VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 8
Mars Is Not a Way Out
Three sections face the age's loudest answer to the ruin of the paradise: flee to another world.
First, the plain reckoning. Mars has none of the seven gifts. It has no free air, no free water, no living soil, no gentle sun, no turning seasons, no warmth of the human world, no self-renewing life. To move there is not to reach a new paradise. It is to leave the only one.
Then, the true nature of the claim that we can abandon Earth and start again on Mars. Held to the light, that claim is a claim that the paradise may be ruined and the ruin walked away from. Its cost falls on the billions who cannot go.
Last, the telling-apart. To reach toward the stars is innocent, even good. The guilt is not in the reaching. It is in the heart that would use the reaching as a license to ruin the one home we have.
Chapter contents:
Section One. Mars Has None of the Seven Gifts: to Go There Is to Leave Paradise, Not Find It.
Section Two. The Claim That We Can Abandon Earth, Held to the Light.
Section Three. Reaching for the Stars Is Innocent: the Guilt Is in the Heart That Would Ruin Home.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.