Spaceship Earth
Frank de Jong
Spaceship Earth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spaceship Earth or Spacecraft Earth is a world view encouraging everyone on Earth to act as a harmonious crew working toward the greater good.
The earliest known use is a passage in Henry George's best known work, Progress and Poverty (1879). From book IV, chapter 2:
It is a well-provisioned ship, this on which we sail through space. If the bread and beef above decks seem to grow scarce, we but open a hatch and there is a new supply, of which before we never dreamed. And very great command over the services of others comes to those who as the hatches are opened are permitted to say, "This is mine!"
George Orwell later paraphrases Henry George in The Road to Wigan Pier:
The world is a raft sailing through space with, potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody; the idea that we must all cooperate and see to it that everyone does his fair share of the work and gets his fair share of the provisions seems so blatantly obvious that one would say that no one could possibly fail to accept it unless he had some corrupt motive for clinging to the present system.
Fred Harrison
Director
Land Research Trust
London
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Twitter: @geophilos & @sharetherents