Abstract
The very phrase ‘planning liberty’ seems a contradiction in terms. Yet, there are ways, through physical architecture, legal systems and social norms, that an environment can be created that maximises the potential for individuals to both have a sphere of activity in which they can enjoy non-interference and in which they can maximise their potential to realise their goals. In space, the environmentally extreme conditions warrant a search for all means to maximise liberty in its various manifestations against the extreme tyranny-prone nature of the environment. An example of a liberty-driven technological innovation is a reliable, plentiful and easily donned spacesuit that maximises the potential for freedom of movement in an otherwise lethal environment. Another is the development of fast, reliable spacecraft for moving goods around the solar system that minimise the effects of economic isolation and maximise the potential for efficient free trade. An example of liberty-driven administrative planning is free access to all information about oxygen supply and demand to prevent tyrannical control of oxygen supplies. When constituted deliberately around the desire to maximise liberty, there are technological, economic, political and cultural ways in which tyranny in outer space can be held at bay. I suggest a ‘liberty calculus’ as one way to approach this challenge.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I am assuming here that the advance of science and the movement of people beyond Earth will not result in some entirely new type of rational human being who lies beyond the conflicts of liberty we see on Earth today. There is a tendency, particularly in Enlightenment literature, to make assertions that such utopias exist (at least on Earth). A classic view by de Condorcet (1979, p. 179), for example: ‘The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason; when tyrants and slaves, priests and their stupid or hypocritical instruments will exist only in works of history and on the stage.’ It is likely to be safer to assume that tyranny will always exist and then attempt to mitigate it than to hope it will go away completely. Furthermore, if we accept that there will never be an objective agreement on what liberty is (and maybe such a point would in fact spell the end to free thought), then we must find ways to allow a healthy disagreement and discussion on what constitutes tyranny at any given time in human history.
- 2.
The excuse for control derives from facing a type of ‘enemy’ and in some ways the psychology that results is reminiscent of the collectivism that war causes, as Millar (2006) recognised long ago (p. 180): ‘There is no situation in which a body of men are so apt to run into disorder, as in war; where it is impossible that they should cooperate, and preserve the least regularity, unless they are united under a single person, empowered to direct their movements, and to superintend and control their several operations.’ If the common enemy is the extraterrestrial environment, and existence is adeptly turned into a collective war against this environment by the managers of a settlement, then central control follows.
- 3.
- 4.
The problem is one of using the pursuit of liberty as the very excuse to curtail it. In the terrestrial case, the most in-depth exploration of this problem was made by Berlin (for example, in Berlin (2002)). He suggested a crucial distinction between negative and positive liberty, the former liberty resulting from lack of interference, the latter the extension of the capacity for individuals to realise their goals. The problem Berlin discussed was that positive liberty can become an excuse to establish coercive regimes for the purpose of ‘enhancing’ people’s liberty. If the lethal external environment leads to a ‘we know better than you how to secure your liberty against the outside environment’, then positive liberty becomes an instrument of tyranny.
- 5.
Paradoxically, even those in power fall prey to a form of slavery that results from their role as mere providers of dictates. Weil (2002, p. 91) stated that ‘As the man of power lives only by his slaves […] he is never capable, strictly speaking, of willing, but is prey to desires […] he passes all of a sudden from the feeling of absolute power to that of utter impotence.’
- 6.
There are many scientific papers and texts examining spacesuit design (e.g. Schmidt et al. 2001; Graziosi and Lee 2003; Jordan et al. 2006), but all of them approach the problem from a purely functional perspective. None to date, as far as I know, discuss overtly how spacesuits might be designed to maximise liberty, although in attempting to fathom how they can be made more comfortable, they do this implicitly.
- 7.
In Chap. 3 of his work, On Liberty, Mill (2004) elaborated on the reasons for allowing different ‘experiments in living’ (p. 57) based on his view that without this freedom, society succumbs to the ‘despotism of custom’ (p. 70). Indeed, he went a step further and positively encouraged eccentricity (p. 67): ‘It does seem, however, that when the opinions of masses of merely average men are everywhere become or becoming the dominant power, the counterpoise and corrective to that tendency would be, the more and more pronounced individuality of those who stand on the higher eminences of thought. It is in these circumstances most especially, that exceptional individuals, instead of being deterred, should be encouraged in acting differently from the mass. In other times there was no advantage in their doing so, unless they acted not only differently, but better. In this age the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.’
