. . . is, let's face it, another form of escapism. Great if you don't take it too seriously; tediously obsessive if you do. But, unlike the absolute adherence to generational, faith-derived religions, science fiction does have the added benefit of holding a mirror up to the reality that we all think we perceive.
The problem with "sci-fi" is the fact that there are many variations on a theme. On the one extreme there is "speculative fiction" such as the writings of Verne and Wells in an earlier age when practical imagination was taking a huge evolutionary step forward. Speculative fiction begat "science fiction", written by people who were trained physicists or academics such as Baxter, Benford and Brin. But, as always, the mystics and fantasists hijacked the game. The "fantasy fiction" that swamp the book shops and libraries are jammed with endless regurgitations of Tolkien or proselytising on behalf of the authors' religion-of-choice.
Of course "speculative science" fiction itself is in danger of generating its own monsters. "Cult" film and TV shows produce an extreme worship of anything beginning with the word "Star" (Trek, Wars, Gate, etc.) with more and more Hollywood producers jumping on the money bandwagon. The "science" is replaced with even more fantastical impossibilities, but they still can be fun . . .
But back to the mirror to reality. In Alastair Reynolds' book "Blue Remembered Earth" he paints an evocative view of humanity from the view of one of his protagonists: "Consider all the inanimate matter in the universe, all the dumb atoms, all the mindless molecules, all the oblivious dust grains and pebbles and rocks and iceballs and worlds and stars, all the unthinking galaxies and super clusters, wheeling through the oblivious time-haunted, mega parsecs of the cosmic supervoid. In all that immensity, she had somehow contrived to be a human being, a microscopically tiny, cosmically insignificant bundle of information processing systems, wired to a mind more structurally complex than the Milky Way itself, maybe even more complex than the rest of the whole damn universe".
Quite. But then with a true sci-fi writer's sense of the absurd, his character is informed: "Please also be aware that you may experience altered emotional states while your neural chemistry is stabilising. Some of these states may manifest as religious or spiritual insights, including feelings of exaggerated significance. Again, this is no cause for distress".
Feelings of exaggerated significance. Ha Ha. Doesn't this found familiar?
Sunday 27 September 2015
Sunday 20 September 2015
Interlude: Short Story
Reluctantly, the Cognoscenti turned their attention again to the pressing problem of Planet Earth. Pressing, not because that world held life in abundance. Not because of that world's levels of internecine warfare. But because the planet itself was special. Of a certain size: not too small to retain an atmosphere to encourage respiratory evolution and suffer protection from high-energy stellar radiation excesses; not too large to create crushing gravitational forces that prevent the development of complex but fragile organic evolution.
It more importantly possessed, through an unusual quirk of interplanetary mechanics, a moon that was an amazing one-sixth the size of its primary. It helped to "slop" the oceans about, encourage a bit of biochemical diversity in the early stages of the system's existence, and provide a bit of added protection from Oort cometary impacts when indigenous cellular life forms were at their most fragile ("added" in the sense that Jupiter and Saturn and the other Outer gas giants were already doing a sterling job).
The problem affecting Earth, thought the Cognoscenti, was accelerating. Far faster than any previous planetary timescales allowed. This world had been around for four and a half BILLION years. Multi-cellular life erupted around two billion years ago. Dinosaurs: 250 mere-million years ago. Primates: around 60 million. "Intelligent" life: a tiny fraction of all that; a small number of thousands of years. But the so-called intelligent life had not been a problem . . . well, until now.
The planet was imminently reaching a "tipping point". In a scant 100 years, a brief nano-second of Earth's geological time, it would succumb to a runaway effect that would change it's surface; all its land and water and air mass, for ever. Either it would become, in a frighteningly short period of time, a dead airless rock like Mars or an inhospitable acidic zone like Venus. Either way, the memory of an interesting 2 billion year evolutionary history would be wiped out.
