Hit 5,000 steps today and drop your achievement here — we’re cheering you on!

It is great to hit 5000 steps. We all need to exercise. We are getting too accustomed to a sedentary lifestyle, with all the consequent deleterious impacts on our health. Get up, walk, move the body, if only to improve your physical and mental health. But here is the catch.

Social media has turned exercise, sports, even hobbies, into forced march performative displays for online audiences. You did 5000 steps? Why didn’t you achieve 10 000? After all, social media influenza and TikTok celebrity w*nker (insert the name of your favourite social media nonentity here) does 20 000 steps everyday, drinks organic kale milkshakes, and walks her/his vegan labradoodle as well.

This is a cycle of perceived underperformance. Why cannot I be as successful as the guy with the hot Lycra pants on Instagram? We drive ourselves into a self-induced existential crisis of confidence.

When I was a child, I could not swim. I would avoid going all the way into the deep end of the pool. However, with the help of some good teachers, I eventually made it all the way. In swimming-mad Australia, where Olympic swimmers are superstar celebrities, being hopeless at swimming made me feel excluded.

A few years ago, I started regular exercising, using the exercise machines in the park near where I live. There is one exercise, the chin lift, which not many people can do. Basically it involves lifting your entire body above high handle bars way above your head. You can grip the bars with palms facing yourself, but I usually grip with the palms facing outward.

It is a difficult exercise, but I manage to do it nearly everyday. 10 or 15 repetitions sometimes. It is an exercise that puts me in a minority group, something not many people can do. That is the way I take revenge on my childhood. Well, the expression ‘taking revenge’ is a bit much. Perhaps the term I am looking for is compensation.

No, I have never spoken about this before, and I do not intend to share reels on TikTok of myself exercising. It is a goal I have set for myself, and if other people exercise the way that I do, that is fantastic. It is great to exercise on the rowing machine, but just be careful of the impact on your back.

I am quite certain that Australian Schwarzenegger copycats are able to do 1000 repetitions of the chin up in one afternoon, and then devour a protein shake as dessert. Schwarzenegger can remain where he is, and I happy for him. His example is not a template for everyone. Rowing is a great sport, and if you are able to go kayaking around Sydney Harbour and not work up a sweat, good luck to you.

Each person has their own goals, and achieving them is wonderful on your own terms. If you enjoy rowing because you find it rewarding, that is awesome.

Not every sporting activity has to be a social media competition. Please do not misunderstand; I never begrudge anyone their success or achievements. Please do not turn every sport into a performative hobby-competition.

Go out, enjoy the sunshine, walk, jog, run, whatever takes your fancy. If you do not post about it on Instagram or Facebook, that is fine.

Not every activity is Instagrammable content showcasing passion which will inevitably lead to entrepreneurial, seamlessly integrated synergies leveraging multiple technological inputs to generate profit maximisation….get the idea?

What’s a time you followed your gut and it turned out to be exactly right?

The first time I met creepy C, my gut instinct told me something was off about this person. I soon learned that he was narcissistic and duplicitous. I do not want to provide his full name, because I don’t want to be open to any defamation actions. But it was a time when I followed my gut, and the subsequent trajectory of his behaviour only confirmed that I was right.

A maligned narcissist, he wanted to drive me out of an organisation to which we both belonged. I did not give him the satisfaction, but redoubled my efforts to demonstrate my contributions. Some time after, he left. I have never crossed paths with him again. A part of me thinks – was he resentful because his ex-girlfriend got together with me after breaking it off with him? I never asked, but I got that vibe.

I am not sharing this story because I am bragging, or gloating about how correct I was. I am relating this experience because it was the result of years of ignoring my gut instinct. You see, I had a friend’ in junior high school who, while pretending to be a friend, was backstabbing me. Constantly ridiculing my accomplishments, bragging to me about his supposedly ‘superior’ grades, he never missed an opportunity to belittle me in front of others.

Funnily enough, he wanted my talents when it suited him – we were on the high school debating team. He certainly wanted me to perform at my very best when we faced our debating opposition. But somehow he could never bring himself to admit I belonged on the debating team.

I had a gut feeling from the start, but I ignored it for the misguided purpose of being ‘nice’. Inciting others to insult me, he mocked my ethnic background, and made sure that I knew it. I tolerated this behaviour for long enough.

