Let’s start walking the sacred walk to the stars

Watching “2001: A Space Odyssey” in 1968 was a powerful religious experience. Encountering Transhumanism was another. Space, transhumanism, and transcendence are the cornerstones of Turing Church.

The picture above shows a reconstruction of a holy place of power: the (fictional) place on the Moon where space faring humans first encounter a vast, superhuman intelligence that has mastered Space and Time. In the words of Sir Arthur C. Clarke (from the novel):

They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter. Now they were lords of the galaxy, and beyond the reach of time. They could rove at will among the stars, and sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space.”

[Mind] would eventually free itself from matter. The robot body, like the flesh-and-blood one, would be no more than a stepping-stone to something which, long ago, men had called “spirit.”

And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God.

I am a former space professional who knows and loves cool tech as much as the next geek, and I am persuaded there’s fun to be had and money to be made in space, but to me the importance of space goes much beyond that: I strongly believe spreading to the stars is our manifest destiny, cosmic duty, and sacred quest.

To me, transhumanism is all about future humanity — our biological descendants and our AI mind children — joining the community of advanced galactic civilizations and achieving God-like powers. The Turing Church cosmic visions start with:

“We will go to the stars and find Gods, build Gods, become Gods...”

Our future is out there among the stars, where we’ll find transcendence beyond our wildest dreams.

In two thoughtful essays titled “Religion for a Galactic Civilization” (1982 and 2009) my friend Bill Bainbridge, the author of “The Meaning and Value of Spaceflight: Public Perceptions” (2015) and the classic “The Spaceflight Revolution: A Sociological Study” (1976), argued that

“We need a new spaceflight social movement capable of giving a sense of transcendent purpose to dominant sectors of the society… In short, we need a galactic religion, a Cosmic Order.”

Turing Church wants to be a Cosmic Order, at the forefront of both wild philosophical speculations and bold hands-on space initiatives.

A bold initiative: Let’s start building outposts on the sacred road to the stars

Besides cosmic speculations, I also want to help building outposts on the sacred road to the stars, and I want you to participate. Let’s go the futurist way:

In “A Virtual World Space Agency,” (2009) I proposed to create a global space agency of the people, open to anyone. Then a few months ago I created a Facebook group to explore the idea of a decentralized autonomous space agency.

Please request to join the Facebook group “Space Decentral” if you want to participate in informal discussions.

The project is now part of Space Cooperative, a worker-owned cooperative that is developing a crowdsourced approach to settling the space frontier. Please consider joining Space Cooperative if you want to participate, hands-on.

I joined Space Cooperative because it’s fresh and fun (plus there’s also this new thing about farming watermelons on Mars — stay tuned). Most of the team are millennials with young faces untouched by wrinkles and bad thoughts, but that’s a feature not a bug: my generation has screwed up, and it’s right and proper to pass leadership to them. We oldies will do what we can to help.

Perhaps “screwed up” is too much: those cities on the Moon we dreamed of in the sixties were really too much too soon — don’t try to run before you can walk and all that. Bill Bainbridge and Sir Arthur C. Clarke noted that

“Space travel is a technological mutation that should not really have arrived until the 21st century.”

It appears they were right — the youthful Apollo adventure of last century was but an inspiring prelude of things to come, and space travel becomes a reality in this century.

Let’s go and build those outposts on the sacred road to the stars.

You don’t need to be an astronaut or a top space engineer to participate: every small thing you do here and now on Earth to support our expansion into space is a step — your step — in the right direction. Up there, every robotic planetary probe is an important step, waiting for people to follow.

And don’t underestimate the power of symbols. The temple on the Moon proposed by artist Jorge Mañes Rubio as part of ESA’s “Moon Village” concept would be a very powerful symbol and illuminate the beginning of the sacred walk.

Too bad the Moon Village doesn’t have, I fear, a chance in hell to be funded by governments anytime soon.

Perhaps we should do something about that.

Picture from Wikimedia Commons.