The moral problem was keeping the Cognoscenti up at nights (or its equivalent). It was clear that the planet had reached a new epoch; what the locals had started to call the Anthropocene Epoch. That the latest dominant species was to blame for the world's imminent demise was not in question. Top of the food chain, they were now breeding exponentially. On the positive side, they were capable of building complex structures that dwarfed their world's arthropods (compare a termite hill to a skyscraper). Most significant to a galactic perspective was their successful landing on their Moon: such a feat was rare in the history of all intelligent species. But . . . the same clever monkeys were building many, many machines that relocated carbon into their surface environment in quantities that the planet had never, in all its countless millions of years, experienced before.
The moral conundrum was this: if "Goldilocks" planets were rare in the galaxy (e.g. the "just right amount of" size, gravity, interplanetary protection, liquid water, complex amino acids, heavy elements, etc. to make Basic Life), then the incidence and frequency of Intelligent Life was rarer.
The Cognoscenti had access to the histories of thousands of interplanetary, and sometimes interstellar, civilisations in the galaxy. Unfortunately, as the galaxy is itself around 12 BILLION years old and 100,000 light-years in diameter, all of these intelligent civilisations existed in a relative blink of an alien eyeball, and most definitely not in the same time frame. (The Cognoscenti picture a four dimensional galactic pinwheel, rotating very quickly through 12 billion years: little intense flashes of light around the disc represent the rise and fall of all these wonderful civilisations -- but, tragically, never at the same period of time.)
Having access to all the galaxy's civilisation's information (which is never lost; it just radiates outwards at the speed of light long after its owners are gone) the Cognoscenti see the solution.
It is an elegant solution. Moreover, it is a kind solution.
The Cognoscenti's analysis determines that the intelligent, highly industrial primates that currently dominate the surface areas of the planet possess an unshakable faith in the nature of Reality. Around 95% of all these thinking primates absolutely believe in the existence of an omniscient, omnipresent, loving God from whom their entire existence is derived. The Cognoscenti have no experience of such Deities. All their knowledge has been distilled from the radiated but attenuated information fields of past civilisations. However the Cognoscenti understand that the quantum Observations of past civilisations have collectively shaped the current Galactic Reality. They can do no less than acquiesce to the demands of the latest Intelligent Species in the galaxy.
Having decided, the Cognoscenti act.
Overnight, as the world moves in its rotation, 6 billion 650 million clever monkeys, together with their offspring, pets, icons, temples, memes and architectures, perish painlessly.
Upon the remaining 35,000,000 so-called atheists, the Cognoscenti take pity. After all, the remaining humans have no way of benefitting from an eternity at the Right Hand of a Caring God. Thus, each human is purged of all the genetic disorders that plagued these clever monkeys over hundreds of thousands of years of environmental and genetic mutancy. Each human is granted an extended, pain-free thousand-year lifespan in return for the responsible stewardship of the many and varied economies and ecologies of planet Earth. And, of course, freed from their evolutionary, biological and religious demands of mindless (and environmentally expensive) reproduction, they are able to pursue a sensible, non-competitive assimilation of the resources of their solar system. Eventually, the Cognoscenti anticipated, the humans might adapt to the concept of extreme, non-biological time and make their mark; become another marvelous twinkle on the four-dimensional tapestry of the galaxy.
Having judged, the Cognoscenti were relieved of their burden. And satisfied. It was, after all, a most compassionate solution.
It more importantly possessed, through an unusual quirk of interplanetary mechanics, a moon that was an amazing one-sixth the size of its primary. It helped to "slop" the oceans about, encourage a bit of biochemical diversity in the early stages of the system's existence, and provide a bit of added protection from Oort cometary impacts when indigenous cellular life forms were at their most fragile ("added" in the sense that Jupiter and Saturn and the other Outer gas giants were already doing a sterling job).
