Vijayendra Mohanty

There was a time when people who wrote books did so in seclusion, in cabins by the river. They talked about their work with only a select few and they discussed the actual details of what they were writing with an even smaller number of people. When they were done writing their story — a narrative comprising tens of thousands of words — they went about the task of getting it published. This involved negotiations that ran into months, sometimes years.

At the end of the process, there was a rather fat book. When it fell into the hands of a reader, it became an important part of his/her life for the duration of time that it took to finish the tome (and perhaps for a short while afterwards as well). Some books do become lifelong friends. But back in the day, in a less connected age, such friendships were pretty personal.

These days, a person’s love for a book (or a fiction franchise such as a television series) often defines them. There are all manner of clubs online where fans of shows or books (or even particular characters) gather and talk about the things they love. They discuss plots, argue over the merits of fictional events, debate what one thing means compared to the other. Often, they also — and this is what this essay is about — disagree with the story.

I find this curious because it has a lot to do with the way stories are told in the connected age. Writers blog about their writing progress, entire publications devote themselves to the task of trading rumours about forthcoming stories and what shape they might take in light of readers’ hopes and expectations. These enterprises thrive in the aforementioned culture of audience involvement. A culture where the reader/viewer is allowed to be part of the formerly solitary process of creating a work of art.

As someone who both reads and writes (and likes to think he is read) I wonder if readers should have a say.

I believe art should be arrogant. I believe that there is something to be said in favour of respecting the storyteller’s vision in its totality. That readers should surrender themselves to the writer’s / director’s / producer’s vision of the story. Instead, what we have are increasing instances of readers being asked what direction a story should take. We have audience opinion being taken into account when deciding whether a character in a television series lives or dies. We have viewer polls to decide if a story deserves to continue.

On one level, these are market pressures that can’t be escaped in a world where the success of mass media storytelling depends on acceptability and fan support. But on another level, it is about pandering to the whims of the entitled reader.

I recently read someone well-known (can’t remember name, can’t find reference either) say that ‘if readers knew what they needed, they would be writers’.

Feedback is not a bad thing. But more than one genius creator has thrown reader feedback to the wind in favour of pursuing his own agenda. Only a few days ago, the social web seemed to be full of outrage over a particular scene in the popular television series Game of Thrones. Outraged viewers were informing everyone how they will stop rooting for a particular character and how they might even stop watching the show. Mind you, all this was in reaction to events happening in a fictional world.

While the level of involvement these fans (short for fanatics, in case you didn’t know) is admirable and will make any creator’s day, I am not sure if such enthusiasm should actually be allowed to decide the tone of an ongoing narrative. While Game of Thrones producers consciously stay away from fan debates on the web, I keep fearing that the rather impatient fandom of BBC’s Sherlock series might force the hand of the show’s producers and end up making sure that the seasons that follow will not be up to the mark.

Think about it. How effective might Chekov’s short stories have been if a horde of ‘fans’ had crowded around his desk screaming “OMG OMG! Love your work! Can’t wait for the next one. PLEASE HURRY UP!”

Or consider this: If fans were to be allowed to vote on which character in Game of Thrones ‘deserves’ to die next, how much better would the story be as a result of it? Most of the appeal of the series lies in the fact that Martin’s imagination has created an unjust, unpredictable, and shocking world. We love it because it hurts us. Would a collective decision regarding the way it ought to work allow it to even live? If such a vote doesn’t outright kill GoT, it will surely turn it into a world devoid of the magic that has come to define it.

In keeping with our quest for a one-size-fits-all solution, we have now reached a stage where we mindlessly democratise everything. ‘People power’, we are led to believe, can successfully make up for authorial voice and individual creativity. In an atmosphere such as this, what has also come to pass is that the author is no longer trusted with the story he has decided to tell.