- 8.
Discussed in Cockell (2010).
- 9.
As Hayek (2006, p. 340) stated, ‘the preservation of freedom in the sphere of the mind and of the sprit will depend, in the long run, on the dispersal of the control of the material means and on the continued existence of individuals who are in a position to devote large funds to purposes which seem important to them’.
- 10.
Of course, this is underpinned by the assumption that if the legal structures are in place, there is a profit to be made in oxygen production. We cannot easily predict this at the current time (see chapter by Adam Stevens, this volume). Even Smith (1776, Book V, Chap. 1) recognised that some processes may not make a profit but are essential to society. In these, he included ‘public works, which, though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to society, are, however, of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals’. If it eventually turns out that oxygen falls within this category, then people will still need to find ways to minimise monopolies in the public provision of this gas.
- 11.
However, the hope that an initial situation of authoritarianism can successfully transition to a more open society is not in vain. There are countless examples of this transition on Earth and a great deal of literature exploring how this can be done, much of which could be applied to the extraterrestrial case. For example, O’Donnell and Schmitter (1991) discussed the process of increasing democratisation during the breaking down of autocracies. They offer specific examples of methods (p. 49): ‘Although we cannot provide hard data to prove it, our personal experience in having lived through several of these moments indicates that the catalyst in this transformation comes first from gestures from exemplary individuals.’ There are other methods that can be identified and they merit a systematic search.
- 12.
There is a definitional point here. We do not know precisely what sort of apparatus of governance will evolve in different environments and it would be an error to assume that only when something becomes a ‘state’ can it be coercive. Any type of governance can be tyrannical, as von Mises (1944, p. 46) recognised: ‘But not every apparatus of compulsion and coercion is called a state. Only one which is powerful enough to maintain its existence, for some time at least, by its own force is commonly called a state.’ Coercive control of an extraterrestrial settlement is possible at any level.
- 13.
This was a point recognised by Bury (1952, p. 225): ‘It requires positive efforts and a sustained national faith to make sure that independent individual thinking is encouraged and facilitated and that adequate relevant information is available wherever policies are made, and that such policies and the responsibility for them have the requisite publicity.’
- 14.
The problem is an ancient one. As Russell stated (2004, p. 81), ‘The exercise of power, if it is to be something better than the infliction of wanton torture, must be hedged round by safeguards of law and custom, permitted only after due deliberation and entrusted to men who are closely supervised in the interests of those who are subjected to them.’ The latter proviso is particularly important in the case of extraterrestrial oxygen production.
- 15.
Brenkert (1991, p. 190) nicely summarised three conditions that apply to the extraterrestrial case in the matter of open discussion of policies: ‘… the scope of participation must be at least threefold: (a) citizens must be able to participate in decisions whereby the basic directions of their society are determined; (b) they must be able to participate in determining who fill the posts through which the directions society takes are determined, and (c) they must be able to participate in creating or reinforcing social and political values and institutional practices that determine which issues will come within the scope of the political process and public consideration’.
- 16.
- 17.
Although one should be under no doubt that some type of bureaucracy is desirable to prevent catastrophic failure. The question is the extent to which it is allowed to dominate people’s public and private lives. As von Mises (2007, p. 14) summarised, ‘But people are unfair in indicting the individual bureaucrat for the vices of the system…The system is bad, not its subordinate handymen… What people resent is not bureaucratism as such, but the intrusion of bureaucracy into all spheres of human life and activity. It is a misnomer to label the fight for freedom and democracy a fight against bureaucracy.’
- 18.
Skinner (1998, p. 119) observed that ‘One side argues that the state can hope to redeem this pledge simply by ensuring that its citizens do not suffer any unjust or unnecessary interference in pursuit of their chosen goals. But the other side maintains that this can never be sufficient, since it will always be necessary for the state to ensure at the same time that its citizens do not fall into a condition of avoidable dependence on the good will of others. The state has a duty not merely to liberate its citizens from such personal exploitation and dependence, but to prevent its own agents, dressed in a little brief authority, from behaving arbitrarily in the course of imposing the rules that govern our common life.’ These observations are equally pertinent to the extraterrestrial case, even if the ‘state’ is nothing more than a few individuals running an extraterrestrial settlement.