When we were a bit older, I confronted him about his malignant behaviour. He apologised, and that is all well and good. But as the old saying goes; forgiveness granted, but access denied.

It was a useful lesson in life; do not ignore your gut instinct. When you feel a toxic vibe from a person or situation, do not suppress it. It may turn out to be wrong. But the price you pay for ignoring it is an emotional taxation I would not wish to pay again.

I raise this issue of a gut feeling, because a news item over the last few days prompted my thinking about false friends. One of the issues that I take seriously is international recognition of the Armenian genocide. Armenians in the diaspora have constantly pushed the governments of their respective resident to formally recognise the reality of the 1915 genocide.

Well, over the past few days, one government, after decades of delay and prevarication, has decided to formally recognise the Armenian genocide. You would think that this would be an occasion of rejoicing, but I am very wary. It is a case of acknowledging a bad vibe, or at least being aware of a pitfall – welcoming a false friend.

The government which has recently declared to formally recognise the Armenian genocide is that of Israel. Tel Aviv has announced through media channels that the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, will adopt an official resolution recognising the Armenian genocide of 1915.

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar claimed, in justifying his decision to recognise the Armenian genocide, that it is never too late to do the right thing.

Wonderful and noble sentiments to be sure. However, this does raise a number of questions. Is Tel Aviv doing this because of increasing tensions with Turkey? While both Tel Aviv and Ankara are generally aligned in a pro-western direction, they have their specific differences on a range of issues. Whether it be Ukraine, Iran, Syria or other hotspots, these conflicts sometimes explode into the open.

Is this recognition by Tel Aviv driven by a principle of adherence to historical reality and opposition to genocide, or a weapon with which Tel Aviv can strike back at its Turkish counterparts?

An even larger question looms in the back of my mind – is genocide recognition by a government genuine when it is guilty of precisely the same crime?

It is no secret that the Israeli military is carrying out genocidal violence against the Palestinians. Systematic bombing of hospitals and medical infrastructure, water facilities, targeting journalists, razing crops, deliberately killing children – these are the actions authorised by Tel Aviv against the Palestinians in Gaza.

These atrocities, long condemned at the Nuremberg trials, stand as an indictment of Israeli government policy. Did we not learn the lessons of Nuremberg? If the trial of Nazi German war criminals at Nuremberg taught us anything, it is that international law should be applied equally to all nations, and their political leaders.

What kind of a friend is Tel Aviv to the Armenians? It is better if we follow our gut instinct and reject the calculated, transactional friendship of Tel Aviv, no matter what the consequences may be.

What’s something you used to believe as a kid that seems ridiculous now?

There are many answers to the question above. One obvious candidate for an answer is religion. No need to believe in gods, miracles, virgin births, a talking snake, flying chariots, Hebrew slaves in Egypt, and the rest of the equally fictional stories. However, such an answer would be too easy, and secondly, would not contribute anything original to this question.

So here is my answer – stop believing that the English-speaking nations, what I call the Anglophone world, is a world leader in science. Britain, while an economic powerhouse, is not the centre of scientific knowledge anymore.

To be certain, Britain’s contribution to the sum total of scientific knowledge is awesome. Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Lord Kelvin – these are just some of the heavyweights in the scientific canon of Britain’s history. Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter – Britain’s universities are among the best in the world.

The Enlightenment, the scientific revolution of the 1500s to 1700s, the emphasis on empirical evidence and rational thinking, which built upon but also superseded the Ancient Greek view of nature and the universe – these were momentous achievements, no doubt. These accomplished were taught to us in Australia as the birthplace of modern science.

That is all well and good, but there is something fundamentally wrong with this picture, namely, the rest of the world is excluded. Oh yes, we learnt about Leonardo Da Vinci as a non-British Renaissance polymath. However, we learned next to nothing about the important scientific achievements of other civilisations. This led to a skewed belief that Britain was the epic centre of scientific progress.

Nothing could be further from the truth. That belief lives on in the popular culture of the Anglophone nations. It can be difficult to step outside of one’s own cultural environment to consider other nations and their achievements. But that is what we must do.

