The Biocosmopolitan Deathmarch

what i mean by biocosmist anarchism is this: I propose we as humans organize towards the dessemination of DNA-based life throughout the known universe. The goal is to live forever and go anywhere. While i am actually quite excited to die in a radically human way, i don’t like the notion of a dead universe, and i do agree that people should generally die when they are finished living, rather than when they can’t pay for medication. The human species as well, will have an appropriate end, but hopefully thats around the time the sun dies, not when some KimJong or Donald Duck pushes the button.

The prevailing attitudes of space exploration are very frequently equated to the exploration and colonization era of western capitalism on earth. This is a horrendous mistake. The scale of abuse and suffering incurred by the ignorance of the European invasions is unparalleled in recorded history, and informed by the refusal of the invaders to understand and adapt to new circumstances. Human adaptation to interplanetary travel is more equivalent to early aquatic animals adapting to life on land than any intercontinental migration.

Apes have no business floating in space when they are so well evolved for watching sports on earth. Space faring humanity will evolve into something new and difficult to recognize.

The radical changes in basic forms of life required to adapt to these conditions must draw on all resovoirs of knowledge available. Rather than stagnating in the narrow view of the military/industrial paradigm of the modern aeronautics field, the study of extraterrestrial life has much to gain from those who have close relationships to the nonhuman biosphere. The slogan “water is life” can be applied across the known universe without realistic objections, and still retains it’s essential truth when applied to terran environmental policy. Likewise, it makes no sense for biocosmists to view the destruction of the biosphere as anything but an obstacle to the building of an interplanetary community. Industrial society, even with all its wonders, is an existential threat to life in the universe. There is simply too much we don’t know about the biocosm to just march over the universe in iron boots.

To inhabit the land, animals evolved into drastic new forms of life, and over time created a massively diverse community of bodies and relationships which did not previously exist. As humans take to the stars we must keep two things in mind. First, we will not make these journeys alone, we must bring our biosphere with us. Second, the worlds we explore are as precious as the Earth, and our primary goal should be to learn to commune with them rather than destroy them. If we fail this second goal, we will have lost the wisdom and knowledge these places contain, replacing it with some replication our old lives, rendered a little cheaper and less meaningful by colonial denial.

There is an essential tension here, but it is not a contradiction. We must go, but we must respect the new worlds when we arrive. If that seems like too much to ask of humanity, then humanity must attempt to better itself. The universe is large and alive, and we are a part of of the biocosm: the living world.