evidence from the Israeli kibbutzim to Scottish islands to examine these challenges.
To avoid tyranny emerging from the body politic in space, we need to improve the conditions for freedom. That can be done though political and economic mechanisms that range from encouraging democratic deliberation in the political sphere to encouraging free transactions in the economic sphere. But we can also use engineering to enhance the conditions for freedom, for example by decentralizing and modularising vital supplies such as oxygen.
Beyond politics, I explore science, education, law, and art as other means by which settlements in the extremes of space can be vivified to make them places where humans can thrive. Crucial, as page 99 shows, is to accept the fact that space will require intensively collectivist activities. But as 18 th century political philosophers understood, the way to address problems of authority is not to imagine an unattainable utopia, but instead to take that reality and turn it to good ends.
Interplanetary Liberty is not a blueprint for a utopia, nor is it a book that makes that case that tyranny is inevitable beyond Earth. Rather, by assuming that tyranny will emerge in space we can put in place the checks, balances, and structures that will maximise human flourishing. That approach, I believe, will yield the most successful human polities across the cosmos.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