The problem affecting Earth, thought the Cognoscenti, was accelerating. Far faster than any previous planetary timescales allowed. This world had been around for four and a half BILLION years. Multi-cellular life erupted around two billion years ago. Dinosaurs: 250 mere-million years ago. Primates: around 60 million. "Intelligent" life: a tiny fraction of all that; a small number of thousands of years. But the so-called intelligent life had not been a problem . . . well, until now.
The planet was imminently reaching a "tipping point". In a scant 100 years, a brief nano-second of Earth's geological time, it would succumb to a runaway effect that would change it's surface; all its land and water and air mass, for ever. Either it would become, in a frighteningly short period of time, a dead airless rock like Mars or an inhospitable acidic zone like Venus. Either way, the memory of an interesting 2 billion year evolutionary history would be wiped out.
The moral problem was keeping the Cognoscenti up at nights (or its equivalent). It was clear that the planet had reached a new epoch; what the locals had started to call the Anthropocene Epoch. That the latest dominant species was to blame for the world's imminent demise was not in question. Top of the food chain, they were now breeding exponentially. On the positive side, they were capable of building complex structures that dwarfed their world's arthropods (compare a termite hill to a skyscraper). Most significant to a galactic perspective was their successful landing on their Moon: such a feat was rare in the history of all intelligent species. But . . . the same clever monkeys were building many, many machines that relocated carbon into their surface environment in quantities that the planet had never, in all its countless millions of years, experienced before.
The moral conundrum was this: if "Goldilocks" planets were rare in the galaxy (e.g. the "just right amount of" size, gravity, interplanetary protection, liquid water, complex amino acids, heavy elements, etc. to make Basic Life), then the incidence and frequency of Intelligent Life was rarer.
The Cognoscenti had access to the histories of thousands of interplanetary, and sometimes interstellar, civilisations in the galaxy. Unfortunately, as the galaxy is itself around 12 BILLION years old and 100,000 light-years in diameter, all of these intelligent civilisations existed in a relative blink of an alien eyeball, and most definitely not in the same time frame. (The Cognoscenti picture a four dimensional galactic pinwheel, rotating very quickly through 12 billion years: little intense flashes of light around the disc represent the rise and fall of all these wonderful civilisations -- but, tragically, never at the same period of time.)
Having access to all the galaxy's civilisation's information (which is never lost; it just radiates outwards at the speed of light long after its owners are gone) the Cognoscenti see the solution.
It is an elegant solution. Moreover, it is a kind solution.
The Cognoscenti's analysis determines that the intelligent, highly industrial primates that currently dominate the surface areas of the planet possess an unshakable faith in the nature of Reality. Around 95% of all these thinking primates absolutely believe in the existence of an omniscient, omnipresent, loving God from whom their entire existence is derived. The Cognoscenti have no experience of such Deities. All their knowledge has been distilled from the radiated but attenuated information fields of past civilisations. However the Cognoscenti understand that the quantum Observations of past civilisations have collectively shaped the current Galactic Reality. They can do no less than acquiesce to the demands of the latest Intelligent Species in the galaxy.
Having decided, the Cognoscenti act.
Overnight, as the world moves in its rotation, 6 billion 650 million clever monkeys, together with their offspring, pets, icons, temples, memes and architectures, perish painlessly.
Upon the remaining 35,000,000 so-called atheists, the Cognoscenti take pity. After all, the remaining humans have no way of benefitting from an eternity at the Right Hand of a Caring God. Thus, each human is purged of all the genetic disorders that plagued these clever monkeys over hundreds of thousands of years of environmental and genetic mutancy. Each human is granted an extended, pain-free thousand-year lifespan in return for the responsible stewardship of the many and varied economies and ecologies of planet Earth. And, of course, freed from their evolutionary, biological and religious demands of mindless (and environmentally expensive) reproduction, they are able to pursue a sensible, non-competitive assimilation of the resources of their solar system. Eventually, the Cognoscenti anticipated, the humans might adapt to the concept of extreme, non-biological time and make their mark; become another marvelous twinkle on the four-dimensional tapestry of the galaxy.
