We Will Be Lost Without Home: A Call for Earth-Centric Space Ethics

By DongHun Lee @ 2025-05-24T09:53 (–5)

We Will Be Lost Without Home: A Call for Earth-Centric Space Ethics

As we look to the stars, we must ask ourselves:

Are we leaving behind a place we’ve loved—or one we’ve abandoned?

Humanity’s accelerating ambitions for space exploration are inspiring, but they carry an existential risk.

If we pursue outer space before restoring Earth—emotionally, ethically, ecologically—we may end up building a civilization that is technically advanced but spiritually unanchored.

Without an emotional and ethical restoration of Earth, humanity will become a rootless species—drifting, extractive, and incapable of true belonging.

This is not a rejection of space development.

It is a call for sequencing and re-grounding.

A Civilizational Design Proposal

We need a framework that ensures:

1. Earth is treated not just as a launchpad, but as a home.
   A place of memory, care, and shared human rhythm.
2. All space programs integrate a “Returnability Ethic.”
   Every mission must preserve either symbolic or real ways of returning to Earth—physically or emotionally.
3. Governments and companies must invest proportionally in Earth’s repair.
   A required Earth-recovery fund for any organization allocating massive resources to space.
4. We center emotional infrastructure in our civilizational expansion.
   Design emotional UX, memorial rituals, and intergenerational memory systems as core modules of long-term space culture.

Invitation to Collaborate

I’m currently building a framework called Ma-eum Company, which centers emotional architecture and ethical restoration as a foundation for future AI and planetary design.

I would love to:

• Talk with others working on space ethics, longtermist governance, and emotional design
• Co-author a whitepaper on “Earth-Centric Civilizational Sequencing”
• Hear your critiques, insights, or related work

Closing Thought

“If we leave Earth without healing her,

we won’t be explorers.

We’ll be runaways—with nowhere to return.”

Let’s make Earth feel like home again—before we try to build new ones.

—

Lee

Creator of Ma-eum Company

Contact: magnanimity2023@gmail.com

(More background available upon request)