Centuries before Da Vinci, and while Britain was still a patchwork of competing kingdoms, there was the Muslim scholar, scientist, astronomer and philosopher Al-Biruni (973 – 1050). Born in what is today Uzbekistan, he was one of the world’s first anthropologists.

He did not reject the heritage provided by the ancient Greeks, but he developed his own work, and built his own foundations. He was a pioneer in the study of ancient India – he made a detailed analysis of that country’s philosophy and social practices.

His work spanned numerous branches of science – astronomy, geography and physics, just to name a few. He spoke Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Sanskrit and Hebrew. In fact, he was the earliest writer to distinguish astronomy from astrology. That was quite a daring and groundbreaking path to take at the time.

He wrote a book which today would be classified as an expose of astrology as a pseudoscience. Using trigonometric calculations, he calculated the radius of the Earth – at a time when in Europe the earth was considered a flat surface.

Far ahead of his times, he surmised that there must be a landmass between Asia and Europe. He was a pioneer in what today is known as geology. No, he did not sail to the continents we know today as the Americas. But to suggest another landmass was quite a stunning claim to make at the time.

Columbus, after he got lost, thought he bumped into Asia and called the indigenous people of the Americas ‘Indians.’

Al Biruni’s work and achievements are part of what we now acknowledge as the Islamic Golden Age. Indeed, it is chronologically correct to say that Da Vinci was the European Al Biruni. Learning about this neglected history helped me to abandon the adolescent belief that Britain was the homeland of science and rationalism.

But that is all history, is it not? What about today? Are not the Islamic nations stuck in a quagmire of fanatical dogma and scientific backwardness? There is an element of truth to this. Yes, Muslim majority nations must be more proactive in the scientific fields.

When we mention Iran, the image we have here in the Anglophone community is a country of mad mullahs, fanatical ayatollahs, gun-toting militants screaming anti-Western slogans, and submissive burqa-clad women. Underlying these stereotypes is the belief that Muslim nations are impervious to logic and reason. How can you talk to such closed-minded zealots?

One of the revelations from the latest US-Israeli attack on Iran is the remarkable advances Iran has made in science and technology. No, not just in the military sphere. Let’s think beyond bombs and missiles. Tehran has cemented itself as a scientific hub and powerhouse in Western Asia.

Iranian surgeons have become world leaders in organ transplantation. Iran’s medical institutions domestically developed vaccines for Covid during the pandemic, all the while under US sanctions. Iranian researchers are leading the world in stem cell technology, gaining international recognition for the development of treatments for leukaemia and blood cancers.

Let us step away from Iran for a moment, and have a look at the Nature Index, an international ranking of universities for scientific research. In 2025, that ranking released its top ten universities for science – nine of them are in China. Beijing has surged ahead over the last few decades, surpassing the US and Britain as hubs for scientific expertise.

These rankings not only reflect Chinese scientific knowledge and competences, but also a stunning triumph for Beijing’s vision as a global leader in science.

If we maintain the misguided belief that we, meaning the Anglophone West, are still the best in science, we risk becoming the scientific backwaters which we accuse other nations of being. This is not a competition to see who is best, but a recognition that if we maintain teenage-like beliefs in our own superiority we will face a rude awakening one day.

What’s a piece of media (book, movie, song) that changed how you see the world?

There are many books, movies, songs and music genres that inform our world view. They influence the way we see ourselves, and our connections to humanity and nature. Rather than list all the books and media content that impacted our lives, I thought it best to select a major scientific project.

When we think about science, we usually think about technology. The inventions that remade, and are still remaking our lives, are there for all of us to witness. Mobile devices, personal computers, functional magnetic resonance imaging, vaccines, wireless communication, the transistor – all of these have changed our lives and the ways we interact.

It is the Human Genome Project (HGP) that has most profoundly changed us, and our vision of humanity, at least since 1990.

But wait a minute, the HGP is not a book, or a video, or a piece of music, or a CD, is it? Yes, that is true. However, journalists working in science communication, and the geneticists themselves, have routinely likened the human genome to a piece of technology. A blueprint of life is a favoured metaphor; DNA is the book of life, an instruction manual for making a human being. DNA is information, similar to the software coding of a computer programme – another analogy.

