Needed To Make Something Right Now To Deal With These Feelings. Think Of This Like The Rough Draft To

needed to make something right now to deal with these feelings. think of this like the rough draft to the series of essays that probably will never come, but i sure can hope!

Alone Together

Every now and then, someone will ask, "why is it still called first contact?" They think they are clever, apparently, by pointing out that we already know intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, and so it should simply be called 'contact.'

But it is clear that they do not understand the weight these words carry.

Far back in 2145, humankind made first contact on a small, airless, inner moon of Uranus. Except... no one was there to greet us. All we found were the remains. Within a week, our understanding of life in the universe had gone from hopeful optimism to somber concern: had we really been so close to contact, only for our elder and only counterparts to vanish? Research on the ruins revealed that the ancient starfarers had wiped themselves out in a catastrophic civil conflict, and we feared what that meant for us. We resolved, then, that we would do better, not only for ourselves but for the ones who had come before us and lost their way. We had given up one kind of loneliness -that of simple ignorance- for another, far worse kind of loneliness: that of the sole survivor.

Our loneliness was not to last, fortunately. In 2191, the crew of the Arete mission to Proxima Centauri encountered a species of lifeform on the frigid moon Calypso which exhibited unusual intelligence, and in time discovered the great settlements they inhabited. After two years of study, the Arete explorers established rudimentary two-way communication with the Calypsians and grew a conversational relationship with the people of one nearby settlement. Humankind was overjoyed: here, at last, were the interstellar neighbors we had longed for.

But eventually the Arete mission had to return to Earth, and the Calypsians would not achieve interstellar radio transmission for a hundred more years. Even once they were able to commune with us across the great void, we found that our species were too different to have much in common aside from scientific interest. Thus, we were faced once more with a new and uniquely tragic kind of loneliness -almost that of estranged cousins.

In 2220, our prayers seemed to be answered at last by a stray radio signal from Tau Ceti. Though it took time, we were able to decipher its meaning and sent a return message, followed by a probe. The initial course of contact was slow, as is always the case with remote contact from across the emptiness. Over patient years of interaction, we learned how to communicate with the skae, and eventually sent a crewed mission to their homeworld of Ra'na: Andromeda One, the first of many.

We discovered the skae were a younger civilization than us, by several centuries, and so took responsibility for teaching them to be more like us. We taught them the secrets of nature and technology that they had not yet uncovered- of black holes and quarks, of the microchip and the fusion reactor. They accepted our gifts with wonder and gratitude, and in turn taught us their ways of terraformation- new methods to accelerate the healing of our own world and transform others from dead waste to bountiful gardens. Together we founded a coalition, to unite all civilizations seeking starflight under the common purposes of curiosity and betterment. But although this was everything humanity had ever wanted, we still felt the pangs of loneliness: the burden of the elder and mentor.

It was our good fortune, then, that elder civilizations were watching us. Just a decade after founding the USSC, Earth received a radio message from the star Epsilon Indi. It was a direct greeting, excited and hopeful. "We are shyxaure of Delvasi and ziirpu of Virvv. We saw you," they said, "and you have done well. We have ached to reach out for centuries, but worried over what would follow if we did. The alliance you have forged with the people of Tau Ceti is assurance that we are, truly, alike in thought. We are proud to call you neighbors, and hope to soon call you friends."

While we waited for their embassy ship to arrive as promised, humanity reveled in passing a test we had not known was ongoing. We had proven ourselves worthy of contact, worthy of inclusion into the interstellar community... and yet, a new loneliness seeped through the cracks of our joy. We had anguished in isolation for so long, all the while our cosmic seniors watched from not so far away. For hundreds of years, we had not realized there were new friends just beyond the horizon. And so, in secret, we mourned this loneliness: that of what could have been.

In the centuries that have followed we have discovered even more sapient beings around us: the rimor of the Eridani Network, the Xib Zjhar of Xiilu Qam, the pluunima of Niima. We are connected to each other in many ways, but the most important of these is simply that we share the gift of sapience. In this vast and quiet universe, any fellow intelligence is infinitely precious because we are the only ones, as far as we know. Every contact event is first contact, all over again, ​because every new civilization that we encounter will expand our horizons just enough for us to wonder: "was that last contact? Is there still someone else out there, or is that the end of roll call? Are we alone together, now?"

This, the grandest and most poignant of all mysteries, is why the motto of the Coalition is "solum habemus invicem et stellas" – "we only have each other and the stars."

[The player has recently created a character from Texas, cowboy hat, boots, and has the whole southern stereotype thing going for him]

DM: Is Texas canon to my universe now? I hate you.

