There has been a great deal of interest in space flight lately. Many ultra wealthy individuals have taken it upon themselves to compete with each other to see who can commercialize the “final frontier” first. After all, these individuals have already figured out how to squeeze every last drop of blood from our precious Earth. Space is the next natural step in this capitalist venture.
It is probably clear from my opening what I think about these people. Many of them reporting record profits over the past two years; two years which have had most of us locked up at home trying to avoid a deadly pandemic virus that is killing millions of people worldwide. I think it is pretty deplorable that these few individuals have virtually abandoned humanity in order to pursue their lofty projects, when a small fraction of their immense wealth could be used to prevent most of these tragic deaths. A small fraction of their wealth could have turned a two year pandemic into something much less devastating.
Of course, all that I say is speculative. Who knows what would have happened had various individuals made different choices over the past several years. As one who’s beliefs lean toward a hard deterministic view of the universe, I do have my doubts that they could have done otherwise. Which creates a rather depressing view of humanity and its future.
Which brings us to my topic of choice today: Elysium. Elysium was a film from 2013. The story was a commentary regarding the state of affairs observed in our modern world, and a prediction for the future. In this story, the future of humanity was not some Utopian civilisation, like in Star Trek where humanity had resolved its various problems, curing diseases and trying to spread joy throughout the galaxy. No, in this story humans did what they seem to often do, they dismissed and discarded the refuse and the undesirable.
In the story of Elysium, the ultra wealthy decided to abandon the Earth and live upon a large artificial habitat in high orbit around the Earth. Over the years, the Earth had become a miserable place to live. Pollution, climate change, poverty. It was just easier (it seems) for the wealthy to leave, than to repair the Earth.
The rest of the story focuses on an individual who was born on Earth. A sorry excuse of a person, surrounded by poverty and problems, dreaming of one day living on Elysium. Even promising his best friend that they would one day be there. Through significant hardship, he eventually makes his way to the orbiting habitat. The details of that adventure I leave to you to discover for yourself.
If it is not painfully obvious and clear, the recent interest in space exploration and commercialization by our real world wealthy elites has reminded me of this eight year old film. It seems like Neill Blomkamp‘s vision of the future may not be so distant as even he seemed to think.
We might have to wait about 150 years for an orbiting space platform to be constructed for our modern wealthy elites, but that is obviously just speculation. What isn’t speculation is that the current super rich are already setting their gaze toward space right now. What I don’t understand is how no one in the mass media has acknowledged this little gem of a film in the process.