It is not my intention to respond to each and every metaphor, no matter how well-intentioned and misplaced. It is relevant for us here to note one egregious example; in 1992, (I think his name was Dr Gilbert, but I would have to check my notes) a geneticist at a press conference held up a CD-ROM and said ‘this is you.’ He was explaining, in his own way, the significance of mapping the human genome to the assembled journalists.

He was both right and wrong; no, DNA is not reducible to a CD, but he was correct in pointing out the enormous repercussions of the HGP on our way we view humanity. In the Stanford University’s monumental encyclopaedia of philosophy, there is an extensive section examining the human genome project.

Wait a minute, surely the HGP is a scientific endeavour? What is an online philosophy encyclopaedia doing discussing that topic? Actually, the philosophy area is precisely the place to discuss the human genome, because it directly relates to what makes us human, and how we see ourselves in the natural world.

I studied biology and geology at school some 40 years ago. It was fascinating, and I have many fond memories of those times. Genetics was obviously a branch of biology, but I had no idea about genomes, gene sequencing, genetic determinism, DNA databases, genomics and the commercialisation of genetic testing – all that lay in the future.

Earlier this year, (April I think), pioneering geneticist and researcher J. Craig Venter (1946 – 2026) passed away. He was one of the first scientists to not only realise the importance of the human genome, but dedicate his scientific career to mapping it. He was driven by a strong motivation to achieve in science. I wish more people would take science as seriously as he did.

His death marks a kind of bookend for a scientific project. While I am quite certain that genomics, a field he helped to develop, will continue to grow, his passing reminds us that scientific goals are equally important with political and environmental issues.

His work, along with the scientists working at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) helped to finally achieve a full sequencing of the human genome. Where I disagreed with Venter, much as I admired his scientific work, was in the privatisation of genomic material. Private genetic companies collect our DNA, and unlock the information about our lives contained within, as private property.

Genomics has become big business. Multinational genomic corporations have spread across the globe, collecting and analysing our genetic data. Does this mean we have come closer to understanding ourselves as humans?

Of course genes play a role in our development as human beings. There have been numerous heavyweight boxing champions, but only one Muhammad Ali. He was born with faster than normal reflexes, and his leg speed was lightning fast. Most heavyweights, while powerful punchers, move like refrigerators.

Ali could throw seven, eight punches while his opponent only threw two. His reflexive dodging of punches was extraordinary. If you can hit, and avoid getting hit, you have made it in the sweet science of boxing.

Yes of course he trained, building up his strength. His environment certainly helped him become a great champion. Malcolm X, in his autobiography, relates how when he was young, he wanted to be a boxer. He trained, exercised and ate nutritionally appropriate foods. In his very first amateur fight, he got knocked out in five minutes. Getting up from the canvas, he realised he was never going to be a boxer.

While our genes are important, it is vital that we do not fall into the trap of genetic determinism. The catch-all phrase ‘it’s in the DNA’ has been deployed to explain away social inequality, warfare and racism. If our DNA is rotten, what is the point of change?

The rottenness is not in our genes, but in our unjust socioeconomic relations and exploitive ecological practices. If anything, the HGP has revealed just how similar we all are under the skin, rather than highlighting any differences.

Hey, I have some news for white nationalists; genomic studies of Viking DNA, you know, those tall, fair-skinned, blond haired warriors you are so fond of? Even they, yes the Vikings, were not the pure white master race you would like everyone to believe. If you want to read further (presuming you can actually read), have a look at the admixture the Vikings were back in the day. Viking did not necessarily equate with Scandinavian ancestry.

Such findings as the one I summarised above are only possible because of the remarkable work of thousands of scientists on the HGP.

What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?

Everybody has a mobile device these days, whether it be a mobile phone, iPad, tablet or some other variation. We all like to talk to our friends, catch up on the latest news, shop online, and share our ideas and gossip. But if there is one piece of advice I would give a young person today, it is this; our mobile devices are there to make us available, they are not an electronic leash.

When you are on the phone, please be mindful of your surroundings. While it may be a matter of life and death to you whether you get mayonnaise on your sandwich, the rest of us have our own lives and problems, and really do not care about your daily dramas.