The ground rumbles as a catchy piano tune echoes in the distance. The far-off echo of Mariah Carey's voice is heard, barely audible at first, but rapidly it grows louder. You know the words before you hear them. The memories of your old retail job flood back. You cover your ears, your eyes welling up with tears because you know what's coming. The ground splits beneath your feet. You hear sleigh bells that rival your terrified screams in their overwhelming volume, and you plummet into a frozen, sickly-sweet Hell.

You just posted like ten different things about potatoes in the span of maybe five minutes, and I gotta know your take on "The Martian".

Like, the (fictional) man alone on a planet literally only survives because of potatoes shrink-wrapped in plastic for a Thanksgiving meal. If they weren't slated to be on Mars for Thanksgiving, he would have died.

And Andy Weir (author of the original novel) did such a good job with the science of every other element to the story, I honest-to-god believe that potatoes could actually manage to grow in Martian soil (even if that's not been proven for certain afaik).

Which means..... could potatoes terraform Mars into sustaining life??? Are potatoes the key to the universe???

Haha sorry for going so hard on them! Those were mostly all posts from 2020 when gardening and fantasy worldbuilding were lockdown fixations for me. One of them blew up recently so I wanted to give The People more of the content it seemed they were looking for. I don't actually know a lot about potatoes. I just think they're neat.

I do not want to take apart the concept of "colonizing Mars" as some kind of woke gotcha. I want to take your question seriously and charitably. However, I just am the kind of person who's like "Hmm, 'colonize', we should really stop and unpack that word," so let's do that, without forgetting the potato element.

(What "I don't know a lot" means: Potatoes were a crop my family grew several acres of for a few years on our farm before we switched our focus to sheep. I am about 50% as reliable as a horticultural brochure on various potato diseases and growing condition issues. I have listened to two University lectures and read perhaps four historical journal articles beginning-to-end on how the Columbian Exchange affected early-modern Europe, that and half as much again on medieval and early modern European farming practices and population changes, and perhaps three science/history articles specifically on the domestication and proliferation of the potato. I am a white Canadian who actively seeks out information and training in Indigenous history and culture in the Americas, but that's probably still only equal to like, two Native Studies classes in university. I know more than the average person on this topic, but I am also not an expert compared to people who have devoted serious time to learning about this.)

But I have some intuitions in a couple of ways:

The Martian is probably being wildly over-optimistic about its potatoes. They would probably have been irradiated into sterility before being vacuum-packed, and I don't think you can split and propagate them that quickly or successfully. However, potatoes can definitely grow in all kinds of conditions (including under my sink).

They might not be the world's healthiest or happiest potatoes, tho. Soil quality definitely affects the end product. Presumably Watney, being a botanist studying Mars' soil composition, knew how much he had to ameliorate his soil with latrine compost (which would definitely have needed a LOT of processing, since human waste is generally not good for plants, but maybe he used chemicals to speed that up?) to get good soil. However, we would probably need to add a LOT of shit to Mars' soil (and air, and water) for it to host plant life.

Mark Watney makes a joke about having "colonized Mars" because "colony" is Latin for "farm" and he farmed on Mars so haha, funny joke! And we talk about colonies on Mars partly because that's what science fiction did, and a lot of science fiction has been into that colonialism aesthetic. But colonialism and empires actually aren't great, not just because they necessitate huge amounts of racism, oppression, and genocide—I know, you asked me a fun question about potatoes and did not sign up for this, I'm not here to drag you, hear me out—but because they're also really sucky models for agriculture and successful societies generally.

My British ancestors tried to be colonial farmers in a place that is sometimes colder than Mars (Canada's Treaty Six), and let me tell you: IT SUCKED. Most of the crops and herbs and vegetables and flowers that settlers here brought from home and are used to? DON'T FUCKEM GROW. For the Canadian prairies to become conventional farmland, farmers and scientists had to scramble to find, or produce, cold-hardy varieties of everything from wheat to roses. A lot of flowers and plants that are unkillable invasive zombie perennials in other climates don't survive our winters no matter hard we try. The trees and flowers that hold cultural or sentimental attachments for us often don't grow here. The climate is so harsh and population is spread so thin that we cannot do the 100 mile diet and eat foods we're familiar with, and can hardly even manage the 1000 mile diet. (Not that I try, but, my family did once look into it)

A huge number of colonial homesteads, where the pioneers go out on their little covered wagon and build little houses on the prairie? Failed miserably and got bought up by land speculators. My own family came out to Alberta in the 1880s and moved around from land assignment to land assignment, like, six times before settling at their current place in the early 1900s.

