Mobile Suit Z Gundam Volume.04
The Second Coming of the Zabi Family

Part 5 Clown (or Drollery)

In response to the question of why humans have begun to explore space, it can only be said that this is the inevitable result of mans need to stay alive. Humans started out as animals living at one with nature. It is only relatively recently in their long existence that they began to transform and dominate their surroundings through technological progress. The instincts cultivated while living at one with nature are the same ones driving them to explore space.

However, human-specific high intelligence has led to isolation from nature and has dominated and configured society as a whole. Until the end of the old century the undeveloped countries still had a social structure that was influenced by nature. As that dissipated, nature became nothing more than something to be enjoyed as a leisure activity. If you think about nature and human beings, it was a peculiar development.

What’s more, as undeveloped countries advanced, their cities all began to face the same problems of pollution, poverty and chaos that early 20th century cities faced. These problems became worldwide problems. Furthermore, as cultures become more technologically advanced, people tend to become “specialists,” as they are not force by their environment to develop many of their innate abilities.

New types of religions form to fill in for this distortion, and people pursue enlightenment. Unlike primitive religions, which tended to encompass all of nature, these new spiritual pursuits were just another form of narrow specialization. The adverse effect of specialization wasn’t that they no longer lived in harmony with nature, it was that it encouraged the principle of individualism. Civilization up until the 19th century involved a constant battle with nature, disease, and despotism represented by royal authority. This situation forced people to have a self-cleansing nature.

That is, people were forced to find ways to evade the oppression of the planet.

They had the humility to be happy with their lives if they could only manage to avoid illness. Wars and other such man-made disasters could only be faced in the same manner that one would face the violence of nature. The best one could do was to try to survive as long as possible. However, in modern times, even the victims of a nation’s wars demand compensation. That is to say, the rights of the individual have come to be seen as equal to those of the nation as a whole. This is another form of individual specialization.

Members of a nation are not supposed to place themselves at the same level as the nation itself. Individuals who sing of their sovereignty threaten to crush the nation. If a group of such individuals attempted to manage a country, the general arbitrariness of their governance would render the endeavor hopeless. In the past, when people were involved in a showdown with nature, they didn’t live with the idea of individual sovereignty in the forefront. As the structure of society moved further away from nature, people gained more ability to influence that structure. Since then too many people have brandished their own self-consciousness.

Because of this, people have tired of other people and become obsessed with preserving their own lifestyle. They have forgotten that they originally lived together with nature. This intentional existence is what caused the destruction of the planet. Nature, which produced humans, is tremendously large. It is the instincts of those who felt that without conquering nature they would be unable to survive that led mankind to turn its eye to space exploration.

If humans were to become too comfortable and forget their need for self-preservation then it would be their downfall. This insight, intuitively held by people, is correct. That is why it is called an instinct. It is that instinct put into practice that led to space exploration. After confirming their intention to explore space and gaining the ability to live there, humans found that nature had placed them in a severe environment. When forced to live in a harsh environment, no one has the free time to commit themselves to trivial theories of self-preservation.

For example, if a child is in a public park and falls into a pond with no fence, the responsibility would clearly lie with the municipality charged with maintaining the park. In space there is no time to insist on such things. Humans will find this cruel, but there is no time to listen to people chanting about the logic of their personal circumstances. At the very least, isn’t it narrow-minded to try to blame the municipality?

Why?

Space is originally nothing more and nothing less than a place for people to live. Of course it’s an environment where one must put technology to good use, but once one has command of that technology then space becomes a habitable area. If not, space would be filled with a substance that would make it uninhabitable for humans, would it not? So now, why is the environment in space more severe than it is on Earth? The intelligence that humans developed on Earth was a self-righteous intelligence. It might be better to describe it as “narrow” rather than “self-righteous.” It’s easy to believe that the area set aside to swallow that intelligence is outer space itself.

If there were an accident on a colony, although it could well be that the responsibility might lie with the Space Corporation, the first priority of the Spacenoids must be to preserve the integrity of their environment. This definition of justice is not something new. In an extremely harsh environment, before worrying about individual sovereignty, all financial and material resources must be devoted to environmental protection. It is only with a surplus that attention can be diverted to the security of the individual.

Preserving an environment capable of sustaining life is the primary concern. The idea of accommodating individual sovereignty originated in an era before scientific civilization had advanced. Nature provided a new environment for those people who were not interested in environmental pollution if it wasn’t right before their eyes and who eventually exhausted the Earth. This is why humans were once again forced to feel humble before nature, much like animals.

This is the meaning of space exploration.

After making full use of their technology, it was space that taught the animal known as “man” about humility. However, there are few who recognize this fact. Many see the movement of mankind into space as nothing more than a technological victory. That is, as to the thesis of why humans pursued space exploration, they are unable to answer.