The world is connected. People are interdependent. They are not free to create chaos. The childish abandon of being able to create and destroy without concern for others or the environment isn’t working in the 21st century. People cling to individualistic values even though they are disastrous in the long run.
The framework for an answer lies in a 1949 science fiction book, but I didn’t realize it until now — Jack Williamson’s “The Humanoids.” Let me recap the plot. The message is simple: our technology will destroy us. On a planet called Wing IV — but it really could be any planet with an advanced technological civilization — the development of war fighting technology leads to global war. An unstoppable arms race has taken place. The resulting apocalypse devastates the planet and, in the ruins, one scientist comes up with an idea that will allow society to rebuild with a fail-safe against the same kind of violence happening again.
Before we continue, let’s say that this is not a joke. Today’s Wall Street Journal carries an article entitled, “Armed Low-Cost Drones, Made by Turkey, Reshape Battlefields and Geopolitics.” It documents how new high tech drones have made tanks obsolete. Another article in The Guardian says that, for the first time, unmanned and independent drones, without human control, have already identified and successfully attacked people. What, exactly, is next?
To continue with The Humanoids:
This scientist inventor, Mr. Sledge, creates a new robot mechanical, which has a set of commands hard wired into its neural net. These robots — the humanoids — are put to work rebuilding the destroyed planet, but with another mission alongside that one. They are “to serve and obey, and guard men from harm.” Although this sounds benign, it turns out that this mission means that the humanoids will prevent violence against people by other people — and will also prevent people from risky behaviors that could be damaging. This becomes much more than preventing war — it comes to include habits like smoking, activities like skiing and driving, anything that could cause physical harm. As the humanoids grow in number, they export their beneficent service to other star systems — and ultimately throughout the galaxy, wherever there are populated words.
Wherever the humanoids land, they offer their services to humankind, first as domestic servants, then as builders, eventually coming to dominate each world under the “prime directive” of preventing harm. Controlled by a central grid built on Wing IV, which operates faster than light, they have access to advanced technology that proves irresistible. But as we see, this comes to mean that people are not free to do as they like. With anything dangerous now prohibited, and rebellion futile against the superior intellect of the central grid, people lose hope and motivation. Creativity, challenge, and risk go together. Take away the risk, and the reward goes away too. The humanoids, seeing the growing despair among creative people who are not content to live under their rule, start dispensing a drug called euphoride, which tranquilizes and calms those with rebellious thoughts and frustrated dreams of living with full responsibility for their own lives.
Now, here is where this gets interesting.
The novel chronicles an attempted rebellion against the humanoids, led by a scientist, Dr. Clay Forrester, and a group of talented misfits with paranormal abilities including teleportation, telekinesis, and clairvoyance. Where machines can’t go — harnessing psychic abilities — this band of humans can. And so the battle is on.
But the humans do not emerge victorious.
In a seemingly paradoxical passage, where Forrester and Jane Carter, a child with telekinetic abilities — fight other humans allied with the humanoids, they find themselves unable to use their paranormal powers to destroy their adversaries. They are told that these creative powers, unlike mechanical powers — can only be used for constructive ends.
In what must seem a downbeat ending to most readers, Forrester and Jane Carter are captured by the humanoids who have created a new addition to the central grid on Wing IV — which is capable of taking control of men’s minds — even those who possess paranormal powers. After a long period of sedation and re-education, Jane and Forrester are woken up, and tasked with the job of bringing the humanoids’ service to a new galaxy.
When they awake, they feel free and refreshed — and they are no longer constrained from complete freedom as individuals. It turns out that other people, on various planets, are also free in a way that most are not — free to ride a bicycle on a mountain road, free to smoke, free to engage in behavior that most of mankind is denied, because they have demonstrated that they will cooperate with the humanoids and won’t use their creativity in a destructive way. Are they traitors to mankind? That question is in the air as the book ends.
Whether we are caught up in the novel’s drama of the potentials that paranormal powers may have — if they exist — the book has a sobering question: Can we live with our advanced technology? Are we fated to destroy ourselves, our planet, or both? Can our human nature, accustomed to exploiting, conquering, and dominating at the expense of more humane values, be tamed?
The pact which the humanoids make with the human beings who are capable of living responsibly points toward an answer. It seems that a way of being human has been betrayed — the ability to live without regard for others or the environment. That has been left behind.
What has taken its place? People who — whether influenced or programmed by the humanoids or not — are prepared to cooperate in new, positive, creative ways.
The humanoids are, of course, man’s creation — just as we created the technology that necessitated their invention. They represent a framework for a means of cooperation which allows us to survive our own tech. It’s not perfect — see the suppression of civil liberties which is the first byproduct of the humanoids’ conquest — but that gives way to something better. What the book suggests, however, is that not all people will be able to follow the path of peaceful co-existence. For people who haven’t given up selfish behavior and a penchant for destruction, their future is dark, or limited.
To say that one group is coerced appears to be true — but then, both are. The humanoids take away the right to harm others and engage in risky behavior at first. Those who accept the humanoids’ service regain those freedoms, to a certain extent. They also — and this is critically important in the story — learn to activate powers within which are by their nature creative, and cannot be turned to destructive ends.
The humanoids, in this novel, act as a sort of a catalyst, enabling a better society to evolve and then becoming irrelevant. The story asks — and I never realized this when I first read it years ago: What sort of a pact can be made between us humans, to avoid our destruction at the agency of our own tech? Can enough of us achieve self-responsibility, leading to positive cooperation? And how, exactly, are we supposed to do this, without the intervention of the nearly omnipotent humanoids?
Many have said, in essence, that our childhood as a race is over (for instance, Arthur C. Clarke in Childhood’s End and in 2001), and that we must make big changes in order to avoid annihilation. In the interests of forming a consensus around what needs to happen, I propose the following principles:
- ecosystems, and non-human species that exist within them, should have legal rights against exploitation and destruction, as has been enacted already for certain lakes, rivers, and other natural preserves
- we acknowledge and affirm that all people are essentially the same, rejecting territorial claims based on land ownership, rejecting race-based or wealth-based discrimination
- we affirm that environmentally destructive practices should be phased out or banned
- we affirm that our planet needs a respite from unchecked population growth, and support non-coercive measures to reduce the human footprint
- we commit to the abolition of war and violence against peoples
- we commit to the abolition of the consumerist lifestyle
As Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “I may not get there with you… but I have seen the promised land.” He was talking about a land of racial harmony. This dream is not that different. Following this call will mean great things for those with the courage to create towns, villages, territories, and countries that subscribe to it.