this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
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This is just describing imperial expansion and framing it as a biological necessity. The only historical example he could be using is European colonization, either of each other or the New World. It was very much the fashion in his day to paint space exploration as the new Manifest Destiny or the new generation of European explorers. Terrible cultural holdover that should be stamped out of this discourse tbh.
Well... We can exploit the resources of the asteroid belt, or we can continue to exploit terrestrial resources until we die from it.
So either colonize the belt or colonize our own decedents.
The quote says we need to keep expanding because only expansion provides the productive vitality to carry humanity. This is simply not true. If we treat space exploration as imperial heritage then we won't just exploit natural resources, we will create slave labor in space. That's the heritage of exploration in history. It's never about only about gold or coal or oil, it's about exploiting labor to access those things. It's about not letting the cultures that live on top of those resources benefit from extraction. In space there are no cultures living on resources but that doesn't solve the problem. The exploitation of labor will continue and give a jolt of vitality to human cruelty in the name of making Earth owners more rich.
The choice isn't either mine asteroids or steal resources from the future. We have resources to support future humans on Earth. The choice is either you stop the capitalist extraction of those resources along with human slavery or you kill your descendants. Which, by the way, are already likely dead because letting capitalists extract oil to support billions of car owners, with absolutely no survival advantage, has killed the planet.
Was it imperial expansion when the first humans left Africa? Or got to Australia 40,000 years ago? Or walked across the Bering land bridge to America? Or when Polynesians sailed east across the Pacific? Humans need to explore past what they know. It's fundamental to the human condition.
Think about what you're saying. If walking from one place to another is biological then what is settlement in those places? If walking from Asia to N America was the biological necessity, then what was settling in N America after the walk? Why is one a biological necessity over the other? We're working backwards from the assumption that walking is the special part, not examining the things that exist alongside walking.
Some people get discontent with where they are and want to try their luck elsewhere. It's the same drive that makes some people leave their hometowns to try and make it in the city while others want to give up the rat race and move out to the country side. Sure there some people use imperialism as the tool for said exploration/roaming, but I genuinely believe that some people just need to see what is out there. I think it's the same thing that makes some people want to create their own art/music. A lot of people just want to know what is possible, what is out there, or what they are actually capable of doing once they push themselves to the extreme. And that drive is common across pretty much all cultures across all ages, so I have to assume it's biological to some degree. Just like how everyone with a cat or a child will tell you they are constantly trying to see what is in a restricted area.
And obviously that's not for everyone. Plenty or people live and die in the same place they grew up, watch the same handful of TV shows/movies over and over, or listen to the same playlist every day. But I believe that exploration of the unknown should always be encouraged, and for some people images from a probe won't be enough and they want to go out and see it for themselves.
I'll have to stick to the specifics of the argument and context on this one. We're talking about biology and now you're talking about individual personalities wistfully dreaming of greener pastures. We're slowly drifting from the point to something far beside the point. The point was that Sagan is conflating a more modern historical and social condition with human nature. This is something that people have done for hundreds of years and part of why capitalism is sticky. The innovation of Marx is that this modern social condition is not the eternal state of humankind, but something that has changed over time and must be changed. Everything has a social and historical context. The only way to make "people just want to explore new ideas" fit in with "traveling to space is a biological imperative" and "because people long ago traveled long distances" is to have no regard for either social or historical context. You have to remove context in order to flatten it out and make it all seem on the same level.
This isn't an argument about the indomitable spirit of mankind or whether people dream of possibilities. I'm trying to view this through a socialist lens not a romantic, literary one.
Human exploration predates imperialism by millennia, the two are not the same
The quote above is not talking about prehistoric nomads though. He's invoking European exploration which is inseparable from colonization.
I'm not seeing anything in the quote to justify your interpetation
It's the talk about increases in productive capacity that gives it away. It's the same framing that people used to justify Western conquest for hundreds of years.
"Every time humanity stretches itself and turns a new corner, it receives a jolt of productive vitality that can carry it for centuries."
It's more of a stretch to pretend this is about ancient nomads than the most recent centuries of Western "exploration." It's possible for Sagan to be both a cool guy that everyone loves because they saw Cosmos and it blew their minds and for him to have Western brainworms.
Cosmos Episode 6 does it too:
https://vimeo.com/291415990
Idk why people are finding this some kind of hot take that can't be true. The dude romanticized conquest as part of the human spirit.
I'm still not seeing it, as far as I can tell your entire argument is based on the usage of the word "productive", productivity as a concept is not exclusive to capitalism and the usage of the word in this context does nothing to imply it
My claim that Carl Sagan conflates European exploration with human nature is supported by Carl Sagan saying he conflates European with the human endeavor of exploration and then claims that exploration is human nature. If you don't see it then you don't see it.
Anything's possible when you make shit up! Unfortunately for you anyone familiar with Sagan's work will already know just how much he wrote specifically about early human history and the origins and development of our species. In the context of the quote alone it's at least slightly arguable, in the context of his actual life and career it's extremely obvious that he is referring to early human migrations and not imperialism. You clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about, so just stop talking.