Humanity Today Faces a Choice

Ideas have consequences. Humanity today faces a choice between two very different sets of ideas…On the one side stands the antihuman view, which…continues to postulate a world of limited supplies, whose fixed constraints demand ever-tighter controls upon human aspirations. On the other side stand those who believe in the power of unfettered creativity to invent unbounded resources and so, rather than regret human freedom, demand it as our birthright…

If [the antihuman] idea is accepted…then each new life is unwelcome, each unregulated act or thought is a menace, every person is fundamentally the enemy of every other person…The ultimate outcome of such a worldview can only be enforced stagnation, tyranny, war, and genocide…the central purpose of government must not be to restrict human freedom but to defend and enhance it at all costs.

And that is why we must take on the challenge of space. For in doing so, we make the most forceful statement possible that we are living not at the end of history but at the beginning of history; that we believe in freedom and not regimentation, in progress and not stasis…in life rather than death, and in hope rather than despair.” – Robert Zubrin writing in The Case for Space