If Joss Whedon is telling an Avengers story, I want to hear it exactly as he would tell it, no matter who dies. If Steven Moffat has an answer to the question of how Sherlock Holmes survived the fall, I want to know his answer and not those proposed by nameless fans on the web. The one who is telling the story has a bigger picture in mind and those who are watching (or reading) it, don’t. If you are a reader and you think that a story you are reading isn’t going the way it should, stop reading it and write the story you want to read instead. Don’t second guess the choices of the person who is telling you the story. You may not see it yet, but the storyteller has a plan.

I have been a longtime fan of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and recently went back to the roots and watched “The Original Series” as well. One thought that I find myself returning again and again to was that barring some cosmetic futurism, there really isn’t anything futuristic about the franchise. Star Trek is more about Utopia than it is about the future. And the difference between the two is not something we should pass by in silence. Not all futures are going to be nice. Some of them will turn out to be nightmares. If you are having trouble digesting that, spend a minute thinking about what people in the last century imagined the 21st century will be. End of war was one theme. Commonplace space travel was another. Domestic robotic servants filled these optimistic dreams as well.

Though Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future was one of peace and prosperity, he gave these to Earth alone. All of Earth’s troubles he hurled into space. Racism, religious bigotry, superstition, gender bias and a host of other social ills were now to be found on planets on the far side of the Alpha Quadrant. Roddenberry, and those who inherited Star Trek from him, sent their heroes to these places with a message of civilisation and enlightenment.

Earthman's burden much?

Don’t get me wrong. I love the Prime Directive. Star Fleet is not supposed to interfere with the workings of pre-warp civilisations – planets which have not yet achieved the ability to travel across inter-stellar space at the speed of light. But this seemingly wise strategy only serves to emphasise the unstated superiority of those aboard the Starship Enterprise. They shake their heads and go, “Pity these poor fools. They know not what they do. Alas! We can not do anything to help them. Our high ideals stop us from interfering.”

The values embodied by Star Fleet are advertised as being representative of Earth in a general way. Though Star Trek episodes hardly ever deal with life on Earth, we are told that technology has erased war, famine, and misery from this planet. It also seems that in the Trek future, all cultural diversity has been erased from Earth. What appears on the surface to be a unified Earth culture, is actually a patently Western one. Am I ranting? Perhaps. But there is a danger here – the idea that in the absence of conflict and scarcity, the culture humanity will fall back on by default is Western.

Also, even though Star Fleet seems to be limited to the Alpha Quadrant of the galaxy, almost every other alien civilisation they encounter seems to be humanoid. Not only that, they all speak English. Even if the communication between them is happening by way of universal translators, a measure of linguistic difficulty would definitely be in order for the stories to be more credible.

Despite being a die hard Trekker, I have to say that when faced with the choice of episodes from all of TNG, it is slim pickings for genuine science fiction in a sea of moral fables.

Think, for a moment, about your condition — the human condition. You exist in the middle of eternity and infinity. You are somewhere inside a stretch of time that, for all practical purposes, does not have a beginning or an end. You are inside a stretch of space that has no known edges. These abstractions called time and space are all we have to define ourselves.

The other curious thing about being human is that we can’t let these abstractions be all that defines us. They are too large and too maddening to be of any use to our limited imaginations. So we make things up — we litter these abstractions with markers so we may make sense of the world we live in.

To deal with the infinity of space, we mark it with milestones, monuments, walls, borders, and boards. We use these markers to make sense of distances and to be able to tell “here” from “there”.

To deal with the eternity, we mark it with similar markers in time. These time-markers are rituals. Often, rituals are associated with religiosity of one manner or another, but their roots lie in human nature itself. Brushing your teeth every morning is a ritual. Calling your girlfriend at a certain point of time in the day is a ritual. A ritual is anything your day is marked with for purposes of keeping order in your life.

Why do we do all this? My guess is as good as yours. But if I had to guess, I would say it is because we can’t not do all this. We are pattern-seeking conscious beings reacting to the environment we exist in in imaginative ways. Breaking the world (and all that is in it) down and classifying it into fields real and imaginary is what makes us human.

