Enrichment of the driving metanarratives shared between SETI and space sustainability through a multispecies lens

The fields of SETI and Space Sustainability appear to have significant conceptual common ground. This article argues that this cross-fertilization of ideas is the effect of socially-shared nonfictional narratives at work in each of the two fields, which are tacitly driven by the same cross-cutting metanarrative foundations. The article suggests that the scientific communities of SETI and SS utilize such narratives to enable sense-making, decision-making, and action-generation at the collective level, under conditions of radical uncertainty. It then posits that the distinct narratives at work in each of these two fields are implicitly framed and driven by a finite set of four shared metanarratives, whose assumptions are organized on the basis of the following combinations of descriptive and normative (non-)anthropocentrism: a) descriptive anthropocentrism & normative anthropocentrism; b) descriptive anthropocentrism & normative non-anthropocentrism; c) descriptive non-anthropocentrism & normative anthropocentrism; and d) descriptive non-anthropocentrism & normative non-anthropocentrism. Despite being less intuitive than the first three, the nascent fourth one is argued to be accessible through a multispecies lens borrowed from adjacent academic bodies of work and is highlighted as very promising for stimulating fruitful dialogue between the two fields and for enriching the existing pool of competing narratives in each of them. • Discusses the apparent conceptual common ground between SETI & Space Sustainability • Explains the role of socially-shared nonfictional narratives in both fields • Introduces a finite set of shared metanarrative foundations based on anthropocentrism • Stresses the descriptive & normative non-anthropocentrism metanarrative as promising • Suggests a multispecies approach for further developing that nascent metanarrative