Meanwhile: POTATOES

Potatoes are less than ten thousand years old! I am not any kind of expert on archaeology, please nobody throw things, but humans showed up in the Andes (think: high, cold mountains) of South America roughly 9,000 years ago. There are hundreds of wild potato varieties, but they generally produce fairly tiny tubers. It took active work of Indigenous Andean people around 8,000 years ago around Lake Titicaca to cultivate specific strains of potato, doing oldschool genetic modification to make them bigger, more delicious, and hardier. From that cultivation effort around a single species of wild potatoes, they produced thousands of cultivated potato varieties.

Ancient Andean farmers and botanists also played a big part in cultivating quinoa from wild amaranth, as well as producing modern food crops you probably haven't heard of, like oca, olluco, mashua, and yacon, and also coca, which may get a bad rap because it's what cocaine and coca-cola are made from but you cannot deny it's got kick.

Basically, Indigenous people of the Americas (South, Central, and North) went all in on botany and plant cultivation. Plants that we take for granted now have mostly been developed by Indigenous people in the past few thousand years: Tobacco, sunflowers, marigolds, tomatoes, pumpkins, rubber, vanilla, cocoa, sweetcorn, maize, and most kinds of pepper except peppercorn. These things were not found; they were made, by careful cultivation of the world as it was.

This gives us a vision of the future. Colonization, and industrial agriculture, both lean us towards the vision of a totally uniform end product, with the same potato varieties grown on each farm because we have made every farm the same. Instead we could embrace biodiversity and focus on privileging local knowledge and considering the interactions of environment, plants, microbiota, and people. We could create potatoes that were happy on Mars. We could create Mars that is happy to have us. We could create a society that can accept what Mars has to offer.

A lot of why we dream about colonizing Mars is the idea that the Earth itself is dying, that we are killing it, and we need to abandon this farmstead and seek out a new frontier. I acknowledge that shit is bad, but I don't agree with that framing. I am increasingly persuaded that there is a third path between ecological destruction and mass exodus, and I think we need to reject European colonial mentality that creates the forced choice. I find far more use in privileging the knowledge of people who live on and with land than their landlords and rulers, and I especially find value in Indigenous knowledge of land management practices and food production.

I am absolutely not saying that Indigenous people were or are wonderful magical ~spiritual beings~ who frolicked in an Edenic paradise that only knew death and disease once white people showed up. This isn't noble savage bullshit, nor am I invoking people who existed once but whom I have never met. I am saying that I have Indigenous neighbours, colleagues, relatives, and elected representatives. I have learned about mental health, leatherworking, botany, and ecology from Metis and First Nations elders and knowledge-keepers. And like. They have good and useful shit to say.

This is about culture, not race. It is not that their biological DNA means that they know more than me about how to get food from this landscape. It's about cultural history and what we learn from our heritages. What have our cultures privileged? Like, Europe has historically been super into things like metallurgy, domesticating livestock, and creating dairy products. If I want to smelt iron or choose animals to make cheese from, European society would have a lot of useful information for me! And what Indigenous cultures in the Americas have historically focused on instead of cows and copper* include 1) getting REAL familiar with your local flora and figuring out how to make sure you have lots of the herbs and grains and roots and berries you need, and 2) how to make a human society where people can live and have good lives, but do not damage the environment enough to impair the ability of future generations to have the same sort of life.

*Edit to add: Actually many Indigenous American societies DID practice metalsmithing of various types, including copper. Which I forgot, sorry!

Conclusion

I think we could use the processes that formed the potato to find and foster forms of life that could survive on Mars. It would involve learning to think that botany is a sexy science, and understanding just how rich and complicated the environment is. To oxygenate the atmosphere, we'd have to get super enthusiastic about algae and lichen and wetlands. We would have to learn to care deeply about the microorganisms living in the soil, and whether the potatoes are happy.

We'd have to create an economy that counts oxygen and carbon dioxide production on its balance sheets. To learn how to wait for forests to grow back after a fire, instead of giving up in despair because the seedlings aren't trees yet. To do the work now and be hopeful even though we might not see the payoffs for decades, or our victories might only be witnessed by future generations.

So yes, I think we could totally plant potatoes on Mars

But I also think that if we ever got there, we'd have turned into the kind of people who could also save Earth in the first place.

Which makes it a good enough goal in my opinion.

Pokemon headcanon that once Absol are studied and people realize they prevent disasters instead of causing them, particularly dangerous workplaces get themselves a workplace Absol and it also decreases accidents.

Construction sites and fishing ships and factories will have one that pretty much just lazes about until it just gets up howling one day and knocks a dude down. They almost never figure out what would have happened but they're always like "yes absol thank you absol I am so grateful to be on the floor right now. Can I offer you a treat in this trying time"