I got mistaken for an atheist some time ago. I suppose it was because of the nature of some of the items I had shared on social media — jokes and memes poking fun at god and religion.

The general impression seems to be that if you believe in the existence of god or practise a religion, you will not take kindly to any kind of ridicule that comes their way. In fact, in addition to being highly deferential towards your faith, you will also react with hostility to such ridicule and criticism.

That’s silly of course.

Not only is it possible for a believer to laugh at the things he believes in, it is perhaps necessary also. Having a healthy relation with your deity of choice involves understanding (and accepting) that it is dependent on at least a small measure of silliness. I for example, am a Hindu. My religion offers me a choice of gods, goddesses and demons to fawn over. My cultural heritage includes a rich mythology of imaginative stories that have thrilled generations.

And yet, despite these obviously hallowed traditions, India has never really lacked a sense of humour when it comes to discussing the gods. Although, I would admit, there is a certain deferential air here that can be suffocating at times. But then, such is the nature of respect.

I take some pride in my culture, and I find myself more than a little annoyed when some people equate being culture-conscious with backwardness. Apparently, holding the traditions of one’s ancestors in contempt is a mark of being progressive. As you might have guessed, I don’t buy it.

So it boils down to what one defines oneself as. Those like me, who happily identify with the word Hindu, choose to identify with this aforementioned cultural heritage. And here, right here, is the answer to why I don’t call myself an atheist even though my idea of god is not necessarily that of an ‘imaginary sky friend’ (a rather silly oversimplification, courtesy our neo-atheist friends).

I don’t want to define myself by what I do not believe in. It is like wearing an ‘I hate…’ t-shirt. It makes for a lousy self image and makes a negation the centre of your existence.

Of course, I understand that there are many atheists for whom their atheism is a small part of their life. They define themselves in other ways and let their atheism be just what it is — their religious/spititual outlook. My problem is with the more vocal type. The ones who wear their atheism on their sleeve and define their existence by their hate, unbelief, and opposition. The same goes for those who define their Hindutva (Hindu-ness) only as an opposition to monotheistic cults. There has to be more to you (and me) than only the things we hate, right?

Stand against all that you consider wrong, but do not make that what defines you. I am much more favourably disposed towards those who choose the label ‘rationalist’ or ‘free thinker’ to distinguish themselves from the ‘believers’. Saying ‘I believe in science and critical thinking’ is better than saying ‘I don’t believe in god’. It makes you look smarter (although by itself, atheism is no proof of intelligence) and it makes it appear as if you stand for something (as opposed to against something).

So in summary, here is the question we ought to make the foundation of our identities (however diverse they may be): What do I stand for?

If you think of the origin of life as often as I do, you perhaps have a mental image somewhere of a fish bravely crawling out of ocean water on to ground. Perhaps you imagine it desperately clawing at the sands in its attempts to move deeper inland. Perhaps in your mind, the fish survives and prospers and its equally competent descendants turn — bit by bit — into animals that are more and more suited to life as land animals.

You aren’t wrong. But what you are probably forgetting is the many, many, many fish who died after failing to do what this fish succeeded in doing. And this fish is the mere opening note of a sad song that has been playing ever since.

Earth’s evolutionary history is a tragic tale full of death and lost possibilities. Species never get mutations — especially significant mutations — exactly right the first time around. Each attempt to change is tested under nature’s merciless gaze and more often than not, rejected.

Before the fish that made it, there were many fish which came out of the water and died moments later. And before that, there were many fish that died even before they could approach shallow waters. Some fish, before this, developed mutations that might have allowed them to survive on land, but continued to live underwater and made no use of the mutations (which of course, disappeared in the course of the generations that followed).

Picture, if you will, evolution as an infinitely long corridor. Each door, on either side, opens into a whole new corridor, each full of its own evolutionary possibilities. A mutation is the equivalent of a species struggling with a door latch. If the struggle works out, the door opens and the species walks through it into a world full of more possibilities.

