‘The End of the World and the Last God’ by Pierre-Henri d'Argenson is an idea-based book that explores the reasons why space exploration seems to have captured the human imagination once again. Looking at a range of difficult and philosophical questions about evolution and modern life, this book questions whether our aims to reach for the stars come from our innate desire to explore or a boredom with life on Earth.
I found the arguments in this book to be well written, and well translated by James Christie. Taking us through human history, our complete exploration of the world and development from hunters to more sedentary work, to consumerism and the part that religion could possibly play in any future interstellar life. Within these pages you will find intelligent arguments and plenty of food for thought as to what a life among the stars would look like. With journeys into space coming in to the forefront of our minds and the media in recent years, ‘The End of the World and the Last God’ looks into what could be driving us as a species to head to space and what some of the realities of space living may be. I found the section looking at religion to be particularly interesting, as an atheist I’d never thought of the contradiction of space travel and a God who we usually depict as living among the stars and how our aims for space travels and looking for other hospitable planets is potentially a “rejection” of what a God has provided us.
After years of relative indifference, space exploration has caught the public’s imagination once again. But this enthusiasm may well hide a disturbing question: what if humankind is in fact bored with life on Earth? Indeed, we have discovered every piece of land, tried all sorts of political regimes, exhausted all the forms of the arts and committed ourselves to all kinds of religious beliefs. Yet if we admit that the thirst for exploration and novelty is at the heart of our human nature, can we survive the end of our world? Will we hold out long in this cloistered and domesticated Earth that has become so devoid of all mystery and adventure? And if we can’t conquer space, will we be tempted to destroy our world and start anew, as after the Great Flood? Or will we die of boredom when the Earth will have become the biggest open-air zoo in the universe?
Knowing the world has nothing more to offer us is not a mere piece of information; it is a shattering reality to which our bodies and minds will react wildly and the biggest existential challenge humankind will have to face in the near future.
