More war or more worlds?

Are we humans engaged in a multi-faction civil war that began in 1494 or teething in the cradle of a multi-galactic team concept that began in 1975? We live not on one planet but in a brutal universe,¹ an unforgiving and omnidirectional physical reality. Ever-present threats to human existence include, 1) super volcanoes and tectonic shifts beneath Earth, 2) diseases across Earth and 3) potentially lethal solar and cosmic radiation beyond Earth. Sometimes there are no second chances. As Thomas Hobbes² wrote in an Earthbound context, life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”³ Hobbes’ awareness is applicable to building solar system resilience:⁴

International sport teaches us that no human is perfect over time, yet. We as individuals can always be better in the context of different kinds of teams, including families. This experiential truth among athletes and fans alike is quite a different notion than the doctrine of original sin or the secular idea that the human nature of everyone living is primarily bad whether we acknowledge our capacity for true goodness or not. Everyday, the original sin committed across ruling classes, the desire to maintain and be a part of a ruling class is projected onto the human majority in order to rationalize oppression which reduces total human capacity.

In No More War, (1958),⁵ the 1954 Nobel laureate for chemistry and the 1962 Nobel laureate for peace,⁶ Linus Pauling (1901-1994) advanced the intellectual tradition during the John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) presidential administration of the United States that nuclear weapons made war among humans obsolete. In 1975, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP)⁷ as part of the period of detente⁸ in U.S.-Soviet relations demonstrated the untapped synergistic potential of the two superpowers of the Cold War.

The Age of Exploration (1400s through 1600s)⁹ for better and worse unified or at least integrated human space and experience. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)¹⁰ reinforced the self-destructive human trait of exclusion on a global scale, distinct from the idea of privacy and reflection, necessary to prepare for endeavors large and small that are held in common within our fledgling solar system human civilization that began with Sputnik I¹¹ on October 4, 1957.

If before 2025, we can repurpose human civilization to actually move beyond Earth in tangible ways then we can redefine the years since 1494 as “The 530 Year Human Civil War” with previous ages of conflict being more provincial or regional in nature. Given the potential for past rapid advancement of the human cause through human synergy since 1494 instead of the unnecessary conflict over global resources and status that has occurred since then, the last half millennium has been a qualified disappointment. Technological and social gains have occurred within a sub-optimal paradigm not as a consequence of healthy conflict expressed through war as an efficiency mechanism.

In international or association football,¹² team functions are commonly divided into thirds of the field, 1) defenders, 2) midfielders and 3) forwards. By analogy, a team of eight billion super responsible, technologically accelerated, culturally interconnected and intensely focused humans can be organized around 12 cultural bioregions that change or “flex”¹³ over time like an American football¹⁴ defense across each of three mega-regions: 1) Asia-Pacific, 2) Americas and Africa-Europe. The aim of such mega-activity zones for the next several generations can be to construct as many bases across our solar system as soon as possible so that future humans can build an interstellar and then an intergalactic civilization as soon as possible. Such an approach is more responsible within the brutal universe than infighting over precarious geography.

If at present, the U.S. is in the historically typical self-inflicted process of being replaced by a soon-to-be global hegemon on Earth such as China or “a multi-polar world” through BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa),¹⁵ for what purpose exactly and more precisely, whose purpose? The answer likely may be just the latest human hierarchy posing as liberation from the previous hierarchy.

Humans need not accept more disingenuousness by mono-global ruling classes. Fostering team chemistry¹⁶ is both an art and a science. International and national sport has provided us with useful clues¹⁷ as how to best form and refine an eventual intergalactic human team,¹⁸ designed to achieve many positive goals together over millennia.

REFERENCES

1. Martin A. Schwab, Prospects for Collaborative Power in a Brutal Universe, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawaii, 2012. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/e94ae5ca-ab45-478b-950c-4a4d2c897cd8. Retrieved August 9, 2024.

2. John Gray, “Was Thomas Hobbes too optimistic?” Time, November 10, 2023. https://time.com/6333259/thomas-hobbes-state-of-nature-john-gray-essay/. Retrieved August 10, 2024.

3. “nasty, brutish, and short,” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), i, xiii. 9. Oxford Reference, webpage. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100223527. Retrieved August 10, 2024.

4. Martin Schwab, “Sea rise and solar system resilience 1/1 | 3×3 Global Drills Worksheet Series,” YouTube, September 30, 2017 (5:01). https://youtu.be/-YNbxHLlDEE?si=G9wXJT1bID-D9Azw. Retrieved August 10, 2024.

5. Linus Pauling, No More War (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1958). https://archive.org/details/nomorewar0000unse. Retrieved August 9, 2024.

6. “Award ceremony speech” (Linus Pauling), Nobel Prize, webpage. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1962/ceremony-speech/. Retrieved August 10, 2024.

7. Eric Betz, “Apollo-Soyuz mission: When the space race ended,” Astronomy, July 21, 2020, updated May 18, 2023. https://www.astronomy.com/space-exploration/apollo-soyuz-mission-when-the-space-race-ended/. Retrieved August 10, 2024.

8. Antonov, Anatoly. “With the Apollo-Soyuz handshake in space, the Cold War thawed a little: Russia’s Ambassador to the United States recalls an iconic example of space détente, 45 years ago this week,” Smithsonian Magazine/Air & Space Magazine, July 15, 2020. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/apollo-soyuz-cold-war-thawed-little-180975321/. Retrieved May 26, 2025.

9. Amanda Briney, “What was the age of exploration?” ThoughtCo., updated May 5, 2024. https://www.thoughtco.com/age-of-exploration-1435006. Retrieved August 8, 2024.

10. Mark Cartwright, “Treaty of Tordesillas,” World History Encyclopedia, August 11, 2021. https://www.worldhistory.org/Treaty_of_Tordesillas/ and “Treaty of Tordesillas” Wikipedia, webpage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas. Both retrieved August 9, 2024.

11. “Sputnik and the dawn of the space age,” NASA, updated October 10, 2007, webpage. https://www.nasa.gov/history/sputnik/index.html. Retrieved August 9, 2024.

12. “Association football,” Wikipedia, webpage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football. Retrieved August 10, 2024.

13. “Tom Landry” (flex defense), Wikipedia, webpage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Landry. Retrieved August 10, 2024.

14. Martin Schwab, “Camaraderie through endeavor – across spacetime: Reflections and recommendations from a participant-observer of late 20th century American football and 2020s solar system(s) building,” 3×3 Global Drills, April 29, 2024. https://3x3globaldrills.com/2024/04/29/camaraderie-through-endeavor-across-space-time-reflections-and-recommendations-from-a-participant-observer-of-late-20th-century-american-football-and-2020s-solar-systems-building. Retrieved August 9, 2024.

15. BRICS, official website. http://infobrics.org/. Retrieved May 26, 2025.

16. “In team sports, chemistry matters.” ScienceDaily/Northwestern University, December 4, 2018, webpage. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181204095355.htm. Retrieved August 9, 2024.

17. James Franklin, “The intricacies of team chemistry in the NFL’s pursuit of victory,” World in Sport, July 8, 2024. https://worldinsport.com/the-intricacies-of-team-chemistry-in-the-nfls-pursuit-of-victory/. Retrieved May 26, 2025.

18. “Intergalactic: Beastie Boys (Lyrics),” Daermon Cedar. Posted October 16, 2011 (3:30). https://youtu.be/4z0YkBnEYzc?si=_Pt2NQeDOTQDEbG4. Retrieved August 9, 2024.