It started innocently enough…..a young woman, probably in her early twenties, got on the train at Blacktown station in western Sydney. She was on the mobile phone. Not many passengers were on the carriage, and I was reading on my iPad. You cannot help but overhear parts of her conversation.

She was talking with someone about whether or not she would go to university, or TAFE, and what kind of job she wanted. Typical fodder of conversation for a person her age, I thought – indeed, that is what I talked about when I finished schooling, and contemplated university education.

I ignored her and went back to my reading. And then it started; voices became raised. The train is moving, there is another hour until we get to the city. Tensions are rising. The entire carriage can now no longer avoid overhearing her conversation.

At this point, it turns into a full blown rage episode. Shouting at the top of her lungs, she launches into a torrential tirade against her interlocutor. The volcanic eruption is in full swing.

Hurling words like it’s my life!’ and ‘Uni is not for me!’ as verbal missiles at the person on the receiving end of her broadside, I did my best not to react. Indeed, the other passengers buried their heads ever deeper into their mobile devices.

I dared to turn around, however briefly, to catch a glimpse of our local firebrand. Not many other passengers risked incurring her terrible wrath by turning to look at her. She was completely oblivious to her surroundings. The shouting and expletives continued for the remainder of the train journey. She got off at Redfern station, the one within walking distance of Sydney University.

I never saw her again, but I remembered her as an example of a mobile phone zombie. Unaware or uncaring about their environment or other people, mobile phone zombies are dead to the world, walking while completely entranced by their mobile device, much the same way that Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man walked around transfixed by his portable television.

In 1988, that behaviour was considered eccentric; only a developmentally delayed person, incapable of understanding social norms, would walk around staring at a small portable tv. Well, here we are today, a nation of Rain Man-like Raymond Babbitts, unable to raise our collective gaze from our mobile phones.

Reading books, you know, those iPhone-like things that don’t need batteries or charging, is a declining practice in the age of social media. TikTok reels and short form videos have largely overtaken every aspect of our lives, from our shopping habits to news feeds.

The brain needs practice, just as the biceps need regular exercise and weightlifting to increase in strength. Books are the weightlifting of the mind. Tackling the heavy-going books is its own reward.

No, I am not insistent that everyone become a history professor or literature expert. Every person has their own preferences and tastes. I have never read J R R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you have, congratulations – I doff my cap to you.

I have, a long time ago, ploughed through the pages of Beowulf, which was tough going to be sure, but ultimately rewarding. An old English heroic epic poem, Beowulf is the first identifiable major work of English literature. Blending elements of myth, folkloric tales, old Anglo-Saxon and Norse mythology, it is an alliterative poem that reflects both old Norse-pagan myths, but also incorporates early Christian themes well.

That is not surprising, when you consider that Beowulf was recorded – derived from the oral tradition – in the early eighth century, when Scandinavian people migrated to what is now the British Isles. Some scholars put the first manuscript much later. Be that as it may, its composition reflects the intermixing Norse-Anglo Saxon cultures and competing religions frameworks, of the time.

The brain requires constant exercise. If you do not like the weightlifting analogy, then how about the following metaphor. Reading the difficult books are to the brain what running a marathon is for the body.

One of Vladimir Lenin’s under appreciated books, but I think critically important as his other works, is Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Published in 1908-09. In its pages Lenin explores the relationship between physics and philosophy. He emphasised that while these two topics may appear far apart, even physics has a philosophical basis and particular implications for philosophy. He elaborated the relationship between the natural sciences and what became known as the philosophy of dialectical materialism.

Why would a political revolutionary take the time to write about such an obscure topic as physics and philosophy? There were new discoveries in the field of physics – what used to be called the natural sciences – and this had repercussions for philosophy. Lenin saw the politically reactionary application of these underlying philosophical positions proposed by the physicists of the time.

No, it is not my purpose here to go into an elaborate discussion of his book, otherwise this article would expand into 10 000 words. Besides which, I am certain that you will have already fallen asleep.

Nevertheless, I wanted to share my main point – the brain requires exercise. Absorbing the contents of books is muscular training for the mind. No, I am not suggesting that you tackle all the issues of quantum mechanics yourself. But please do not outsource your cognition to AI. It is the gentle friction of problem solving and grasping topics by reading that increases your brain-muscles.

