Don't forget to pack your phaser- E.T. may be Hitler, rather than Gandhi!
Space.com is a site a visit daily. Being an amateur astronomer (or "naturalist of the night," as Terrance Dickinson once suggested we call ourselves), I find it invaluable.
One of the things about it I enjoy is the substantial, and not overly-technical, articles. Right now the site has a basically favorable review by Seth Shostak of box office smash Alien vs. Predator.
The review is positive in the sense that the reviewer sees it as a good genre piece. But he goes to great lengths to dispute the notion that E.T. is likely to be very much like either of these critters in real life. He's probably right, but not for the reasons he cites.
Shostak writes:
With all due respect to Shostak, that's utter nonsense.
The assumption that any species "advanced" enough to be capable of interstellar travel would also be morally advanced enough not to be "aggressive" or otherwise "nasty" seems to have originated with the late Carl Sagan, and it's empirically not true. Our own species- the only space-faring race we know of, and the most advanced beings from whose psychology and biology we can learn at the moment about the likely psychology and biology of other advanced races- is still producing Hitlers and Stalins and Mao Tse-Tungs and Pol Pots and Idi Amins and Saddam Husseins as quickly and efficiently as ever. A case can be made that modern technology has, if anything, made cruelty and mass murder more efficient than it was before, and I challenge any advocate of the "technologically advanced aliens will be friendly aliens" school to show that we, ourselves, are less nasty a species than we always were. As I read the evidence, if anything we may be getting nastier, not nicer, as our technology grows more advanced.
And the notion that "killing just for the fun of it, as the Predators do, is no longer considered socially acceptable in most (human) circles" says more about the circles in which Shostak (and most academics) move than about the realities of the question at hand. In fact, hunting remains a very popular sport among humans- and in the developed world, hunting is literally nothing other than "killing just for the fun of it." There may be ethical gestures in the direction of eating the venison or the ducks, or selling the fur of the coyotes some Nebraska farmers I know of hunt every Saturday morning in the winter and donating the money to a good cause, but the brutal truth is that hunting is about the fun of killing other living creatures. Sure, there may be other things involved- the thrill of the chase, for example; the excitement of chasing down or outwitting the prey. But I don't expect ducks or deer or any animal plentiful enough to be hunted to be involuntary participants in a game of paint ball or laser tag any time soon.
In fact, in the Predator model the chase- the hunt itself- is at least as important as the kill. It's our challenge as prey that makes us such an intriguing target.
Further, there's one more point which disciples of the Sagan school of thought- including Shostak- never seem to take into account. It's an interesting failure, too, because it's really a question which comes from their own world-view, and would be more natural in the mouth of someone like Sagan than in that of, say, yours truly.
It's simply that, while we are probably on safe ground on assuming that the laws of physics, biology, and other "hard sciences" are pretty much universal, it really takes an affirmation of faith to say that there's anything at all universal about ethics. Or if not, at the very least it takes a concession about what we empirically observe about our own species which non-religious people in our culture are generally reluctant, for ideological reasons, to make.
It was C.S. Lewis who scored a rather significant apologetic point in Mere Christianity when he observed that far from humanity being a race of morally diverse beings, the actual, governing moral assumptions of literally every society on Earth are in fact remarkably similar. As great a source of scandal as this may be to the moral relativists among us, when the missionaries arrived on the prototypical remote desert island, they quickly found out- if they were paying attention- that the natives already knew that it was wrong to murder each other, steal from one another, commit adultery, demonstrate disrespect toward one's parents, lie about others, maliciously covet what belonged to others, misuse sacred time, and commit sacrilege against the gods. The details, to be sure, varied from culture to culture: the name and number of the god or gods, and their precise nature; how many people one could be lawfully married to, and what the precise sexual, economic and ethical boundaries of marriage might be; the degree of respect shown parents, and the degree to which that respect passed on to one's other elders; what the sacred time was, and how it was properly to be used; the exact attitude toward property (or rarely even whether such a concept existed), and so forth. But while there was some variation from culture to culture, to a remarkable degree the ethical standards of societies which had never come in contact before with biblically-based religion seemed to bear a remarkable family resemblance to the Ten Commandments.
Now, there are all manner of explanations for that fact. The person of faith will, of course, see in it a demonstration of the accuracy of Paul's observation in Romans 1 that the Law of God is written on the human heart. A thoroughgoing secularist, on the other hand, might simply see it as evidence that we are, after all, a common species facing what are- given admitted variations due to happenstance and even randomness- a very similar set of problems and questions in the common struggle of getting through life on a world we all share- and that a large degree of commonality in our ethics is therefore quite understandable.
