{"id":1271,"date":"2016-03-13T00:02:23","date_gmt":"2016-03-13T00:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=1271"},"modified":"2016-03-13T00:04:47","modified_gmt":"2016-03-13T00:04:47","slug":"the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html","title":{"rendered":"The space case to prevent human extinction"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1272\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/375\/2016\/03\/Space-1024x563.jpg\" alt=\"Prevent human extinction in space\" width=\"1024\" height=\"350\" \/>Human extinction. If it occurred, would it matter?<\/h2>\n<h3>This is not some depressed remark I am making. It is my way of questioning the mandate of a think tank like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/search\/label\/Lifeboat_Foundation\" target=\"_blank\">Lifeboat Foundation<\/a>, whose books I have been reviewing but the reviews have yet to be published.<\/h3>\n<p>We\u00a0have some influential figures, writers and even Stephen Hawking justifying\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/health_and_science\/science\/2013\/05\/surviving_the_next_mass_extinction_humans_will_need_to_leave_earth_for_space.html\" target=\"_blank\">space colonization (as if it needed justifying) by saying it is a way to prevent human extinction<\/a>. The idea is that if a catastrophe destroyed humans on Earth, other communities will continue to live on, based on the Moon, Mars, space stations, etc. Thereby we would prevent human extinction.<\/p>\n<p>Fine. The only problem is, they don&#8217;t explain why anyone should bother, and it is contrary to existing political norms.\u00a0The prevailing liberal, centrist, libertarian and even socialist philosophies in the west today mainly focus on the rights, pleasures, and just treatment\u00a0of individuals. Where they are concerned, it doesn&#8217;t actually matter if no humans exist a couple of centuries from now, as long as people didn&#8217;t die painfully. The only concern, if you consider\u00a0current politics and philosophy, would be about dispensing medicines and painkillers to existing people during a global disaster rather than actually ensuring fertility and the existence of future generations. Simply put, almost no-one would care about preventing extinction. Governments certainly wouldn&#8217;t. All their concern would be about administering short-term fixes to the agonies and problems of various individuals.<\/p>\n<p>Surely, this\u00a0needs to be addressed. Why is the species worth saving? Isn&#8217;t it all about saving individual people and caring for them?\u00a0The political case simply hasn&#8217;t been made. It&#8217;s a gap on all our bookshelves. Personally, I believe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/01\/needs-of-the-many-against-survival-of-the-few.html\">global injustice is worse than extinction<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-919\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/375\/2015\/09\/hjb-signature-new-transparent-300x86.png\" alt=\"hjb signature new transparent\" width=\"300\" height=\"86\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Human extinction. If it occurred, would it matter? This is not some depressed remark I am making. It is my way of questioning the mandate of a think tank like the Lifeboat Foundation, whose books I have been reviewing but the reviews have yet to be published. We\u00a0have some influential figures, writers and even Stephen&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,41,63,37,66],"tags":[1413,1370,1074,557,1274,25,326,1414],"class_list":["post-1271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alter-globalization","category-book","category-futurism-2","category-history","category-politics-2","tag-colonization","tag-extinction","tag-ideology","tag-lifeboat-foundation","tag-philosophy","tag-politics","tag-space-2","tag-stephen-hawking"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The space case to prevent human extinction - L&#039;Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Space colonization to prevent human extinction lacks any effective political justification. Current ideologies have no time for the idea of saving your DNA.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The space case to prevent human extinction - L&#039;Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Space colonization to prevent human extinction lacks any effective political justification. Current ideologies have no time for the idea of saving your DNA.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"L&#039;Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-03-13T00:02:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-03-13T00:04:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2016\/03\/Space-1024x563.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Harry J. Bentham\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The space case to prevent human extinction - L&#039;Ordre","description":"Space colonization to prevent human extinction lacks any effective political justification. Current ideologies have no time for the idea of saving your DNA.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The space case to prevent human extinction - L&#039;Ordre","og_description":"Space colonization to prevent human extinction lacks any effective political justification. Current ideologies have no time for the idea of saving your DNA.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html","og_site_name":"L&#039;Ordre","article_published_time":"2016-03-13T00:02:23+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-03-13T00:04:47+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2016\/03\/Space-1024x563.jpg"}],"author":"Harry J. Bentham","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html","name":"The space case to prevent human extinction - L&#039;Ordre","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2016\/03\/Space-1024x563.jpg","datePublished":"2016-03-13T00:02:23+00:00","dateModified":"2016-03-13T00:04:47+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e"},"description":"Space colonization to prevent human extinction lacks any effective political justification. Current ideologies have no time for the idea of saving your DNA.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2016\/03\/Space-1024x563.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2016\/03\/Space-1024x563.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/03\/the-space-case-to-prevent-human-extinction.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The space case to prevent human extinction"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/","name":"L&#039;Ordre","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Harry Bentham","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e","name":"Harry J. Bentham","description":"Harry J. Bentham is a British futurist blogger who has been a contributor at a number of think tanks including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies since 2013. His work at Press TV and the L'Ordre blog featured at the multi-faith Beliefnet website has gained increasing attention and praise, including in the international media. Commentaries on political and ethical controversies by Bentham have been published at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, H+ Magazine, Dissident Voice and numerous other publications. He edits The clubof.info Blog (http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/search\/label\/Harry_J_Bentham).","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Harry-J.-Bentham\/e\/B00D4MSEY0\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/author\/hbentham"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1271"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1281,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions\/1281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}