Here is a rather crude example to illustrate the point. Human beings never evolved to grow wings and fly like birds. But there must have been a door in the corridor somewhere which would have allowed the wing mutation to pass through. Once on the other side, we would have travelled down a corridor full of doors that will then have given shape to the flying man’s evolutionary path.

But we never opened any of those doors. As a species, we never even opened the door that led to those doors. If, at some point in the past, human beings did begin to show signs of wings, these signs must have quickly disappeared because another door — another evolutionary path — proved more suited to our continued survival than flying did. We don’t fly because nature selected us to go down another evolutionary path.

And it is not just us. For each species that lives today, there are millions that never came into being. Of all the animals that could have existed on this planet, most do not.

If you are alive, you are extremely lucky. We were “lucky” not in the sense that we were “chosen” somehow. We were lucky in the sense that we are all that remains of a great big storm — an evolutionary storm that has raged on this planet since the first self-replicating molecules caused ripples in a pool of shallow water 3.5 billion years ago.

And the storm rages on.

Here is one way in which comic books misrepresent the real world.

The average archnemesis in the story book hero world is an evil sorceror, a mad scientist, or some other kind of fiendish schemer. What they have in common is that they are intelligent. The “heroes” they are up against are often good-natured oafs who save the day (and get the girl) by flexing their muscles.

​​Intelligence is shown as evil and might is shown as being right (not in an entitled sort of way, but in a moral sort of way). This, as Isaac Asimov points out in his essay ‘Sword And Sorcery’, is a dubious proposition. We do not live in a world where strong people are nice and smart people are evil. But then most comic books must necessarily oversimplify the universe for their stories to make easy sense.

In American cinema too, we find evidence of such anti-intelligence ways. Scientists routinely make “forbidden” discoveries which then explode out of control and ruin everything. Jurassic Park, Godzilla (the one with Mathew Broderick), World War Z, I Am Legend, are all cases in point. The message being sent out is the same old (insert ominous spooky music here) “some doors should never be opened”.

Perhaps the theme is Biblical — Adam and Eve and the fruit of forbidden knowledge. The idea that knowledge is dangerous and that powers beyond our understanding (a very confusing god in this case) will punish us if we try to explore too much. The idea that we should know our place and stay within our limits.

The catastrophe caused by these scientists is then averted (or survived) by the familiar old musclebound hero. When he is not musclebound, he is a chastened scientist who is haunted by guilt. He chants “what have we done?” and “god will never forgive us” in a never-ending loop.

​​In the real world, scientific advances make everything possible. And this includes the making of the aforementioned comics and movies. While I do not believe that the world owes science anything resembling devotion, popular literature’s obsession with scientific evilry does make us look like we have our priorities upside down.

I think that an ideal human society would exult in its intelligence, not live in fear of it. It will appreciate the human condition at its best — brave, imaginative, and kind. Not at its worst — self-centered, submissive, and frightened of itself.

Going through many discussions on matters that pertain to Hindu culture, one finds that there are two distinct sets of opinions on the matter of what Hinduism is.

There is one school of thought that seeks to ban anything it perceives as un-Hindu or as being “against Indian culture”. The group opposed to this line of thought speaks of the universalist nature of Hinduism. It speaks of the accepting Hindu, the spiritual Hindu, the universalist Hindu. It says that people who say something is un-Hindu, are actually un-Hindu themselves because Hinduism accepts all ways of thought.

Hinduism is not amorphous. It is large and has no visible limits, but what gives it shape is its core, which is pluralism. Modern India has inherited this very same pluralism from its Hindu heritage.

People who castigate others for objecting to something from the Hindu point of view, often take the moral high ground and say that because Hinduism is all-accepting, any kind of ideological opposition is un-Hindu. They say that because Hinduism is accepting and assimilating, it must accept unquestioningly everything that is thrown at her. This is not valid line of reasoning.

