So, i want to tell you about a dream that i have had many times in a row now.

It is called “Der Flug der Schwalbe” (the flight of a bird)

It discusses why space settlement is not just a pointless human endeavor but much more profound than that.

Imagine you are standing in a forest and next to you is some really old tree that speaks to you: “Oh, i can throw my seeds but no matter how far i throw them, there’s no point because all the land is taken and we’ve reached our potential [Note: carrying capacity]. Just like a wolf would eat my fruit and shit it out somewhere very far away1,2, just like a bird can carry it through the air to remote islands3, it is the destiny of humans to carry seed to remote worlds4.” In fact plants pay us to do so, in the form of incentive in the form of food. Plants pay us to carry their seed to remote places, that is literally the evolutionary reason why plants produce (edible) fruit in the first place. We are workers that fulfill the role of transporting seeds through space, for which we get rewarded from plants with calories. That is the evolutionary role of animals.5

[1]: Note: This is a fascinating concept. An animal’s shit contains many minerals (phosphorous, sulfur, …) that plants need to grow properly. So many plants make fruit that is eaten by animals sothat the seeds inside the fruit are swallowed as well and pass through the digestive tract, often without being digested themselves, to end up in a pile of shit, which makes them grow better than if they fall on dirt.

[2]: Note also that (most) animals can move through space (which is an important property they have). Which implies a plant can move its seeds through space inside the digestive tract of an animal by incentivizing the animal to eat the seed. For example by adding sugar and other delicious stuff around the seed. As is done in fruit.

[3]: Note: The implicit assumption here is that remote islands are sparsely populated, so if a seed falls on them, it is more likely to grow as it has less competition from other vegetation. At least that’s the assumption; I don’t guarantee its veracity.

[4}: Planets.

[5]: Exceptions apply. For example, cows eat grass, which is not a fruit. They do so with the help of symbiotic bacteria which are able to transform cellulose into calorie-rich protein.