Having judged, the Cognoscenti were relieved of their burden. And satisfied. It was, after all, a most compassionate solution.
Sunday 13 September 2015
Chapter 7: Civilisation
After ten or so thousand years of development, homo sapiens became the dominant species on planet Earth. Being a bisexual (in the original sense) species, like most of their mammalian cousins, procreation was divided into strict biological roles. And the survival of the species was totally predicated on the optimization of those roles.
Because of accidents of environment or genetic fortitude our species gradually became "top of the food chain". Was it was because of the male ability to fashion crude weapons to kill and secure food; their evolutionary strength to protect their chosen mates? Or was it because of the females' abilities to select those mates; to have the babies that ensured the future of the species, as early as possible after puberty before they themselves died? Whatever: the genes survive! This is all that matters to any long-lived species. The difference in this case is that the homo sapiens had an edge -- intelligence.
Gradually, as Nation-states begat Empire-states, a rather large percentage of any given population had time to breathe between the animal attacks, the viral attacks, and the various wars that their leaders felt obliged to conduct on behalf of the common good. These exceptions eventually created scholars and artisans and engineers and alchemists and experimenters. At home there arose stable domesticity and friendship and mutual support between families. Together this new race of Timmies escaped their wells, learned to cooperate, not only with their sexual partners to keep the race alive but to cooperate with neighbours for the benefit of all.
With the science of materials came the wheel and other conveniences.Whether it be by chewing rawhide to make protective covers for your baby, or by endlessly banging away at a piece of stone to make a sharper, more penetrative tool to kill and skin the most beneficial animal to feed your family. The end result was collaborative. And necessary for the future of each little tribe.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where we are today! From small, interdependent tribes to technologically superior species. So . . . are we Civilised?
Good question. On the one hand, our species has achieved a technological progression far beyond any other species that ever existed on our planet: tools and metallurgy and huge structures to live in; guns and atom bombs to deter our more aggressive neighbours; medicines and plague-defeaters to defeat an early death; interplanetary travel to broaden our experience; harnessed energy sources such as petroleum and sunlight and chemical batteries to improve the quality of life; computers and communication devices to widen our social networks. An entire pantheon of health and comfort unsurpassed in the entire history of homo sapiens' existence.
On the other hand . . . . we so bloody much resemble the primitive, selfish, tribal, ignorant, grasping acquisitive, unbelievably moronic attributes of our monkey ancestors that it would give a careful, observant, rational man or woman cause to burst into tears. From international wars to obtain territory, resources or prestige to the everyday simple selfishness of individuals: of putting one's airplane seat back to gain a modicum of comfort while halving the available space of the hapless person behind; gaining "ownership" of a set of sunbeds at a holiday hotel then disappearing for hours so as to deny anyone else the same pleasure; of raiding the local store of new produce to "put in the freezer" thereby denying neighbours access to the same produce; of blocking the local road with one's family's vehicles with no care for the needs of their neighbours; of loud music or domestic rows late at night; of dispersal of rubbish into the local environment; of placing personal clothing on adjacent train seats; the list is endless.
Is it any wonder that the devout would rather believe they are the product of a omniscient, caring deity rather than the latest iteration of a tribe of tree-owning, bellowing baboons? It begs the question: should the human race be relieved of their illusion that they are somehow "divine"; or should every single human be forced to believe they are just "clever monkeys".
Two questions emerge:
* in a religiously-dominated civilisation does being an atheist automatically make you a sociopath? Should your life be ended because you fail their "belief" test?
* in a rationally-dominated society does being a sociopath automatically deny you the benefits of that civilisation? Should your life be ended because you fail their "belief" test?
In both societies the concept of the "common good" is paramount. The greatest good for the greatest number. The definition of "good" is mercurial, but the point is this: for all societies that have exploded past the village level there are inordinately complex population pressures that could threaten to bring down that society's "house of cards". For that reason, the human race had to develop a tool called POLITICS.