But here's the problem: unless one accepts some sort of design in the universe, how is such an affirmation possible, even provisionally, about E.T.? How do we know that beings who are, after all, alien in their very nature, even have words in their language (assuming they have a language as we understand the concept) for "justice" or "mercy" or "good" or "evil?" Might they not be like T.H. White's ants in The Once and Future King, unable to conceive of right and wrong, or even sick and well, but only of "done" and "not done?"
Why should racism be a uniquely human trait? Why would an advanced enough species see us as worthy of the treatment we, ourselves, instinctively believe sentient beings deserve, since to all practical purposes, in their eyes we might be nothing but animals? And who is to say that kindness to animals is necessarily part of their ethos?
Where, finally, is it written that technological sophistication and what we Earthlings see as lofty ethics need to go hand-in-hand? Sagan assumed that the early nuclear age was a sort of rite of passage through which all advanced races would have to go, and that the only ones who would survive without destroying themselves would be those who avoided that fate by developing, in essence, a high degree of niceness. But the Cold War has passed, and we- though not notably more evolved, from an ethical point of view- are still here. Could it be that all that is required to survive the "nuclear crisis" is a sufficiently-developed instinct for self-preservation?
Gene Roddenberry, too, was a thoroughgoing materialist whose universe nevertheless could include not only Klingons and Romulans and the Cardassians, but even the Borg. Whatever the limitations of his worldview- which for my part I see as for the most part remarkably childlike and naive -he was realistic enough to understand that technological advancement and "niceness," by contemporary human standards, were by no means inseparable. Yes, he and his successors have presented us at every point in the saga with a rival race to our own (the Romulans in the original Star Trek series, and the Klingons in TNG, DS-9, and Voyager; these races seemed to switch fundamental ethical natures after the original series) motivated by concepts of honor and duty and ethics which, if we didn't always entirely share, we could recognize, understand, and even admire. Yes, even the forces of ethical anarchy- first the Klingons, and then the Romulans, and even the ultimate force of ethical chaos, the Borg- turned out, after we got to know them, at least in individual cases not such bad guys after all. Yes, I.D.I.C itself is a concept which seems almost incredibly sappy; where, after all, do, say, Hitler or Stalin fall into a values system whose basic affirmation is the value of diversity of every kind, presumably including the acceptance of ethical systems capable of embracing racism and even genocide?
But if Roddenberry was, at a philosophical level, as naive as Sagan, he at least was sufficiently honest to recognize the problem. If, in his view, E.T. had- as a matter of dogma- be somebody you can ultimately make friends with, he was sufficiently realistic that you might very well have to stop him from killing you first- and maybe from wiping out your species.
The Alien mythos involves an entirely different set of issues. Many of the better reviews of the original Alien makes an observation which remains valid for all of the films in the series: that at least part of the menace of these creatures- their Alien-ness, if you will- comes from the very fact that their intelligence is a completely open question. It is by no means clear that the chest-poppers are an especially advanced species. They certainly are not a spacefaring race;they get from planet to planet, when they do so at all, inside the ships of other species- and an unpleasant percentage of the time, inside their crews. You can outwit a creature of intellect. But the race of the Alien mythos gives us the willies precisely because it appears to be something much more formidable: a creature which has evolved into a predator so perfect in its instincts and natural defenses that intellect- while it may be present, and merely not obvious- is in any case not particularly necessary.
We can compete with other creatures of intellect. But with this sort of creature, any encounter is going to be on its own terms, and fought with weapons to which have simply not evolved an answer. And that's what makes at least the first two Alien movies not only among the greatest science fiction films ever made, but also among the greatest horror films. The Alien may not be supernatural, like a vampire or a zombie or a werewolf. But he's beyond nature in any terms that do us any good.
Shoshak's criticism of the Alien is an evolutionary one, whose primary flaw is that the basis for his criticism of the creature is factually inaccurate:
Well, no. Nothing in any of the Alien films even says anything which could understandably be misunderstood as the notion that the Alien species depends specifically upon humans for reproduction, and I have no idea where Shostack gets that idea. If the original movie had suggested such a thing, it would have constituted an absurdity at once so obvious and so huge as to have completely ruined it, and precluded any thought of sequels!
In fact, we are told just the opposite on our very first encounter, if not with the creature, with his-excuse the expression- natural history. No sooner has the Nostromo landed on the planet than its crew encounters the remains of the "space jockey-" a spacefarer of some unknown, alien race, whose chest has been burst outward in a way which, in retrospect, leaves little doubt that he had been the host for at least one of the critters himself!