If you could instantly master any skill, what would it be and why?

If there is one occupation or skill set I wish I could master instantaneously, it is that required to be an underwater archaeologist.

Yes, I know your next question – ‘what the hell is that?’ Don’t archaeologists, like Indiana Jones, dig up the artefacts of ancient civilisations, fight off indigenous peoples and treasure hunters, and avoid being consumed by demonic spirits emerging from the pyramids?

Underwater archaeology opens up a whole new world, not just composed of famous shipwrecks such as the Titanic.

The Titanic sinking was a devastating loss, to be sure. No one is minimising the loss of life and destruction accompanying that incident. Immortalised by the 1997 Steven Spielberg blockbuster, and the topic of countless documentaries, the Titanic shipwreck has come to overshadow the vast area of underwater exploration and archaeology.

Each shipwreck is a time capsule – revealing details about its place in the maritime traffic and the connections between the societies joined by that trade. Consider, for instance, the SS Antilla.

Launched in 1939, the SS Antilla was a German cargo ship, intended to carry trade between Germany and the Caribbean. In July 1939, she left Hamburg on her maiden voyage. That journey, and her subsequent journey through the Caribbean, would prove to be fateful – World War 2 began in September of that year.

Unable to reach German ports, or the port of any nation allied to Nazi Germany, she headed for Dutch-controlled Curaçao, eventually docking in Aruba. Unfortunately for her crew, Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. The Dutch were now a hostile power. They had been monitoring the movement of German commercial and military ships prior to the arrival of the SS Antilla.

The Dutch approached the German ship, off the coast of Aruba. The captain of the SS Antilla, confronted by the enemy and with no prospect of outside assistance, decided to scuttle the ship.

The ship sank to the depths of the ocean in May 1940. Today, the shipwreck is a maritime tourist attraction. You may scuba dive to view the wreckage, because it is quite accessible. The Antilla helps to remind us that while we think of World War 2 as a European event, its battles and repercussions extended around the globe. Competing European powers had their eyes on the Caribbean and its resources.

There is also another aspect we need to remember about shipwrecks, including the Antilla. It is the remarkable resilience of life. Marine animals and ecosystems, while reeling from the direct impact of a sinking ship, display a remarkable ability to recuperate and even use the bare skeleton of the sunken ship as a refuge.

Not only are shipwrecks a capsule of cultural history, they quickly become a part of the marine life adapting to its presence. Corals and sea sponges have made their homes in the wreckage. Many species of fish, sea turtles and eels make their way through the sunken ship. Life continues to evolve in unexpected ways. An underwater ecosystem thrives, colonised by numerous marine organisms.

It is not just shipwrecks, and submerged airplanes, that provide artefact-materials for underwater archaeologists to uncover and study. Undersea cave systems are being explored, and more is being understood about how life can survive in extreme conditions.

Situated off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, is the Hoyo Negro (black hole) underwater cave system. A vast subterranean domain, it is a relic of the ice ages. What remarkable discoveries lie there, waiting to be uncovered? How much more can we uncover about the geological history of the Late Pleistocene period?

Rather than colonising other planets, let’s devote our energies to exploring and understanding our own planet.

Do you think humans will ever colonize Mars? What would life there actually look like?

Even if we have the technology to colonise Mars, we shouldn’t. Colonisation would lead to a planetary catastrophe; let’s confront the ecological crisis on Earth, and implement solutions which will improve and prolong the life of our species, and all the other life forms on Earth, that make up our biosphere.

The impulse to colonise Mars originates from legitimate concerns. Human induced climate change, the extinction of numerous species and their habitats, and the discovery of the interconnectedness of life on Earth makes us wonder if it would not be better to simply relocate to another planet to continue our existence as Homo sapiens.

Those concerns are perfectly valid – the proposed solution is an even more catastrophic response, based on cultural pessimism. Mars is an appealing candidate for terraforming – the latter being the buzzword for changing the inhospitable conditions on Mars to make them accommodating for human life. This presents an immediate question; if we can reshape Mars to look more like Earth, then why cannot we change our economic and ecological practices on our current planet to make it more like Earth?