Because of accidents of environment or genetic fortitude our species gradually became "top of the food chain". Was it was because of the male ability to fashion crude weapons to kill and secure food; their evolutionary strength to protect their chosen mates? Or was it because of the females' abilities to select those mates; to have the babies that ensured the future of the species, as early as possible after puberty before they themselves died? Whatever: the genes survive! This is all that matters to any long-lived species. The difference in this case is that the homo sapiens had an edge -- intelligence.
Gradually, as Nation-states begat Empire-states, a rather large percentage of any given population had time to breathe between the animal attacks, the viral attacks, and the various wars that their leaders felt obliged to conduct on behalf of the common good. These exceptions eventually created scholars and artisans and engineers and alchemists and experimenters. At home there arose stable domesticity and friendship and mutual support between families. Together this new race of Timmies escaped their wells, learned to cooperate, not only with their sexual partners to keep the race alive but to cooperate with neighbours for the benefit of all.
With the science of materials came the wheel and other conveniences.Whether it be by chewing rawhide to make protective covers for your baby, or by endlessly banging away at a piece of stone to make a sharper, more penetrative tool to kill and skin the most beneficial animal to feed your family. The end result was collaborative. And necessary for the future of each little tribe.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where we are today! From small, interdependent tribes to technologically superior species. So . . . are we Civilised?
Good question. On the one hand, our species has achieved a technological progression far beyond any other species that ever existed on our planet: tools and metallurgy and huge structures to live in; guns and atom bombs to deter our more aggressive neighbours; medicines and plague-defeaters to defeat an early death; interplanetary travel to broaden our experience; harnessed energy sources such as petroleum and sunlight and chemical batteries to improve the quality of life; computers and communication devices to widen our social networks. An entire pantheon of health and comfort unsurpassed in the entire history of homo sapiens' existence.
On the other hand . . . . we so bloody much resemble the primitive, selfish, tribal, ignorant, grasping acquisitive, unbelievably moronic attributes of our monkey ancestors that it would give a careful, observant, rational man or woman cause to burst into tears. From international wars to obtain territory, resources or prestige to the everyday simple selfishness of individuals: of putting one's airplane seat back to gain a modicum of comfort while halving the available space of the hapless person behind; gaining "ownership" of a set of sunbeds at a holiday hotel then disappearing for hours so as to deny anyone else the same pleasure; of raiding the local store of new produce to "put in the freezer" thereby denying neighbours access to the same produce; of blocking the local road with one's family's vehicles with no care for the needs of their neighbours; of loud music or domestic rows late at night; of dispersal of rubbish into the local environment; of placing personal clothing on adjacent train seats; the list is endless.
Is it any wonder that the devout would rather believe they are the product of a omniscient, caring deity rather than the latest iteration of a tribe of tree-owning, bellowing baboons? It begs the question: should the human race be relieved of their illusion that they are somehow "divine"; or should every single human be forced to believe they are just "clever monkeys".
Two questions emerge:
* in a religiously-dominated civilisation does being an atheist automatically make you a sociopath? Should your life be ended because you fail their "belief" test?
* in a rationally-dominated society does being a sociopath automatically deny you the benefits of that civilisation? Should your life be ended because you fail their "belief" test?
In both societies the concept of the "common good" is paramount. The greatest good for the greatest number. The definition of "good" is mercurial, but the point is this: for all societies that have exploded past the village level there are inordinately complex population pressures that could threaten to bring down that society's "house of cards". For that reason, the human race had to develop a tool called POLITICS.
Sunday 6 September 2015
Chapter 8: Politics
Politics happens when a group of intelligent primates form a community. Politics also happens when communities manage economies: of resources, of talents, of trading, of currencies, of people.