The Alien doesn't rely on humans at all! It relies on any species that happens to be available- and it isn't any too picky even about its host's solar system of origin! It almost certainly arrived on the planet where the crew of the Nostromo encountered it inside the chest of the "space jockey," or some other visitor from some other planet. Any other planet!
And that, finally, is the menace of the species. It is the ultimate imperialist- and the ultimate opportunist. Its survival strategy strikes me as very much a winner: use the materials available, and when they're used up- or more likely, long, long before- take advantage of the fact that their hosts travel to other stars to make their way inside them to an infinite number of fresh, potential living incubators.
Sure beats carrying one's young in one's own body! If anything, I see the "Alien" as precisely the frighteningly efficient and biologically ruthless being its creators meant it to be. If there are things about it that aren't believable, they aren't the ones Shostak points out. Well, with the possible exception of the molecular acid which does double-duty as blood. A great defense mechanism, that- but one which requires a bit of the old suspension of disbelief.
Now, having said all that, I happen to think that, as a whole, Shostak's review is actually a pretty good one. Again, it's a favorable review- and, as Shostak himself observes, "it's only a movie." It isn't intended as a treatise on xenobiology, or anything other than a few hours' entertainment. And I agree with Shostak that E.T. probably won't turn out to be nearly as anthropomorphic as either of these interstellar villains.
But next time you get in your starship, be sure to take your phaser. E.T. is at least as likely to be Hitler as he is to be Gandhi- and a Hitler evolved precisely in some strange, unpredictable, and potentially very frightening ways.
One of the things about it I enjoy is the substantial, and not overly-technical, articles. Right now the site has a basically favorable review by Seth Shostak of box office smash Alien vs. Predator.
The review is positive in the sense that the reviewer sees it as a good genre piece. But he goes to great lengths to dispute the notion that E.T. is likely to be very much like either of these critters in real life. He's probably right, but not for the reasons he cites.
Shostak writes:
Of course, films like this suggest that the Galaxy is largely populated by highly aggressive species, ones whose interest in Earth might extend no farther than using it now and again as a hunting lodge. The tracts of space, in this view, are akin to the unknown seas on medieval maps -- "here be monsters" -- vast, forbidding habitats that lap the shores of the civilized world, and are stuffed with dangerous creatures.
That's unlikely to be typical. We still can't say what real aliens are like, of course, but science can provide some useful insights. After all, any biology out there will exist in a landscape of finite resources. Darwinian competition will be their lot, as well as ours. So you can expect that there will be predators. Predation is an economic device: carnivores leave it to plants or plant eaters to slowly build up energy-rich molecules from sunlight or some other source. They then harvest this crop of useful compounds quickly, a tactic that can power an active life style.
But of course, for an intelligent species with technology capable of interstellar travel, predation is oh-so Stone Age. Even today, humans (who are a long way from being able to make sporting trips to other star systems) don't rely on predation much. We farm our food, and soon we'll manufacture it. Killing just for the fun of it, as the Predators do, is no longer considered socially acceptable in most circles. Real Predators, who must be many thousands of years ahead of us, have presumably moved beyond this.
With all due respect to Shostak, that's utter nonsense.
The assumption that any species "advanced" enough to be capable of interstellar travel would also be morally advanced enough not to be "aggressive" or otherwise "nasty" seems to have originated with the late Carl Sagan, and it's empirically not true. Our own species- the only space-faring race we know of, and the most advanced beings from whose psychology and biology we can learn at the moment about the likely psychology and biology of other advanced races- is still producing Hitlers and Stalins and Mao Tse-Tungs and Pol Pots and Idi Amins and Saddam Husseins as quickly and efficiently as ever. A case can be made that modern technology has, if anything, made cruelty and mass murder more efficient than it was before, and I challenge any advocate of the "technologically advanced aliens will be friendly aliens" school to show that we, ourselves, are less nasty a species than we always were. As I read the evidence, if anything we may be getting nastier, not nicer, as our technology grows more advanced.
And the notion that "killing just for the fun of it, as the Predators do, is no longer considered socially acceptable in most (human) circles" says more about the circles in which Shostak (and most academics) move than about the realities of the question at hand. In fact, hunting remains a very popular sport among humans- and in the developed world, hunting is literally nothing other than "killing just for the fun of it." There may be ethical gestures in the direction of eating the venison or the ducks, or selling the fur of the coyotes some Nebraska farmers I know of hunt every Saturday morning in the winter and donating the money to a good cause, but the brutal truth is that hunting is about the fun of killing other living creatures. Sure, there may be other things involved- the thrill of the chase, for example; the excitement of chasing down or outwitting the prey. But I don't expect ducks or deer or any animal plentiful enough to be hunted to be involuntary participants in a game of paint ball or laser tag any time soon.
