New Mars Forums

Cindy was probably referring to comments I'd made in another thread. 

We have somewhat different ways of seeing the world.

For what it's worth, Cindy, I just finished Voltaire's "Collected Works". It was a good read, even if I disagreed with some of what he had to say.   

I'm with Cobra on this one.

Once people start to terraform Mars and establish a powerful central government, people like me will want to leave for Ceres or Ganymede or wherever.

The more the merrier. It's a big solar system.

I believe that whatever profits are to be made from the exploitation of space resources, should belong to those who had the vision and the resources to take the risks. Greed is good. 

I also don't buy any of this "Star Trek"-ish rubbish about humans being one big happy, altruistic family someday. You can only turn a man into the liberal's "ideal" human by draining the humanity right out of him.

I don't really buy KSR's premise that giant corporations will be all that interested in terraformation. Terran corporations are unlikely to fund it to any great extent. How many decades or centuries will it take for terraforming to produce a return on the investment? Earth governments have that and other reasons, like objections from the scientific community, to oppose it.   

I also think it's reasonable to believe that colonists will prefer to use their surplus industrial capacity to produce luxury items, not massive amounts of terraforming infrastructure. Terraforming will have to compete with education, welfare, and some form of colonial militia for funding.

Some colonists might also be lukewarm to terraforming because of the powerful, global bureaucracy it entails. Transforming an entire world's climate will require some kind of planetary governing entity with enforcement powers. Martians who value the self-determination of their communities have reason to suspect that this will be used by the Power Elite as a backdoor to creating a global, authoritarian regime. A power grab of planetary proportions could be enabled, under the simple pretense of regulating industrial emissions and resource management.

I used to be a hardcore Green. But after reading KSR's Mars Trilogy, I see terraforming as an idea fraught with sociopolitical consequences I don't like. I would definitely find myself in an unlikely alliance with the Reds. The local militia and the educational system could better spend the Greens' slice of the budgetary pie.

Cindy, call yourself whatever you wish. It changes nothing. I see humanity as anything but one-dimensional.

What I don't see is a lump of clay for social engineers to simply shape and mold as they wish. Like it or not, the ability to reason doesn't change the fact that you and a chimpanzee still share 98% of the same DNA. Think that's irrelevant? I beg to differ.

The Communists believed otherwise. They believed that with proper social conditioning, the human mind could be made totally obedient to the needs of the State, and devoid of all the things you bemoan about the human race. Hence the reference to the "New Soviet Man".

Cobra Commander: "...Service to the Empire..."

Damn straight! And remember, 'Service guarantees citizenship'!

The human race is a warrior species. This is what we do. If you want a human society that is NOT prone to violence and exploitation, you're dreaming an impossible dream. People foolishly imagine that the human beast can somehow be shaped and molded into a 21st-century socialist version of the New Soviet Man.

Western Imperialist civilization is as good as it gets. Do people on the margins suffer? Nobody ever said life was fair. The unspoken belief of some here, though no one wishes to say it out loud, is that redistributing the wealth (by whatever means necessary) and wrecking the current global economic system would be more 'fair'. Sorry, real life doesn't work like that.

As to the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, I say...woe to the conquered. The Japanese were lucky. The Romans would have sold them all into slavery.

I make absolutely NO apologies for my nation's actions as an Imperialist power.

As AJ pointed out, this discussion was begun with the stated assumption that the Ares Corporation town could profitably export Mars' mineral wealth to Earth.

Just to head off that objection if it raises its head again...

Absolutely correct. The Crusaders took 57 years to systematically loot the city of all its tangible wealth...even many of the stone buildings were carted away. The nominally Christian 'holy' warriors of the Fourth Crusade, when not engaging in other favorite Crusader pursuits like rape and pillage, spread their ill-gotten treasure far and wide across the castles and churches of medieval Western Europe.

Constantinople was indeed an impoverished collection of ruins after all that, albeit inhabited ruins.

Sorry to rant. Specializing in Byzantine history tends to make you somewhat hostile towards the Crusaders.   

You're right about the Byzantine preference for cultural continuity versus technological progress. Constantinople was, however, richer than any other city on Earth due to international trade...the Islamic realms included. Its reputation for fabulous wealth was earned, and its citizens were also better educated than those of many other civilizations.

Of course, Western Europe resembled today's Third World during Byzantium's apogee of power (Macedonian Dynasty). But aren't all comparisons of the wealth of nations based on the examination of other, contemporary civilizations? It would be hardly fair to say that 21st century America's reputation for wealth is "unearned", by comparing it to the relative affluence of people in the 31th century.

I love that! 

Cindy, 'Ruby' is pretty cool, too.

Constantinople was named after the Roman emperor Constantine. Though the city, currently named Istanbul, is ruled by the Turks (and has been since 1453 AD), the word element "-stan" (common to Turkic place names) in Constantinople is purely coincidental.

Even its modern name, Istanbul, is derived from a Greek phrase meaning "The City".

Maybe the Turks should have changed the city's name when they conquered it, though!    Your idea certainly makes it fit more smoothly within Turkic nomenclature!

That's the crux of the conflict between Greens and Reds, isn't it?

You believe terraforming is a crime against Nature, and we Greens (amazingly[!] of both Left- and Right-wing varieties) believe that terraforming is the FULFILLMENT of Nature.

It's impossible to reconcile such radically different views of nature and Humanity's role in it.

I believe the Martians themselves should be the ones who decide whether or not to terraform their world, and should be solely responsible for paying for it. Terraforming is just one more tax burden for the masses...in addition to maintaining life support and transportation infrastructures, the military-industrial complex, educating children, caring for the sick and the elderly, et cetera.

I agree with Byron. I think the whole terraforming thing will work out OK for the indigenous life-forms, because the process will necessarily be slow and probably haphazard in character. Areas like the upper mountain slopes of Tharsis will always be like the Mars of today, and I'm not totally against a compromise with Reds that leaves certain (otherwise useless) areas permanently free of development.

But to reiterate, I think it's truly for them to decide.

NovaMarsollia will now have plenty of time on his/her hands to e-mail friends and rant about the evils of technological civilization..and how she and her friends are going to "fix" everything someday, like Pol Pot tried to. * shudder *

Bizarre aims? The only "freakazoid" here is the one Adrian just banned. Hooray!

Sincerely,

A "Techno-Imperialist"