Imagine a small village of around 100 people. Not difficult: there were thousands of them scattered around medieval Europe. Ignore, for the moment, that such places were subject to macro-economic feudal systems. Any such village was inevitably subject to the problem of scarce resources; food, metals, land, medicines, public utilities . . . They would develop means of deriving the best from artisans (wheelwrights, farmers, bakers, smiths, doctors, etc.) for the rest of the community by common agreement from the rest of that community as best they could.
There would, statistically, also be a village idiot; an unfortunate produced from ill-advised mating, genetic disorder or physical accident. There would also be a half dozen persons of varying degrees of sociopathic tendencies. Such a village would eventually elect a sheriff and a magistrate (or priest) to deal with the disturbances such dysfunctional behaviors generate.
Now -- multiply this village by 1,000 or a metropolis of 1,000,000. Expand the varieties of resources that need to be managed; of talents that need to be managed; of personal expectations that need to be managed; and the statistical likelihood that our village idiots will bedevil the best of intentions. Everyone will want a say on how the resources are to be distributed, how the miscreants are to be controlled, and how, of course, everyone gets the best deal while paying the least.
And thus we have Politics. And elected Politicians to create the Policies. And Laws to enforce those policies. And Administrators to encode those laws into Regulations. And Lawyers to interpret the regulations. And Judges and Courts to consider those interpretations. And enough Public Servants to enforce all the laws and rulings on a bewildered population constantly and consistently.
Somewhere along the line, in a funny-movie speeded-up acceleration of our 100-strong village to a 7 Billion world-spanning sophisticated human race, we have arrived at a complex, global, expensive, unpopular and deeply divisive political Machine that boasts more public servants and politicians and hangers-on and other miscellaneous parasites than there are "wheelwrights, farmers, bakers, smiths, doctors, etc.". The mundane mechanics of self-organisation are replaced with ideologies of control. In order to deal with the potential of tens of thousands of dissidents, or even sociopaths, there evolved a need for GOVERNMENT.
Imagine a small village of around 100 people. Not difficult: there were thousands of them scattered around medieval Europe. Ignore, for the moment, that such places were subject to macro-economic feudal systems. Any such village was inevitably subject to the problem of scarce resources; food, metals, land, medicines, public utilities . . . They would develop means of deriving the best from artisans (wheelwrights, farmers, bakers, smiths, doctors, etc.) for the rest of the community by common agreement from the rest of that community as best they could.
There would, statistically, also be a village idiot; an unfortunate produced from ill-advised mating, genetic disorder or physical accident. There would also be a half dozen persons of varying degrees of sociopathic tendencies. Such a village would eventually elect a sheriff and a magistrate (or priest) to deal with the disturbances such dysfunctional behaviors generate.
Now -- multiply this village by 1,000 or a metropolis of 1,000,000. Expand the varieties of resources that need to be managed; of talents that need to be managed; of personal expectations that need to be managed; and the statistical likelihood that our village idiots will bedevil the best of intentions. Everyone will want a say on how the resources are to be distributed, how the miscreants are to be controlled, and how, of course, everyone gets the best deal while paying the least.
And thus we have Politics. And elected Politicians to create the Policies. And Laws to enforce those policies. And Administrators to encode those laws into Regulations. And Lawyers to interpret the regulations. And Judges and Courts to consider those interpretations. And enough Public Servants to enforce all the laws and rulings on a bewildered population constantly and consistently.
Somewhere along the line, in a funny-movie speeded-up acceleration of our 100-strong village to a 7 Billion world-spanning sophisticated human race, we have arrived at a complex, global, expensive, unpopular and deeply divisive political Machine that boasts more public servants and politicians and hangers-on and other miscellaneous parasites than there are "wheelwrights, farmers, bakers, smiths, doctors, etc.". The mundane mechanics of self-organisation are replaced with ideologies of control. In order to deal with the potential of tens of thousands of dissidents, or even sociopaths, there evolved a need for GOVERNMENT.
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