09/07/2026
Dear Elon: Before We Take Consciousness to Mars
Dear Elon Musk:
You have described human consciousness as a tiny candle in a vast darkness, something so rare and precious that we have a responsibility to preserve it. You have argued that one way to do that is to make humanity multiplanetary, so that if civilization fails here, consciousness can continue somewhere else.
I understand the intention.
But I would like to invite you into another possibility.
Before we take consciousness to Mars, what if we devoted ourselves just as seriously to caring for the consciousnesses that are already here?
And perhaps, before trying to ensure that consciousness survives millions of years into the future, we might investigate what would help human beings experience greater peace, connection, love and satisfaction during the lives they’re actually living.
Including you.
You once described your mind as a storm.
Rather than trying to outrun that storm, what if you became as curious about it as you are about the universe?
An Experiment You Don’t Need a Rocket to Conduct
You are an experimental thinker, so consider this an experiment rather than a spiritual proposition.
There is a teaching in Mahayana Buddhism, expressed particularly forcefully in the Tibetan text The Wheel of Sharp Weapons, that challenges one of our deepest assumptions about happiness.
We ordinarily organize our lives around acquiring the conditions we believe will finally make us happy.
More success.
More money.
More influence.
The next accomplishment.
The next breakthrough.
The next destination.
But there is a problem.
Every destination eventually becomes here.
And if “here” is never enough, eventually Mars won’t be enough either.
The human mind is remarkably skilled at converting yesterday’s impossible dream into today’s ordinary circumstance—and then identifying something else it needs.
You may have conducted one of history’s most extraordinary experiments in how far external accomplishment can take a human being.
So perhaps there is another experiment worth conducting.
Instead of continually changing the objects of consciousness, investigate consciousness itself.
What happens when you stop accomplishing for a moment?
What does wanting actually feel like?
What happens immediately after getting exactly what you wanted?
How long does satisfaction remain?
What happens when you give someone your complete attention?
What happens when you deliberately practice kindness?
Generosity?
Forgiveness?
Compassion?
Love?
Don’t believe the Buddhist teachings.
Test them.
What We Put Into the World
The Wheel of Sharp Weapons asks us to examine self-centeredness—not because having a self or caring for ourselves is wrong, but because organizing our lives relentlessly around me, mine, what I need, what I fear and what I need next can become its own source of suffering.
Mahayana Buddhism proposes an extraordinary reversal.
Instead of continually asking the world:
What can you give me so that I can finally be satisfied?
begin asking:
What can I give?
There is nothing magical or transactional about this.
If I spend an hour hating someone, that person may never know.
But I have spent an hour living inside hatred.
If I spend that same hour sincerely wishing for another person’s well-being, they may never know that either.
But I have spent an hour inhabiting love.
What we cultivate becomes part of the consciousness through which we experience our lives.
So try it experimentally.
Put more love into the world and observe what happens inside you.
Put out generosity.
Put out patience.
Put out interest in other human beings.
Put out encouragement.
Put out compassion.
And observe what comes back—not merely from other people, but from your own experience of being alive.
Perhaps happiness isn’t something waiting at the end of accomplishment.
Perhaps some portion of happiness is generated through the way we participate in this moment.
If Consciousness Is Precious, Look Around
This brings me back to Mars.
If consciousness is precious enough to spend extraordinary resources trying to preserve it on another planet, then surely the conscious beings living on this planet deserve extraordinary attention too.
There are children alive right now whose deaths are preventable.
There are people without clean water.
People dying from diseases we already know how to prevent or treat.
People who are hungry.
People who are isolated.
People who have never had access to education.
People whose minds are overwhelmed by fear, trauma and despair.
They are consciousness too.
And unlike a future civilization on Mars, they aren’t hypothetical.
They’re here.
Now.
You have resources available to you on a scale almost no individual human being has ever possessed.
Money, certainly.
But also engineering talent.
Companies.
Technology.
Influence.
Access to extraordinary minds.
And perhaps the rarest resource of all:
the ability to direct the world’s attention toward a problem.
Imagine applying that machinery to the question:
How many conscious lives can we help flourish while we’re here?
Not instead of Mars.
Alongside it.
If humanity needs more people, as you have argued, then surely helping the people who are already born survive, thrive and experience lives worth living belongs within that mission.