In fact, in the Predator model the chase- the hunt itself- is at least as important as the kill. It's our challenge as prey that makes us such an intriguing target.
Further, there's one more point which disciples of the Sagan school of thought- including Shostak- never seem to take into account. It's an interesting failure, too, because it's really a question which comes from their own world-view, and would be more natural in the mouth of someone like Sagan than in that of, say, yours truly.
It's simply that, while we are probably on safe ground on assuming that the laws of physics, biology, and other "hard sciences" are pretty much universal, it really takes an affirmation of faith to say that there's anything at all universal about ethics. Or if not, at the very least it takes a concession about what we empirically observe about our own species which non-religious people in our culture are generally reluctant, for ideological reasons, to make.
It was C.S. Lewis who scored a rather significant apologetic point in Mere Christianity when he observed that far from humanity being a race of morally diverse beings, the actual, governing moral assumptions of literally every society on Earth are in fact remarkably similar. As great a source of scandal as this may be to the moral relativists among us, when the missionaries arrived on the prototypical remote desert island, they quickly found out- if they were paying attention- that the natives already knew that it was wrong to murder each other, steal from one another, commit adultery, demonstrate disrespect toward one's parents, lie about others, maliciously covet what belonged to others, misuse sacred time, and commit sacrilege against the gods. The details, to be sure, varied from culture to culture: the name and number of the god or gods, and their precise nature; how many people one could be lawfully married to, and what the precise sexual, economic and ethical boundaries of marriage might be; the degree of respect shown parents, and the degree to which that respect passed on to one's other elders; what the sacred time was, and how it was properly to be used; the exact attitude toward property (or rarely even whether such a concept existed), and so forth. But while there was some variation from culture to culture, to a remarkable degree the ethical standards of societies which had never come in contact before with biblically-based religion seemed to bear a remarkable family resemblance to the Ten Commandments.
Now, there are all manner of explanations for that fact. The person of faith will, of course, see in it a demonstration of the accuracy of Paul's observation in Romans 1 that the Law of God is written on the human heart. A thoroughgoing secularist, on the other hand, might simply see it as evidence that we are, after all, a common species facing what are- given admitted variations due to happenstance and even randomness- a very similar set of problems and questions in the common struggle of getting through life on a world we all share- and that a large degree of commonality in our ethics is therefore quite understandable.
But here's the problem: unless one accepts some sort of design in the universe, how is such an affirmation possible, even provisionally, about E.T.? How do we know that beings who are, after all, alien in their very nature, even have words in their language (assuming they have a language as we understand the concept) for "justice" or "mercy" or "good" or "evil?" Might they not be like T.H. White's ants in The Once and Future King, unable to conceive of right and wrong, or even sick and well, but only of "done" and "not done?"
Why should racism be a uniquely human trait? Why would an advanced enough species see us as worthy of the treatment we, ourselves, instinctively believe sentient beings deserve, since to all practical purposes, in their eyes we might be nothing but animals? And who is to say that kindness to animals is necessarily part of their ethos?
Where, finally, is it written that technological sophistication and what we Earthlings see as lofty ethics need to go hand-in-hand? Sagan assumed that the early nuclear age was a sort of rite of passage through which all advanced races would have to go, and that the only ones who would survive without destroying themselves would be those who avoided that fate by developing, in essence, a high degree of niceness. But the Cold War has passed, and we- though not notably more evolved, from an ethical point of view- are still here. Could it be that all that is required to survive the "nuclear crisis" is a sufficiently-developed instinct for self-preservation?
Gene Roddenberry, too, was a thoroughgoing materialist whose universe nevertheless could include not only Klingons and Romulans and the Cardassians, but even the Borg. Whatever the limitations of his worldview- which for my part I see as for the most part remarkably childlike and naive -he was realistic enough to understand that technological advancement and "niceness," by contemporary human standards, were by no means inseparable. Yes, he and his successors have presented us at every point in the saga with a rival race to our own (the Romulans in the original Star Trek series, and the Klingons in TNG, DS-9, and Voyager; these races seemed to switch fundamental ethical natures after the original series) motivated by concepts of honor and duty and ethics which, if we didn't always entirely share, we could recognize, understand, and even admire. Yes, even the forces of ethical anarchy- first the Klingons, and then the Romulans, and even the ultimate force of ethical chaos, the Borg- turned out, after we got to know them, at least in individual cases not such bad guys after all. Yes, I.D.I.C itself is a concept which seems almost incredibly sappy; where, after all, do, say, Hitler or Stalin fall into a values system whose basic affirmation is the value of diversity of every kind, presumably including the acceptance of ethical systems capable of embracing racism and even genocide?
