Exactly! This is what I don't understand either, Henry. The thought of it is merely too bizarre.
What do you think humanity should do?
Haha ... You're asking this to me ?
Well ... If I was dictator of the world right now, my number one priority would be to terraform Mars and conquer our solar system. Why you may ask ? It seems a little bit far-fetched and pure economical suicide ... But who knows ?
When humanities tries to reach greater goals, begin to dream in a brighter future for herself and her children, hope begin to diffuses in all classes and all minds. In our materialistic disenchanted society, I think there's no better lifefuel in existence at the moment. I would preach for the conquest of the greater unknown. It would wake up men's masculine power of will and desire to conquest all over the world while women too could believe in this brighter future with confidence. By the past, religions used to have this kind of effect on the mass, but they had no practical purpose, and no real interest besides keeping social peace. Now, there's actual interest in putting bases on Mars and beyond.
By interest, I also mean economical interest. Obviously, detractors of space conquest would say "Hurr durr, that costs money, you could do better things with it, like repay national debts to bankers, and give all the rest to corrupt charities making profit on people's misery". Yes, that has been done by the past, obviously that works great since there's no misery in the world anymore, and since paying debt is totally not like filling a freaking barrel of the Danaides from which only the super riches take profit. Satellites almost as big as our planet orbiting our giant gas planets in our system are full of precious commodity such as water, methane, carbone, nitrogen, rare metals, etc. And that's just the satellites, the gas planet are 10 times bigger than our world. Now that's an investment I'm willing to make, not only to make some scheckels, but also to serve the people. The state would of course have a monopoly on all this, in the service of the people.
It might cost a lot at the beginning, but the profit in long term would almost be infinite. Conquest of space would be both interesting for our far descendant and for our own self-esteem as a specie. And I'm not even talking about the cultural and scientific advancements that would make us explore in less than a decade.
But I guess I'm a dummy guy. The number one priorities in our today's world are to repay debt (which is dumb : since the states never die, debt never needs to be totally repaid, only partially from time to time ...), gas dissidents/migrants/students and throw bombs on arabs. Ho and also, take profit from its own people to live in a big house under the sun. Yay, I'm totally not understanding our parasitic politicians right now.