Preserve consciousness by preserving conscious beings.
Reduce preventable childhood deaths.
Improve access to clean water.
Prevent disease.
Reduce hunger.
Improve education.
Address loneliness and mental suffering.
Help human beings understand their own minds.
Some of these problems are enormously difficult.
But compared with making Mars habitable?
We’ve already solved substantial parts of them.
The question is whether we will direct sufficient resources and attention toward doing what we already know how to do.
What Are We Actually Trying to Preserve?
There’s another question beneath all of this.
We don’t actually know what consciousness is.
We know that brains and conscious experience are intimately related. But we haven’t solved the mystery of subjective experience itself.
I don’t believe consciousness is material.
I believe consciousness is participatory—that the perceiver participates in what is perceived, while neither perceiver nor perceived exists completely independently of the other.
If consciousness isn’t material, what exactly are we transporting to Mars?
We can transport bodies.
Brains.
DNA.
Technology.
Culture.
Human beings who participate in consciousness.
But perhaps we should be more humble about claiming that we’re transporting consciousness itself.
And perhaps consciousness isn’t ours to save.
What If the Darkness Isn’t Empty?
You describe consciousness as a candle surrounded by darkness.
I find that metaphor beautiful.
But I wonder about the darkness.
What if darkness isn’t absence?
What if it is potential?
A seed begins in darkness.
A human being begins in the darkness of the womb.
Ideas emerge from not knowing.
Possibility exists before manifestation.
We have explored an almost infinitesimal fraction of the universe. We don’t know whether other conscious beings exist. We don’t know all the forms consciousness might take. We don’t even fully understand our own.
Perhaps the most intellectually honest response isn’t fear.
It’s awe.
We don’t know.
Maybe humanity isn’t carrying the universe’s only candle into empty darkness.
Maybe we’re conscious beings entering a mystery.
I find that possibility much more exciting than escape.
Give People a Reason to Wake Up This Morning
You have spoken about wanting humanity to have reasons to wake up in the morning.
I love that.
But I wonder whether we’ve become so focused on giving people something extraordinary to wake up for tomorrow that we’re forgetting to teach them how extraordinary it is to wake up today.
Our minds have a negativity bias. They evolved to notice threats. Now we place those minds inside an information environment capable of delivering evidence of catastrophe every minute of every day.
War.
Climate.
Disease.
Political instability.
AI.
Extinction.
Population collapse.
Planetary catastrophe.
Another frightening possibility is available before we’ve finished processing the previous one.
Human beings desperately need to learn something that contemplative traditions have understood for centuries:
A frightened thought is an experience occurring in consciousness. It is not necessarily a description of reality.
We can learn to notice fear without becoming fear.
We can recognize wanting without immediately obeying it.
We can experience enoughness.
We can learn that loving this moment doesn’t mean giving up on tomorrow.
In fact, perhaps people who love being alive are precisely the people we want creating tomorrow.
So Here’s My Invitation
Keep building rockets.
Go to Mars.
Explore.
Ask enormous questions.
But consider adding another mission worthy of your attention:
Help make consciousness more habitable here.
And begin with the consciousness closest to you.
Your own.
Become curious about the storm.
Spend some time without trying to change anything.
Learn what happens when you are completely present with another human being.
Experiment with compassion.
Experiment with generosity.
Experiment with contentment.
Experiment with putting love into the world without requiring anything in return.
See what happens.
You have spent decades investigating how much one human intelligence can change the external world.
Perhaps now investigate how profoundly a human being can transform his experience of that world.
And then use some of your extraordinary resources to offer that possibility to others.
Because if humanity eventually arrives on Mars, I hope we don’t merely bring more human consciousness there.
I hope we bring a wiser consciousness.
A kinder one.
A less frightened one.
A consciousness capable of connection.
A consciousness that understands that happiness doesn’t perpetually reside at the next destination.
A consciousness that knows how to care for other conscious beings.
A consciousness that can look into darkness without immediately deciding the darkness is empty.
And a consciousness that has learned something profoundly simple:
We don’t have to wait for another world to discover that this life is worth loving.
Elon, if consciousness truly is precious, let’s protect its future.
But let’s also care deeply for the billions of expressions of it that are already here.
And while we’re doing that, let’s learn how to love being among them.
With curiosity and hope,
Deniece Smith
Our Mettaverse