Indiscriminate acceptance can make any organism unhealthy. This is equally true in the case of cultures — cultures survive on values. Hinduism is what it is because it is based on a particular set of values.

One of these values is openness. But openness does not mean swallowing ideas whole without at least considering them. When a new idea comes in, it must be debated, it's pros and cons measured, and a place for it must be found in the vast spaces inside Hinduism. The fact that some people's calls to debate are taken to mean that they are intolerant is rather unfortunate. No idea should be too sacred, no person too important.

Calls for debate are not censorship. In fact, it is the exact opposite of censorship. It is not about silencing voices. It is about expanding the dialogue and strengthening the foundations of a modern society.

We keep wondering why aliens have not made contact with us. And we keep wondering why we have not been able to find intelligent life in the universe. But do we even know what we are looking for?

Imagine an anthill somewhere near the building you live in. In it, are ants who wonder if there is life outside the anthill. Their explorers venture out into the grass that extends in all directions and come back with nothing. Their astronomers (antronomers?) train their telescopes outwards and report that they can see no anthills. Largely, the ant community comes to the conclusion that they are alone in the universe.

Occasionally they see immense objects wandering about in the vicinity of their world. These are too large for them to make sense of and mostly stay clear of the anthill. The ants sometimes daringly climb up these objects to look for other ants but they find nothing and find themselves mysteriously brushed off by unseen forces. The view that they are all alone in the universe takes root among the ants.

Now return to being yourself. If human beings knew that cosmic loneliness of the aforementioned sort was haunting ants, how much would we care? Would we care enough to communicate the fact of our existence to them? What, if anything, could we tell them about ourselves? What, if anything, would an ant understand of the scale on which humanity operates? What would economics mean to ants? Or religion, or literature, or even things as basic as reading glasses?

An ant’s capacity for understanding is not limited by absence of information. It is limited by the ant’s inability to process information even when it is abundantly available to it. The ant is not looking for life so much as it is looking for ants.

The human quest for extraterrestrial intelligence is marred by this very same limitation. We are looking for something, but we do not really know what we are looking for. We have some ideas regarding what it will look like when we do find it, but for the most part, these ideas are pictures of us. We are staring out into the cosmos with unblinking eyes, looking for our own reflection.

Transhumanism is a school of evolutionary thought that believes human beings are now in a position to determine the course of their future evolution by use of augmented body parts and genetic engineering. They believe that through the use of these patently human advantages, we may take humanity in a direction of our choosing and not be subject to the unpredictability of natural selection.

Before I go into a lengthy explanation of why this is not necessarily the best of ideas, let me write a little about the way evolution works.

It is a game that two players play. One player is you, the species. The other is your environment. You change your environment in small ways and your environment changes you in small ways. For the most part, the impact a species has on its surroundings is in sync with the kind of changes the environment can take. For example, a caterpillar eats leaves and seems to destroy the environment but it is something that is, in a manner of speaking, accounted for. The caterpillar is actually one of the many ways nature uses to keep the balance. The caterpillar and nature serve each other.

If the caterpillar started believing that nature was holding it back from becoming all that it can, it might start thinking of doing things that transhumanists are thinking of doing. It might think that if it becomes capable of eating and digesting soil, it will not have to rely on nature's supply of leaves. It might decide to create artificial leaves in labs to fulfill its needs. It might even decide that it has no need for hunger and go for the elimination of the need to eat.

There is nothing wrong with transhumanist thinking. On the whole, human beings are no different from caterpillars. We consume our surroundings and our surroundings consume us. We put some effort into preventing being consumed by our surroundings of course. We fight against our natural lifespans, we resist forces of nature, we cut through things that are in our way. In addition, we also spend time feeling guilty about all this and berating ourselves for not being more like the lovable caterpillar.

Transhumanism is the other end of this spectrum. It believes that human beings occupy a special space in the order of things — one that allows them to transcend the boundaries set by nature, perhaps even deny that these boundaries exist.

