Writer Charlie Stross asks his readers to design a society that could survive a thousand year journey across space. Many of the responses are intriguing, especially those that are pregnant with possibilities. For example:
Chop it up into 5 or 10 distinct physically societies and do everything you can to make sure they don’t have the means to access one another. Have a computer controlled system allowing extremely unwieldy travel between adjacent areas once every ten years, e.g. a tunnel you have to crawl through which is open for 30 minutes.
How long before one or more of those societies makes it their primary objective to circumvent these artificial borders? And does that focus make the passage of time bearable?
I mention this exchange here because it’s an exercise in political science fiction, the intellectual backbone of my life for the last 20 years.
For what is Stross’ question about a society that can withstand a thousand year journey through space but a novel rephrasing of the question that has defined us all for millennia?
A spaceship in solar orbit, photographed from its satellite.
How should we live?
Ask Moses, Aristotle, Plato, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, St. Augustine, etc., etc., etc.