- 19.
- 20.
It is clear that for this to be realised, people must be technically and scientifically educated to be able to assess all of the systems that surround them as necessary or unnecessary coercion. The extreme case is children, for example Fried’s point (2007, p. 172) ‘…that we are born ignorant, unreasoning, and dependent. It should not be the excuse and occasion for stamping out our capacity for liberty at the very beginning. The dilemma is a challenge to the ingenuity and liberality of the liberal spirit to do the best it can.’ This point is equally applicable to the education of adults, which should be an ongoing concern for the construction of open extraterrestrial societies.
- 21.
For example, this is explored by Lewis (1997).
- 22.
Corporations (and commerce in general) may have the beneficial effect of stabilising a settlement since it is in their interests to have calm and consistency for the running of a corporation. In mitigating the chances for revolution, de Tocqueville (1998, p. 323) recognised the following: ‘I know of nothing more opposite to revolutionary attitudes than commercial ones. Commerce is naturally adverse to all the violent passions; it loves to temporise, takes delight in compromise, and studiously avoids irritation. It is patient, insinuating, flexible, and never has recourse to extreme measures until obliged by the most absolute necessity.’ Although this may be true, and it may well generate some predictability in an extraterrestrial case, of course, the countervailing effects can also exist, namely that any individual or organisation that seeks a new way forward or to question existing arrangements, particularly in a settlement with strong corporate presence, may well be crushed by a corporation seeking to ‘avoid irritation’.
- 23.
They must, however, be aware of their subjugation and this requires effective education. As Muller (1970, p. 79) recognised, ‘Primitives may consider themselves free, or more precisely not feel unfree, because they are unconscious of the constraints we perceive […] Although we cannot be sure of the state of mind of the illiterate peasant masses throughout history, their usual passivity suggests that they generally took their subjection for granted.’ Although it is difficult to imagine this same lack of awareness in anyone who is working in a space settlement, the point is that the extremity of the extraterrestrial conditions can be used to convince people that they are not subjugated, but instead experiencing the maximum level of freedom possible against the total destructiveness of the external environment, and therefore they should acquiesce to decisions. Individuals and societies must guard against this. Boas (1942, p. 55) equally recognised this: ‘We believe that we have such freedom and are not aware of our own limitations […] In this sense we may say that absolute freedom does not exist […] We are free in so far as the limitations to our culture do not oppress us; we are unfree when we become conscious of these limitations.’
- 24.
Patterson (1991, p. 99) emphasised the link between slavery and freedom in ancient Greece, where slavery was accepted since the rulers were kin in a world facing barbarians. If we replace barbarians with the lethality of the extraterrestrial environment, then we can see how economic slavery may even be passively accepted by a population. Patterson observed that ‘The demos accepted the rulership of the traditional ruling class because they saw its members as kinsmen, kith and kin against a world of unfree barbarians.’
- 25.
- 26.
The notion that space offers an intellectual release has been explored previously. Crawford (2014) suggested that a programme of interstellar exploration could be undertaken for the purposes of avoiding intellectual stagnation, including in science, art and philosophy. Beattie (2014) used experiences in analogue environments on Earth to show how art practices can be used to enrich the extraterrestrial experience. Cockell (2008) suggested that the extremity of the extraterrestrial environment will actively drive people to seek intellectual release through novel creativity.
- 27.
See the chapters by Annalea Beattie in this volume and in Cockell (2014) for a more thorough discussion on the link between art, the extraterrestrial environment and liberty.
- 28.
- 29.
References
Alexander, A. (2009). Britain’s new towns: Garden cities to sustainable communities. New York: Routledge.
Beattie, A. (2014). Extraterrestrial liberty and creative practice: A firsthand experience of an imagined future. In C. Cockell (Ed.), The Meaning of liberty beyond Earth (pp. 103–116). Berlin: Springer.
