From Doug Johnson, writing about the need for indigenous voices in the search for extraterrestrial life:
Other trappings of colonialism have ended up in modern space exploration. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos wore a cowboy hat before his spaceflight, for example. In all, if anyone out there is looking, said Shorter, humanity isn’t necessarily putting its best foot forward.
Roger that.
In theory, I agree. In reality though, nobody's out there. We're utterly alone, which is why we should probably figure out how to treat each other a little better.
I wouldn't say with certainty that we're alone in the universe. But it's probably true that the chances of intelligent life elsewhere being able to contact us across millions or billions of light years is infinitesimally small.
There is probably life elsewhere, but the vast majority of it will be still stuck in the single cell stage or not much beyond. The conditions for evolution to the point of advanced life forms with the kind of collective learning that could produce interstellar communication or transportation looks to be so vanishingly rare that our chances of making contact is miniscule. Nothing within 30-40 light years even looks like a candidate.
We have to find them not only within space, but within time. How long does an industrial civilization last? (ours is only a couple of hundred years old). What are the chances that a civilization hundreds or thousands of light years away would contact us at exactly our point in time? Pretty damn small.
How would extraterrestrials know the significance of a cowboy hat?
John Wayne movies would have reached them first.
A cowboy hat has nothing to do with colonialism. It isn't racist, either.
Wouldn't it be better to encourage billionaires to go ahead and float further and further away until the emptiness claims them, before they devise some way of actually taking it all with them?
There should be a Presidential Medal of Freedom for the furthest distance from Earth a billionaire has gotten himself, --but now that I think of it Mark Zuckerberg would win every year without going anywhere.
How about that woke drive to rename the James Webb Space Telescope?
The essence of their case is that practically anybody from the past held - or *might* have held - views that are no longer acceptable.
This is the kind of messaging that will help Democrats in 2022.
https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2022/04/05/activists-are-still-trying-to-change-the-name-of-the-new-space-telescope-n460194
The name itself was a weird choice made in a non-standard way.
James Webb is a pretty minor figure to have such an important item named after him, more a bureaucrat than a scientist. It should be someone truly important in the history of astronomy, like Hubbell.
It's more that he's not a scientist. I would not call him a "minor figure" by any definition - he's arguably the second-most important reason why the Apollo Program actually lasted long enough to make it to the Moon (the first being Johnson's support). He was very good at politicking as well as running NASA, and that's exactly what NASA needed - the agency would be unrecognizable without him.
Were the first people to move into the Americas colonialist? Because that's what we're talking about when it comes to space colonization - not only do these places not have human inhabitants, but it's questionable whether they have any native life at all.
I also don't think there is a capital-I, singular "Indigenous" perspective on space stuff. As the piece itself mentions, there are genuinely different opinions - Arecibo was well-received, and views on Thirty Meter Telescope are mixed among native Hawaiian folks.
I'm actually a human supremacist. My position on alien life is to treat them with respect until we are more powerful, then relegate them to their homeworld only and kill any who defy us.
All hats are colonialist - beanies, miters, top hats, helms, red ball caps. It's pretty simple as a signal, I want what you have.
Eh, ball caps are only colonialist when they're worn backwards with wrap-around shades. A pith helmet -- now *there's* some colonialist headgear.
This was re-published in Mother Jones, with the comment:
"This story was originally published by Undark and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk partnership."
Any idea how this is supposed to be related to "Climate Desk partnership" ?
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/04/what-can-indigenous-worldviews-bring-to-space-exploration-as-it-turns-out-a-lot/
Read this on Mother Jones yesterday. Thought I mistakenly navigated to The Onion. When you wonder why regular people think liberals are nuts, here is one more example.
Have you read The Martian Chronicles? Ray Bradbury was nuts? What's wrong with speculating about space exploration in the context of the history of colonialism? Now, realistically speaking, there's virtually no chance that we will ever encounter intelligent life anywhere else in the universe, much less somewhere like Mars or Venus where we could realistically send human travelers. But thinking about the implications of such an encounter is not a crazy idea.
It's out there, all right. Another new frontier.
Sez the guy who thinks Slaver rebellion was all about Yankee aggression. Who thinks that the North was way too mean to the South in the aftermath.
I just read the article. You are right, @Atticus, it is silly, like a parody.
Tiresome simplifications.
When Guillame the Conqueror invaded the British Isles in 1066AD, who was the colonial and who was the indigenous?
When the descendants of many of the people around in 1066AD later invaded North America in the 1600s, who was the colonial and who was the indigenous?
When Athabaskan peoples moved from Canada to what is now the southwest of the US, and settled in lands used by the Hopi, who were the colonials and who were the indigenous? When the Dine (as the relocated Athabaskans had named themselves) were attacked and displaced by people of European descent, who were the colonials and indigenous people then?
Human populations throughout time and space move around and fight and take over resources from other human populations. It was true within the Americas, and it was true in Europe and Africa and Asia, and it was was true when people moved between those landmasses.
"Indigenous people" isn't a description that makes any sense in this context - it doesn't say anything about a people's historical proclivity for or aversion to colonialism. The best it can do is to identify a group of people who have suffered relatively recent under colonialism on the part of Europeans, and who, for now anyway, might have a different understanding of it. Come back in 500 or 1000 years and the story is almost certainly going to be different.
The current consensus seems to be that simple life -- prokaryotes living in a reducing atmosphere -- is relatively abundandant, perhaps once every hundred light years or so, possibly less, possibly quite a bit less. Unicellular life with complex organelles less so, unicellur life in an oxidizing atmosphere still less, and as for multicellular life, forget it; that's maybe a once-in-a-million occurrence. Anything past that is just piling odds upon odds.
The flip side is that if there is other intelligent, tool-using llfe out there, it hit the HPLD (highest possible level of development) barrier long, long ago and we'd never recognize them on our own for what they are.
"The best it can do is to identify a group of people who have suffered relatively recent under colonialism on the part of Europeans,"
Not necessarily Europeans- Tawan's aborigines are considered indigenous, having been colonized by the Han Chinese starting in the 1600s. As per your point, recent archaeological discoveries have indicated that Taiwan was inhabited by a Negrito people who were wiped out/absorbed when the Austronesian 'aborigines' showed up.
Heard a story, probably apocraphyl, about one of the original Mercury astronauts (possibly John Glenn).
NASA sent this astronaut onpublicity tour before he went up in space, and one of the stops was at a Navajo reservation (if it ain't Cherokee, it's Navajo). An old shaman shuffled up, and asked to memorize a sntence in Navajo to give to any people of the universe he came across.
Years later, he was speaking at a Navajo school, and in telling this story, he rememered the words (what are the odds?), but when he repeated them, everybody burst out laughing . Puzzled, he asked the principal to translate. and was told the old man's word: "Don't beleve anything these bastards tell you- they're just here to steal your land."
If it isn't true it ought to be.
This is why progressives are stupid. They see demons under every bed.