Scavengers Reign
Life, uh, finds a way
Last week was Spring Break for the University of Houston, and so I had another week without class. I want to take the opportunity to follow up on my article about Station Eleven by discussing another show I’ve recently finished watching on Max. Scavengers Reign got a lot of buzz when it came out. It’s a stunningly-animated sci-fi series following the crew of a freighter spaceship marooned on a lush, strange planet. There are some direct themes about space exploration that I thought were interesting, such as the need for strong emergency communication/coordination protocols and the number of people required to build a sustainable settlement (as well as how technology changes this number), but this show also tackles two more abstract Futures concepts I want to dig deeper into.
Making the Familiar Strange
The planet Vesta is filled with a wide assortment of life. This life shows the same patterns and complexity of life on Earth: symbiosis, parasitism, superorganisms, social organization and superorganisms, and cycles of growth, predation, and decay. One of the effects this has is to help drive home how strange and varied life on our own planet is, with all its variety and adaptations. Because it’s the first time we as viewers are seeing these specific interactions, they seem fresh to us in a way that bees pollinating flowers, etc, never can; this detachment from the specific contingencies of today is a key Futures skill A few specific observations I pulled from the show along these lines: electrogenesis is a cool bridge between the living and mechanical worlds; even observing existing natural systems can dramatically change them; co-opting the behavior of the host is the most terrifying form of parasitism.
From an even more distant vantage point, is life even special at all? Is it more “real” or “advanced” than stones or a river? After all, if you deconstruct hard enough, it’s all just matter and energy moving around. Complexity theory is the branch of science that deals with this question - why are there things, and are some things really more complex than other things?1 Fred Spier lays out the basics of this discipline: the amount of complexity possible in a system depends on the number of different building blocks available, the nature of their sequencing, and the number/kinds of possible connections between them2. Any given type of complexity relies on a pretty narrow band of physical constraints, but at higher levels of complexity systems can artificially maintain these “Goldilocks” conditions3. The basic levels of complexity are the non-living natural world, life, and culture. One way to measure the complexity is to think about the energy flow/use per unit of mass4. This level of detachment helps people shake free of anthropocentrism and more properly consider post-human futures5.
Being Human
The other (interrelated) theme is what exactly it means to be human. Some of this is by analogy: watching the complex relationships between life on Vesta raises the question of whether we as humans are the right unit of analysis. In one direction, are we more like a superorganism, where our individual ideas and wills are subordinate to the structures we build for coordinating action (religion, the state, book clubs, etc)? Maybe this isn’t just a human organism, but something that spans the whole planet, as the Gaia Hypothesis proposes. In the other direction, ideas like Internal Family Systems think of the individual - the unit of experienced consciousness - as a collection of independent actors trying to work together. Further, are we more than just our human parts? The human body is host to an extensive microbiome, from eyebrow mites6 to a few pounds of bacteria that can influence everything from our digestion to our mental health; is this part of “us” or something separate?
Following this thread further, our technology shapes us and affects our humanity, even before we stick Elon’s dirty probes into our brains. Eyeglasses seem like a trivial technology, but extending the ability to read, write, and do other detailed work into later years dramatically changes what people could do for themselves; in the ancient world, educated slaves were often used to fill this need for wealthy people7. The development of the current generation of AI, with its ability to write sensible text, come up with creative ideas, etc, will continue to shift the boundaries of what we consider human activities (things like editing may become automated for most authors), but also the boundaries of “me + machine” will continue to shift. Hopefully we don’t lose ourselves in the systems we create.
Last, stripped from an Earth context, some of the basics of humanity’s impact are visible. We have been so successful because of our adaptability, as mentioned earlier, but also because of our persistence and determination. Moving to a new planet won’t change this; we will bring growth and imbalance and murder with us along with art and ingenuity wherever we go in the universe. Further, if we do cross the boundary with AI and create beings that are able to build and follow their own values and goals8, what kind of wisdom and humility will it take from us to accept those beings as valid agents in the universe and live harmoniously with them? All these perspectives can help us not only imagine futures radically different from our present, but also work on preparing people for the changes needed to live in better futures.
Or, as the great poet said, “can’t believe how strange it is to be anything at all”.
For example, in DNA, 4 basic components are arranged in a one-dimensional, directed sequence.
For example, humans have a band of temperature for survival much smaller than what exists on Earth, but have spread across six/seven continents through the development of shelter, clothing, air conditioning, etc.
By this measure, air travel, nuclear submarines, and spaceships are pretty complex.
This is something Jim Dator often discusses in his Transformation archetype and related discussion about artilects etc.
The first five minutes of this documentary are a good primer.
For a view of how this worked in the context of the New Testament, I’ve heard good things about Candida Moss’s upcoming book.
Or, alternately, if we meet non-human sapient life in our journeys.