Why Astral Fibers?
Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.
This was said by Richard Feynman, the famously brilliant physicist who figured out key parts of our best theory of quantum mechanics. “Astral Fibers” are inspired in part by this suggestion that if you find a loose thread and start pulling, you might just find yourself discovering a key part of the universal tapestry. It is through following those little nagging questions that we can ultimately discover the most fundamental truths. This is much like how a story can start with the spark of an idea that draws us in and leads us on a journey that ends in learning something new. Maybe it is something deep, something profound, something life changing, or maybe it is something small and mildly consequential. In any case, the goal is to teach through the stories. These are the fibers.
But what of “Astral Fibers?” “Astral” Fibers are those which are literally “of the stars.” And more than that, they are also those which we attribute to our deepest humanity - our soul.
To state it simply, reading about our “Astral Fibers” is exploring what it means to be human in our universe.
Welcome to Astral Fibers. Just like with dietary fiber, it is important to consume Astral Fiber with regularity for a healthy soul. I hope you enjoy!
What kind of fiction will you find here?
Technological advancements have been a key part in the improvement of the quality of life for billions of people. This is undeniable yet there is a pervasive undercurrent of pessimism today. Many people see technology, and even people, as the problem. Others who proclaim techno-optimism, do so at the cost of their humanity.
There are many complex problems we need to solve as a society, not least of which are war, inequality, disease, food security, global quality of life, and our climate. This forum suggests that the issue is not policy. There are plenty of good belief systems out there. “Treat others as you would like to be treated” as just one relatively uncontroversial example. But where these belief systems break down is when people try to apply them to specific scenarios. Reality is always more complicated than any belief system.
“Plans are worthless, but planning is essential” - A quote often attributed to Eisenhower, Churchill and others.
The trick to being successful as an individual, as a society, and as a species, is to appropriately balance the complexities of reality with our simplified models of it.
Astral Fibers is an endeavor to aid all of us in this regard. Specifically, by using the medium of story to examine our potential, positive futures, while holding two seemingly disparate concepts in our mind at the same time until we can see how they can coexist in a reality.
For example:
techno-optimism + humanism
human-affected climate change + human adaptation and survival
people are fundamentally selfish + people are fundamentally social creatures
capitalism + socialism or capitalism + communism
wealth inequality + fairness
the victors write history + history is absolute truth
Some of these might make you angry, uncomfortable, or prompt you to label me one thing or another. That’s OK. Let’s explore that together through fiction. Fiction is fake. It is made up so there is no serious consequence to our own world views. Yet good fiction is entirely based in reality. It takes kernels of truth and expands on them in ways that might not be acceptable to do so in polite society today. And in so doing, enables us to plot a more realistic and more positive path into our future.
Lets take a look at a specific example:
human-affected climate change + human adaptation and survival
Also known as: “We must stop emitting carbon or we will all die…”
The climate is changing. It might even be reaching a point of no return. The fight has been made and largely won to convince the public that they are at fault. And there is no doubt that burning gasoline, oil and coal increases atmospheric CO2, which in turn changes the global thermal balance with the sun. But, what role do each of us play in this? What effect do our decisions really have? And what changes should we each make in our own lives? Can we coexist with the planet without destroying it’s ability to host us? These are the hard questions for which there are no clear answers.
“Drive an electric car.” “Consume less".” “Don’t use plastic straws.” These are easy things to communicate, and so we tell each other and ourselves to do them. But these things are not necessarily going to save us from a potential impeding climactic catastrophe. In fact - some of these may make things worse.
It might be uncomfortable to hear this because it means we don’t have control. It feels much better to feel like we have control, like we can make a difference. It feels great to own the moral high ground (and literal low ground) as one drives past a big gas guzzler in a sporty electric car. But the actual moral high ground with respect to climate change is difficult, and complicated, and sometimes, uncomfortable.
And the uncomfortable truth is that you might be making no difference (on any measuring scale that actually matters) to our changing climate by switching to an electric car. The rare earth minerals in your Tesla have geopolitical consequences that can affect the global geopolitical balance, causing untold implications on the carbon footprint of entire nations (war releases a lot of CO2). The physical act of mining rare earth metals also has enormous environmental costs (International Energy Agency).