Berlin, I. (2002). Freedom and its betrayal: Six enemies of human liberty. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Boas, F. (1942). Liberty among primitive people. In R. Anshen (Ed.), Freedom. Its meaning (pp. 50–55). London: Simon Shand.
Brenkert, G. (1991). Political freedom. New York: Routledge.
Bury, J. (1952). A history of freedom of thought. New York: Idebate Press.
Cockell, C. (2008). An essay on extraterrestrial liberty. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 61, 255–275.
Cockell, C. (2009). Liberty and the limits to the extraterrestrial state. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 62, 139–157.
Cockell, C. (2010). Essay on the causes and consequences of extraterrestrial tyranny. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 63, 15–37.
Cockell, C. (Ed.). (2014). The meaning of liberty beyond Earth. Heidelberg: Springer.
Crawford, I. (2014). Avoiding intellectual stagnation: The starship as an expander of minds. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 67, 253–257.
de Condorcet, A.-N. (1979). Sketch for a historical picture of the progress of the human mind. Westport, CT: Hyperion Press.
de Tocqueville, A. (1998). Democracy in America. England: Wordsworth.
Fogg, M. (1995). Terraforming: Engineering planetary environments. Warrendale, PA: SAE International.
Fried, C. (2007). Modern liberty. New York: W.W. Norton and Co.
Friedman, D. (1995). The machinery of freedom. Chicago: Open Court.
Friedman, M. (1962). Capitalism and freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Graziosi, D., & Lee, R. (2003). I-Suit advanced spacesuit design improvements and performance testing. SAE technical paper 2003-01-2443, doi:10.4271/2003-01-2443.
Hayek, F. (2006). The constitution of liberty. London: Routledge.
Jordan, N., Saleh, J., & Newman, D. (2006). The extravehicular mobility unit: A review of environment, requirements, and design changes in the US spacesuit. Acta Astronautica, 59, 1135–1145.
Katz, P. (1993). The new urbanism. Toward an architecture of community. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lewis, J. (1997). Mining the sky: Untold riches from the asteroids, comets and planets. New York: Basic Books.
McKay, C., Toon, O., & Kasting, J. (1991). Making Mars habitable. Nature, 352, 489–496.
Mill, J. S. (2004). On liberty and other writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Millar, J. (2006). The origin of the distinction of ranks. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Mitchell, C. (1994). Bioregenerative life-support systems. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 60, 8205–8245.
Muller, H. (1970). Freedom as the ability to choose and carry out purposes. In R. Dewey & J. Gould (Eds.), Freedom: Its history, nature and varieties (pp. 75–84). London: Macmillan.
O’Donnell, G., & Schmitter, P. (1991). Transitions from authoritarian rule: Tentative conclusions about uncertain democracies. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.
Patterson, O. (1991). Freedom: Freedom in the making of western culture. London: Basic Books.
Russell, B. (2004). Power. New York: Routledge.
Skinner, Q. (1998). Liberty before liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmidt, P., Newman, D., & Hodgson, E. (2001). Modeling space suit mobility: Applications to design and operations. SAE technical paper 2001-01-2162, doi:10.4271/2001-01-2162.
Smith, A. (1776). The wealth of nations. London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell.
Sridhar, K., & Vaniman, B. (1997). Oxygen production on Mars using solid oxide electrolysis. Solid State Ionics, 93, 321–328.
Sridhar, K., Finn, J., & Kliss, M. H. (2000). In-situ resource utilization technologies for Mars life support systems. Advances in Space Research, 25, 249–255.
Taylor, L., & Carrier, D. (1993). Oxygen production on the moon: An overview and evaluation. In J. Lewis, M. Matthews, & M. Guerrieri (Eds.), Resources of near-Earth space (pp. 69–108). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
von Mises, L. (1944). Omnipotent government. New Haven: Yale University Press.
von Mises, L. (2007). Bureaucracy. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Weil, S. (2002). Oppression and liberty. New York: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cockell, C.S. (2015). Extraterrestrial Liberty: Can It Be Planned?. In: Cockell, C. (eds) Human Governance Beyond Earth. Space and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18063-2_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18063-2_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-18062-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-18063-2
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)