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In an era when --- even in Antarctica --- researchers can tap into iTunes, it’s hard not to wonder if such connectivity is causing formerly seemingly remote parts of the world to lose their edgy sense of place. And that’s just here on Earth. What happens when humans move offworld? Will
After returning to her hometown of Oakland in the first half the last century, ‘Lost Generation’ author Gertrude Stein famously wrote “but there is no there there.” Her observation wasn’t a late nonsensical nod to Dadaism, but rather a statement about how development was skewing the landscape of her childhood. Thus, to paraphrase Stein, will the first Mars colonists find that the Red Planet is really “there there?” Or will interplanetary communication hinder the Red Planet’s own cultural evolution by continually tethering it to mother Earth?
“Even though [Mars colonists] will be fully committed to their vision of colonizing Mars, they will still experience the typical “emotional change curve” of shock, anger, rejection, acceptance, healing,” astronaut trainer Mindy Howard, Founding Director of The Netherlands-based Inner Space Training, told Forbes. “On the International Space Station (
Even so, it’s likely that even a couple of decades after a Mars One-type colonization project makes its first inroads on that desolate red landscape, they will continue to cherish regular Earth contact. That’s something that’s unlikely to change until a colonized Mars develops its own sense of culture in a way that may not be possible until the colonists overcome the physical constraints on offworld procreation. Or even until a portion of the planet is actually terraformed.
Howard says the full psychological adaptation of becoming a ‘Martian’ might only happen after the birth of a new ‘Martian’ generation.
How will the harsh Martian environment affect the evolution of a separate human culture on the Red Planet?
Although Martian environmental features will influence the new colonists’ culture as it evolves; they may talk about red mountains instead of blue ones, the environment itself will have no influence on the underlying cultural structure, Richard Handler, a professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, told Forbes.
“Given ongoing [Earth] contact, it would [probably] take hundreds of years for a truly distinct separate Mars-based human culture to emerge,” said Handler.
But that doesn’t mean that once it does, it wouldn’t have its own vibrancy.
“[Mars culture] will start like Houston or Singapore, all squeaky clean and futuristic, and it will evolve into layered complexity like Mumbai and Rio with energy and color,” Michael Fischer, a multi-disciplinary professor at MIT, told Forbes. Human Mars culture, he asserts, will either evolve to incorporate the Red Planet’s novel conditions or it will whither and collapse.
Yet Howard sees the human Mars culture as a bit more stoic and more accustomed to coping with adversity than most of Earth’s current 21st counterparts.
In contrast, Howard says it’s likely that the first human Mars culture will have characteristics of researchers in Antarctica. She sees the first Mars colonists as both fiercely independent and resourceful but also at ease in tight-knit groups and working situations. Thus, Howard thinks that these first offworld pioneers will develop a new system of rules that will distinguish them from friends and family back home. Howard says their new culture may largely be based on “making lemonade with the lemons they will continually get.”
“Their experiences will be completely different to anything we Earthlings have,” said Howard. “Only they will be able to understand and support each other when times get tough. Much of their culture will be about helping each other survive.”
As for whether Mars will ultimately retain its identity as a far-flung human outpost?
To the Earthlings who only come for a long sabbatical, probably so. But a new generation of Martians will likely revise Stein’s famous quote to something akin to: Is it ‘here here?’