Even measured in carbon released per vehicle over its full life cycle (including mining the resources for your car, burning the gas as you drive, and disposing of the car at end of life) it is not clear that an electric vehicle is any better for the environment than a gasoline one. A recent study by a major US National Lab found that replacing diesel trucks (delivery mid range and long haul) with electric would save on full life cycle greenhouse gas emissions by any where from 2 - 61 % (source). That’s certainly in the right direction, but wait… there’s more. The actual production of electric trucks creates 13 - 287 % more green house gas emissions than manufacturing a diesel truck! That means that short term, transitioning to electric vehicles is actually worse for the climate situation. Given that we have a short few decades till a potential climactic tipping point, we might actually be doing more harm than good by electrifying vehicles.
Does that mean we shouldn’t buy Teslas? Absolutely not. They are super cool cars. It feels great to drive around in one, a personal super car at a price range affordable to many more than can afford a typical super car.
Maybe we should all throw up our hands in frustration and return to the middle ages?
If there were no CO2 emission then there’d be no problem. Perhaps rampant consumerism is the culprit… Or maybe people in general? This train of logic leads to dark places we do not want to go.
Astral Fibers reject any anti-humanity and anti-technology viewpoint. In fact, it rejects any overly simplistic viewpoint and asks us each to sit with the complexity we know we need to understand to live our best lives. In the case of our technology and our humanity, we clearly need people, and we clearly need technology. Life is better with both. The useful question is how?
Astral Fibers make the humble attempt to inform through story telling. Complex problems take a deep understanding of their nuance to solve. And nuance takes time. Time sitting with, turning over, and re-framing ideas. Fiction is a fantastic medium for this.
Astral Fibers is a place to read about what that future might look like as technology advances (as it will) and people keep optimizing it for the benefit of people (as they will). It is a place for realistic, positive imaginations of technology and the human-focused societies we will build with that technology. And for negative warnings of what could go wrong.
Who is Space Cadet Michael?
Space Cadet Michael is interested in how to provide the best possible life for the most possible people. He has held this interest since he was a child who looked up in awe at the magnificent buildings people made throughout history - medieval cathedrals, ancient pyramids, and roman temples - and realized that the homes, offices, and religious institutions in which we spend all of our time, can and do affect in profound ways. Technology and our lived experience are tightly interlinked.
His training started in architecture of buildings, moved to architecting and engineering of space systems and finally on to architecting and engineering intelligent systems.
His day job is bettering the world with ideas and technology. When the technology moves too slowly, he resort to ideas. He write science fiction.
Our technological progress is moving faster than ever before. But as a person trained in how to get that technological development done, Space Cadet Michael is painfully aware of how much faster our technological progress could be. As a fan of science fiction, he is acutely aware of how much farther we could go. We have so much potential as a species that we can still lean in to.
This is not to say that we aren't incredible as a species. We absolutely are. We accomplish more incredible things than anyone can learn about in a lifetime.
But we could do more.
Space Cadet Michael loves to explore this balance. How do we innovate safely? New technologies can cause real change in people's lives, change they may not be ready for. What is an acceptable rate of change?
A huge part of this is the quality of our communication. This is because our greatest strength is our combined strength. Don’t believe me? Then let’s have a race. I get ten people on my team (let’s randomly pick them from all of humanity) and you get to pick one (you pick whoever you want). My team will win.
How can I be so sure?
Ten people can always out compete a single person. It doesn't matter the metric. Want to see who can run fastest? Nine people can hold one person down and the other person can casually walk to the finish line while their competitor is stuck at the bottom of a nine person dog pile.
Strength in numbers. Intelligence in numbers. Safety and security in numbers. Innovation in numbers. Whatever it is that we want, we can get it better together...if the quality of our communication is high.
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Can I submit my own stories?
Certainly! We welcome guest authors. Astral Fibers are fiction that is useful in our shared purpose of living our collective best lives. How can fiction be useful you might ask? simple! It gives us stories that we can use to aid in interpreting our world and planning our actions within it.
This substack’s science fiction has an overarching optimism about the human spirit and about the benefit to human lives that comes from our thoughtful application of technology.
To submit a story, please sign up for a substack account with the button below, grab a free subscription and contact us in the chat or