But if Roddenberry was, at a philosophical level, as naive as Sagan, he at least was sufficiently honest to recognize the problem. If, in his view, E.T. had- as a matter of dogma- be somebody you can ultimately make friends with, he was sufficiently realistic that you might very well have to stop him from killing you first- and maybe from wiping out your species.
The Alien mythos involves an entirely different set of issues. Many of the better reviews of the original Alien makes an observation which remains valid for all of the films in the series: that at least part of the menace of these creatures- their Alien-ness, if you will- comes from the very fact that their intelligence is a completely open question. It is by no means clear that the chest-poppers are an especially advanced species. They certainly are not a spacefaring race;they get from planet to planet, when they do so at all, inside the ships of other species- and an unpleasant percentage of the time, inside their crews. You can outwit a creature of intellect. But the race of the Alien mythos gives us the willies precisely because it appears to be something much more formidable: a creature which has evolved into a predator so perfect in its instincts and natural defenses that intellect- while it may be present, and merely not obvious- is in any case not particularly necessary.
We can compete with other creatures of intellect. But with this sort of creature, any encounter is going to be on its own terms, and fought with weapons to which have simply not evolved an answer. And that's what makes at least the first two Alien movies not only among the greatest science fiction films ever made, but also among the greatest horror films. The Alien may not be supernatural, like a vampire or a zombie or a werewolf. But he's beyond nature in any terms that do us any good.
Shoshak's criticism of the Alien is an evolutionary one, whose primary flaw is that the basis for his criticism of the creature is factually inaccurate:
As unlikely as the Predator may be, even aside from its oddball, anthropomorphic appearance -- a brushed steel Samurai with dreadlocks -- it's still more believable than Alien. This toothy terror, with its nitric acid blood (pray that it doesn't get a nosebleed in the car), depends on humans for breeding. Now sure, there are some terrestrial species, such as the ichneumon fly that use other creatures as part of their reproductive cycle. But those other creatures are at least hanging around on the same planet! Imagine the evolutionary difficulties for some species that requires a chance encounter with beings from another world just to have kids! That is not a winning survival scenario.
Well, no. Nothing in any of the Alien films even says anything which could understandably be misunderstood as the notion that the Alien species depends specifically upon humans for reproduction, and I have no idea where Shostack gets that idea. If the original movie had suggested such a thing, it would have constituted an absurdity at once so obvious and so huge as to have completely ruined it, and precluded any thought of sequels!
In fact, we are told just the opposite on our very first encounter, if not with the creature, with his-excuse the expression- natural history. No sooner has the Nostromo landed on the planet than its crew encounters the remains of the "space jockey-" a spacefarer of some unknown, alien race, whose chest has been burst outward in a way which, in retrospect, leaves little doubt that he had been the host for at least one of the critters himself!
The Alien doesn't rely on humans at all! It relies on any species that happens to be available- and it isn't any too picky even about its host's solar system of origin! It almost certainly arrived on the planet where the crew of the Nostromo encountered it inside the chest of the "space jockey," or some other visitor from some other planet. Any other planet!
And that, finally, is the menace of the species. It is the ultimate imperialist- and the ultimate opportunist. Its survival strategy strikes me as very much a winner: use the materials available, and when they're used up- or more likely, long, long before- take advantage of the fact that their hosts travel to other stars to make their way inside them to an infinite number of fresh, potential living incubators.
Sure beats carrying one's young in one's own body! If anything, I see the "Alien" as precisely the frighteningly efficient and biologically ruthless being its creators meant it to be. If there are things about it that aren't believable, they aren't the ones Shostak points out. Well, with the possible exception of the molecular acid which does double-duty as blood. A great defense mechanism, that- but one which requires a bit of the old suspension of disbelief.
Now, having said all that, I happen to think that, as a whole, Shostak's review is actually a pretty good one. Again, it's a favorable review- and, as Shostak himself observes, "it's only a movie." It isn't intended as a treatise on xenobiology, or anything other than a few hours' entertainment. And I agree with Shostak that E.T. probably won't turn out to be nearly as anthropomorphic as either of these interstellar villains.
But next time you get in your starship, be sure to take your phaser. E.T. is at least as likely to be Hitler as he is to be Gandhi- and a Hitler evolved precisely in some strange, unpredictable, and potentially very frightening ways.
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