an introductory reflection

The current human civilization is living in a peculiar time, a revolutionary time. The web of conundrums, mismatches, shortcomings, and misunderstandings that is being spun between human psychology, ideological dead ends, and Earth’s planetary conditions, presents us with unprecedented challenges and seem to be causing much existential agony. (Some) humans are ‘enjoying’ a level of material abundance humankind has never seen before. The rest of Earth’s life is experiencing pretty much their worst era. While we are increasingly getting interconnected with the World Wide Web, we are simultaneously getting increasingly disconnected from the Wood Wide Web. As beings of natural evolution, our capacity to deal with the challenges of our time is limited, in our effort to enable what we deem a worthwhile and desirable future. Our moral values, and their physiological context, relate inextricably to present global catastrophic and existential risks to Earth’s life, as they do to our long-term future trajectories.

Zooming out, our era may prove to be one of those significant historical switches, launching the story of Life on Earth into its next chapter. Our common future will be qualitatively different.

For example, we may see an evolutionary transition from the domain of biology to the domain of technology. We may cause global ecological collapse and mass-extinction to the extent that the world as we know it will be unrecognizable. We may even cause self-extinction. On a more hopeful note, we may succeed at permanently spreading the light of life and consciousness beyond planet Earth. We may succeed at creating intelligence that supersedes human intelligence. We may open the door to strange, novel, and beautiful worlds, as biology, ecology, and technology merge. In other words, we are living in a time dominated by a handful of global catastrophic and existential risks on the one hand, and unprecedented opportunities for life on Earth on the other. Humankind, as a species, is taking on truly intergenerational civilizational projects and projects in civilization. This requires long-term and collective thinking, global, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational communication, and articulation of common objectives.

In this macro-perspective, these events make up the determining possibilities of the Anthropocene era, and the likewise astronomical potential for positive or negative value, as the outcome of these events. As such, human cognitive and moral shortcomings is a much bigger problem today than in the past, as a small group, or even a single individual, now has the power to cause global disaster, intentionally or unintentionally. All of these radical possibilities are putting the field of moral philosophy up to its probably most daunting task as of yet, culminating into the question:

‘What do we want to want?’

But also

‘What may all the others we share this world with want to want, including those that come after us?’

As of now, humankind has changed the world to the extent that we now function as planetary, yet immature, masters, whether we really want to or not, and whether we ethically concur with such a role or not. At that, the Anthropocene constitutes a significant cognitive shift concerning our self-perception. Our challenge now is to mature - to figure out how we may, and how we should, adaptively step into our new role as a planetary force and as conscious shapers of evolutionary processes, in order to become capable of wisely dealing with the world we have created and the worlds we dream of creating.

This also means it is time to ethically bring the human being back down from its exalted position as intouchable and holy, separated from the rest of nature, and into the web of interrelations of malleable organic things, beings and systems. Humankind is in serious need of rewilding. This does not entail a rejection of the peculiarity of the human species, without which acknowledgement we cannot speak of moral responsibilities, but we have to overcome our rejection of, and blindness to, the “nonhuman world”, and the ignorance in our narrow conceptions of time, life, self, and value. At the core of this problem is modern Western science and thought’s complete reversal of life and death in the natural world - contra the original intuitive animistic worldview, the most natural view there is and which is largely supported by prima-facie evidence - when life came to be conceived as a quality of humans only, in contrast to the dead nature to which we owe our existence, thus draining the rest of the world of all subjectivity and all moral value.

I believe it is paramount that the ingenuity and inventions of humankind, whether it be macroengineering, AI, biotechnology, human enhancement, or novel socio-political constructions, be designed and applied towards helping us qualitatively develop our own being, systems, thinking, and behavior to versions that benefit the planetary whole and its potential astronomical future, now that our decisions are in practice on behalf of all of Earth’s life, and potentially of all future life.

By merging the scientific and planetary loupe of ecological and GCR ethics with the cosmic perspective of longtermist and space ethics, my commitment is to search for novel insights to our civilizational and planetary entanglement, and to those macroscale questions that linger at the intersection of the trends and events of the Anthropocene. In the face of current reality, we do indeed need to embrace a concept of stewardship, but discard ideas of ourselves as entitled masters. We must be the humble navigators on behalf of all, guided by the appropriate ontological, epistemological, and moral compass.

My motivation can be understood through a perspective that sees our particular generation of a particular species at this cosmic point in time and place, as one of many chapters in the book that is the story of life that originated on Earth. It is possible that most chapters are still to be written. My concern is with how we, in this cosmic here and now, may contribute to the shaping of this narrative, directing it toward future trajectories which we believe to be the most qualitatively promising ones, based on our absolute best knowledge, understanding, and reasoning. That is all we can do. That entails a moral imperative and responsibility that goes far beyond safeguarding our own species as it currently manifests, and from the perspective of our particular interests and values. It entails acknowledging that we might not be the peak of intrinsic value in the universe, but that we have instrumental value in a greater narrative.

We should be concerned with opening doors to futures that vastly outperform our present in potential for good.

From a deep and very serious concern for the future of terrestrial life, but accompanied by a rather paradoxical hope and belief in the potential of our future, I therefore focus on which moral values can mitigate global catastrophic and existential risks and enable a multiplanetary future for terrestrial life, and how to obtain these values. As such, my objective can be summed up as the following: to further the individual and collective wellbeing and optimization of the terrestrial ecosphere and its capacities for good, on Earth and beyond.

Andrea Owe