In this connection, I would like to share a comment by an Australian federal politician from 2025, which succinctly encapsulates why the mentality of colonisation would inevitably lead to disaster. Do not get me wrong, I do not normally follow the statements of Australian politicians. They are largely a spineless, snivelling opportunistic lot. But occasionally they make comments which indicate their depraved, demoralised and cowardly ideology.

Sussan Ley, who was apparently the nonentity leading a political party of equally insignificant nonentities, made a comment that Elon Musk’s efforts to explore and colonise Mars are akin to the First Fleet, the initial British conquistador foray into what became Australia. The First Fleet, Ley intoned, did not set out to destroy anyone, and neither does Musk’s technological initiatives to explore space, and eventually colonise Mars.

It is clear that Ley has no understanding of Australian history, nor space exploration, nor Musk’s billionaire fantasies of astronomical conquest. Her comment clearly flies in the face of historical reality; the British deliberately set out to destroy the indigenous peoples of Australia. Likening the frontier wars to the proposed colonisation of Mars is reviving the myth of terra nullius, the fiction that Australia was uninhabited prior to the arrival of the Europeans.

Mars is uninhabited, you say, and that is true. But to colonise a territory involves destroying and reshaping what is already there. Mars, long the subject of science fiction writers, is not inhabited by little green men, nor are its ‘canals’ full of water. It was erroneously believed, from the late 1870s onwards, that Mars had canals of water, an observation first proposed by astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli. That belief was definitely overthrown many decades later.

Colonisation has never been a simple matter of packing up and relocating to an empty space, much like we see on television. The coloniser actively re-engineers and reshapes the environment they intend to secure and occupy, no matter how empty it might be. We are only now beginning to understand Martian geology, and the vast mountains, valleys and craters that predominate the landscape of that planet.

Mars definitely has vast amounts of water ice, both at the polar caps and beneath the surface. That’s convenient – obviously we need water for agriculture, food production and cleaning. How will those water reserves be extracted and purified? What about sewage treatment, and the risk of water-borne diseases? What about irrigation? Just those questions are enough to make us realise just how impactful any changes to the Martian environment and atmosphere would have to be to provide conditions hospitable to life.

Any attempt at Martian colonisation would be subjected to the private profit demands of the current billionaire space race. The tech bro giants – Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson – want to inflate their already swollen egos by achieving ever-more headline-grabbing exploits in space. Egomania of cosmic proportions has already overtaken the drive to explore space for educational purposes, answering the big scientific questions regarding the cosmos.

The collective wealth of the billionaire parasites could be funding solutions to the problems of ecological destruction. They could devote their considerable financial resources to fighting the loss of biodiversity, supporting renewable energy technologies, reducing our dependence on environmentally destructive fossil fuels, and combating the spread of infectious diseases. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the need to have an internationally coordinated response to medical threats, because viruses do not stop at borders.

However, we are being encouraged to become cheerleading bystanders to a billionaire space race which only parasitises the scientific community’s knowledge capital. The billionaires are basically leeching off the astronomical fraternity.

When Juan Posadas, Argentine Trotskyist militant and union organiser, made some offhand comments about space exploration and humanity settling on other planets, he was ridiculed as an example of an eccentric, ideologically narrow minded militant indulging cosmic fantasies – Trots in space was the expression.

Whether he deserved to be ridiculed for his flights of fancy regarding extraterrestrial life, I do not know. He died in 1981, so he is not here to defend himself. What I do know is that fantasising about other planets is not confined to the writings of Posadas. An even loonier delusion is now being promoted by the financial-technological-algorithmic complex.

The Washington Post, in 2018, published a fawning series called Companies in the Cosmos. Extolling the virtues of corporate space travel, the writers were advocating that private companies now take the lead in space exploration. Are we to become passive spectators as dysfunctional corporations reproduce their maladaptive consumerism on other planets?

Rather than dreaming about Martian colonisation, let’s focus our energies on reviving and preserving life on Earth. David Attenborough, the great nature documentary maker, said as much in his 2025 work Ocean.

Making the case for hope, he said that over his long lifetime, he has seen species brought back from the brink of extinction due to collective action and political will. Creating scenarios for Martian takeover only distracts us from the urgent task of fixing our own planet. Colonial forays into Martian territory only reproduce the consumerist ideology underpinning the economic practices harming the Earth’s biosphere.