{"id":153772,"date":"2021-05-07T13:38:13","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T13:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/?p=9903"},"modified":"2021-05-07T13:38:13","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T13:38:13","slug":"space-colonization-is-a-capitalist-perception-management-op","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/05\/07\/space-colonization-is-a-capitalist-perception-management-op\/","title":{"rendered":"Space Colonization Is A Capitalist Perception Management Op"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The world’s two wealthiest people are fighting over the moon, which just says so much about where our species is at right now.<\/p>

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are in a dispute<\/a> with NASA over whose private space exploration corporation will get the $2.9 billion US government contract to return to the moon. I gleaned this annoying piece of information by way of an obnoxiously sycophantic\u00a0Atlantic<\/em> puff piece<\/a> titled “Elon Musk Is Maybe, Actually, Strangely, Going to Do This Mars Thing”, subtitled “From his private Cape Canaveral, the billionaire is manifesting his own interplanetary reality\u2014whatever the cost.”<\/p>

The mainstream press cannot get enough of these two unfathomably wealthy plutocrats and their outspoken ambition to colonize space, with Musk advocating Mars colonization<\/a> and Bezos preferring to ship us all offworld to live in giant Amazon space tubes<\/a>. They love it for the same reason they love war and status quo politicians: it fits in beautifully with the capitalist world order.<\/p>

Space colonization is largely a capitalist perception management op promoted by the likes of Musk and Bezos to strengthen the narrative that it’s okay to continue the\u00a0world-raping global capitalist<\/a>\u00a0principle of infinite growth on a finite world because we can escape the catastrophic ecological consequences of that paradigm by fleeing to space.<\/p>

“Ecocidal capitalism is fine, we’ll just go to space before it kills us!” is the message we’re all meant to absorb. And too many do. A large obstacle to waking people up to the existential crises we are facing as a species is the blind faith that technology will save us from the consequences of our mass-scale behavior, and therefore we don’t need to change. Which suits the world’s richest men perfectly.<\/p>

But it’s a lie. Humanity will never colonize space. We are not separate or separable from this planet in that way.<\/p>Boca Chica, Texas, has changed so much since I visited in 2019. One big difference: Elon Musk has started calling it Starbase. https:\/\/t.co\/HwGfs84J2U<\/a><\/p>

— Marina Koren (@marinakoren) May 6, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>