There is no Destination

Let's stay below 1 on the Kardashev Scale.

Let’s not make the Dyson’s Sphere our goal.

Image courtesy of FictionTalk

I remember as a child being impatient for the future to come. I read a lot of science fiction books that imagined wonderful futuristic worlds with unimaginable inventions that would make everything better. I wanted that future to get here now!

As I grew older, and hopefully wiser, I realized that there was no such destination. There was no place or accomplishment I was headed for that would be my ultimate goal, not marriage, not children, not retirement, not death. Those are all things that have either happened or will happen in my life, but if none of them ever happened, my life wouldn’t be without worth or without meaning.

The journey itself is the thing.

This isn’t some great revelation I had. Many people know this. It has been written, spoken, sung and communicated many times by many people.

I feel lucky that somewhere along the way I figured that out, and the boy that wanted to walk on Mars someday realized at some point that such a dream really wasn’t important. I could close my eyes and imagine it happening and that would be good enough. No need to move heaven and earth to make that happen.

If you happen to be a billionaire who wants to go to Mars - knock yourself out. Just do it on your own dime. I won’t be joining you.

Certainly not everyone in the world is in the “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey” camp. Plenty of us are strivers, and have striving goals, and that’s fine. But most everyone understands the argument. They may choose to keep their nose to the grindstone, or feel they have to - but they generally know that not participating in the rat race as an individual is an option.

But we don’t seem to understand that it is an option on the civilization scale. If many of us realize that it is the journey that matters on a personal level - what is keeping us from realizing that at the societal level.

Still addicted to growth.

Back to science fiction for a second. Let’s talk about the Kardashev Scale.

The Kardashev Scale, developed by Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev in 1964, measures the advancement of a civilization on energy consumption and technological capability. Each type represents a leap in energy harnessing, reflecting potential growth and influence within the universe.

A Type 1 civilization can harness and use all energy on its home planet, including fossil fuels, solar, wind, and geothermal power. Achieving Type I status requires managing energy equivalent to the total solar energy reaching Earth.

We are at about 0.72 on the Kardashev scale right now.

A Type II civilization extends its energy consumption to the full output of its star.

A Type III civilization controls energy at the scale of its entire galaxy.

A Type IV civilization operates at the scale of the universe, harnessing energy from multiple galaxies.

A Type V civilization can use all the energy of the multiverse, if it exists.

I think the Kardashev scale is a cool science conversation starter. It is a great trope for science fiction. I also think it is ridiculous. We should not have Kardashev 1 as a goal. Yet that is what our civilization has as a long-term goal. That isn’t a stated goal, but that is where we are going with a growth for growth's sake civilization.

Kardashev 1 is all about energy use, which is problematic to start with. Shouldn’t we be working towards some scale that measures living within planetary boundaries, creating a well-being economy, or making sure we can feed everyone?

If your civilization wants to get to Kardashev 1, fine. But get your shit together first. Getting your shit together means making sure we can keep a civilization. If you get to Kardashev 1 at some point, but you get there after we are 4C above pre-industrial levels and we lose half of Earth’s population to starvation, war and extreme weather, that isn’t any kind of victory as far as I’m concerned.

To be fair, I haven’t heard any politicians or businesspeople talking about getting to Kardashev 1. Maybe because we aren’t scheduled to get to Kardashev 1 for about 200 - 250 years.

We want to be human. Start there.

What we crave as human beings is connection, physical, emotional connection, love and belonging. Those aren’t things that products can provide. Only other people can provide them, and only people in a community of some kind can provide that in any kind of sustainable way.

Yet, we as communities that make up our larger society, that make up our larger civilization believe or are led to believe that there is a destination, and that destination is eternal economic growth.

This never-ending need for growth, meaning more production and more consumption, will mean ever more energy and ever more materials are needed, forever, or until we destroy ourselves.

The answer is quite simple to see, but difficult to bring into reality. The answer is to adopt the lens through which we often see our individual lives, realizing that there is no destination we need to get to, but that it is the people along the way that matter.

The same is true for our societies and our civilization. We have nothing else to achieve that won’t push us farther into environmental disaster. We need to ensure we can maintain what we have, by making the focus of our societi’s human wellbeing, not economic growth.

Let’s get our shit together first. Once we have realized that a civilization is worth maintaining and not pushing over a cliff, and we actually save it, we can break out those Dyson Sphere plans. A Dyson’s Shere is cool science, but my guess is we will never get there because we will destroy ourselves first.

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that surrounds a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. It is supercool theoretical science, but quite silly to consider when we can’t even decide to take climate change seriously.