On this day we as representatives of Planet Earth's nations, humble and loving, convened to talk about one of the gravest constitutional issues facing our government since its inception. You as representatives of the Pro-terrafriending lobby, and you as representatives of the Constitutional virgin soil society, together you have debated civilly a matter of utmost consequence. Do we send forth a planetological mission to study Mars and prepare it for guided life anew? Do we adhere most stringently to the guiding UN principle of Utopia on Earth, keeping Mars's primeval soil free from living touch?
Once Mars had liquid water. Again it could have. Yet by what right do we as humans possess, to make that choice? To do as we plan to do, to terrafriend Mars, would mean irreversibly altering the continuum of Mars. We humans have for so long defined the boundaries of our existence by our own limits, arrogantly placing ourselves at the centre of all known creation.
Now our horizons expand outwards, now our horizons expand inwards. Where others explore, expand, exploit and extinguish - we have become introspective, we have developed responsibly, we have conserved & protected, we have sought to uphold and preserve all against the mistakes they make that would cause their own suffocation. Despite our enlightened ideas, our conscious and subconscious attempts to redeem humanity for all the ignorance and harm it caused to the cosmos, we cannot forget this original ignorance and the ease with which we could return to it.
We called our homeworld Earth, because we could only see land.
When mankind took to the seas, to the great steppes and saw the heavens above, at last humanity could glimpse its true place in the vast cosmos. Amidst the terrible history of destruction and calamity that was to follow in the fell Dark Ages of Pre-Unity, we saw what barbarism could sail along the truth - just as readily as it could guide us to the way forward. We swore as a species never to make those mistakes again, to leave our desires to take the heavens apart. No more!
No more would we seize the Kingdoms of Heaven, no more would we tear down the ordained stalk of nature, nor abuse the momentary miracle of universal life.
And so it would be that we would look inwards to perfect Earth and balance, not between humanity and nature, but humanity as nature. I am upset in many ways, that it has come to this. Some will say that Mars is lifeless, but once could have been. That we are restoring it to a natural order, but it is clear we are making a decision that will affect Mars far beyond the human timescale of appreciation. Who is to say that billions of years from now life could have formed upon Mars without us, and that by settling upon it we will have annihilated this possibility? How can we in any good conscience set foot upon virgin soil, claiming it for our own, having been consented to by no one besides ourselves? Does this not reek of our historical arrogance?!!
How cruel we are, to gaze upon the works of eternity, to see the canyons carved by 4.6 billion years of artifice, to repudiate the demiurge's work simply because we do not value Mars without life.
And yet this present time is changing and we must accommodate them, as the tree bends when the wind blows, or else we shall all entirely break.
We are not the Celestial Imperialists of our ancestry. When we terrafriend Mars it is so we can gaze upon our mutual heavens and see friends in orbit, and it is not because I have decided - it is because you have decided, and we must obey this democratic mandate. Sometimes disruption, volatility, chaos and change underpins life, making life purposeful and possible, creating all we know in a world of orderly energy decay. What is proposed is nothing short of radical, and will be offered to you of Earth who have chosen thus: Those who voted to remain, shall remain true to the fundamental democratic principles of the United Nations of Earth. Those of you who voted to depart, you shall be the pioneers of a brave new world. When we dismantled our space mission, it was because we made every living effort to fix our problems on Earth before we ever thought to grace the holy void. At such a time where human longevity, wisdom, discovery, harmony and profound contentedness has been achieved, it seems now is the time to allow those amongst us who need to find another path to walk along, independent and strong, beyond Earth's atmosphere. Yin and Yang, introspective and outward, we have no expectation that the Martial God's world and the Ancestral Mother's world should become distant or hurtful. The United Nations of Earth shall remain of Earth, those who voted for us shall remain of Earth, and those of us who voted to terrafriend Mars, we hope you do so in responsibility & conscience, we hope you shall not let your anthropocentric impulses get the better of you when you set foot on those ancient, virgin soils.
-President Qiang Shen
I did not expect it to be this close, so incredibly close, the pro-terrafriending of Mars lobby won by 6%. Preparations shall be made, whereupon Mars shall be terrafriended, populated, workilized and then granted independence. What this sovereign Martian nation decides thereafter shall be up to them, for we shall remain on Earth.
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Topic: Stellaris: Never leave Earth (Read 89071 times)