But let us consider transhumanist thought for a while.

We change as a result of evolution because we are subject to pressures from our environment. This pressure fuels mutations and over the course of generations, we become something we are not right now. Evolution moulds us into shapes better suited to survival. But it is still a moulding force. It applies pressure and it hurts. Many die before those worthy of survival come into being. The human species may be making the mistake of seeing this creative pressure as a destroying force. Evolution brings death yes, but it also brings necessary change.

When transhumanists talk of placing the human species out of death's reach, what they are essentially talking about is ending evolution's grasp on us.

Now consider this. Perhaps it is not possible to do beat death. But if it were possible, how advisable would it be to do so?

Imagine that in the future, the human species has somehow managed to prolong its lifespan and become practically immortal. Death is no longer a part of the human equation. In this future, evolution by natural selection still works on other animals and plants, but not on us. We would have effectively created a bubble that separates us from all that is out there.

This would mean that the “out there” no longer plays a part in our lives. The changes that happen to human beings no longer happen because nature chose them. They happen because we choose them.

This appears to be empowerment until you start wondering: On what basis are the changes are being chosen? What are our criteria for deciding what enhancements are good for human beings and which ones we should not go for? In other words, given complete freedom to choose any evolutionary direction, which one would we take?

Taking charge of one's evolutionary path sounds like a good idea until one realises that it is not a matter of simplifying the existing equation. It is about creating a whole new equation.

Are we making humankind stronger by augmenting our bodies with artificial enhancements as a matter of standard procedure? If, at some point in the future, the Earth begins to suffer regular electro-magnetic pulses from outer space, it could mean crippling the entire population.

Are we working towards a better future for humankind by giving everyone increased physical and mental capacities? What form would these capacities take? How do we decide which genetic factor is of most value to humanity?

In short, if we take upon ourselves the mammoth task of doing what natural selection has been doing for ages, will we be able to do it justice? Do we even know what “doing it justice” means?

The bubble that we surround ourselves with will have to be absolute. Once we make the conscious decision to stop being participants in natural selection, we will also become extremely vulnerable to the pressures that nature exerts upon all creatures. The resistance we have built against these pressures will be one of the first things to go out the window when we take the proverbial reins into our own hands.

Of course, no technology we have right now allows us to remove ourselves completely from the forces that nature exerts on humanity. So what I am worrying about may very well never come to pass. But in the event that it does and we do come face-to-face with these decisions, we had better start paying them attention right now.

Evolution by natural selection is actually a rather random process. Any unhappiness we might have as a result of it is therefore somewhat like being angry at the sky gods for the bad weather. By saying evolution is doing us good or bad, we are assigning moral qualities to a natural process that does not give a damn either way. And when, under the impression that humanity needs to be protected from the evolutionary storm, we take action against these natural influences, we engage in something patently adolescent. It is like creating an imaginary friend to battle an imaginary enemy.

Here's something that is worth thinking about.

Trump said horrible things and many were aghast. These were views they would not dream of having. These were views they would not touch with a barge pole. Destructive views about minorities, immigration, racism, and all that.

These are views that are reacted to with so much (rightful) scorn that they became part of an invisible vocabulary. People who had these views kept quiet for fear of being scorned and the others began to live happily under the assumption that they had defeated these views.

Then elections come and a certain candidate begins to openly talk about these things. Those of us who had assumed victory are horrified and think he is just one person and that nobody will ever come out in support of him. Sooner rather than later, this person begins to attract followers. It does not stop. He becomes unnaturally popular. This can't be happening, we think. Something is wrong, we think. This is an echo chamber, we think. He will never win, we think.

And then he wins.

The so-called civilised society of liberals got him this victory. By living in denial about the society we live in and the issues that matter to people, we give power to every such enemy.

Xenophobia exists for a reason. Sexism exists for a reason. Racism exists for a reason. We share our communities with xenophobes, sexists, and racists. By pretending that these people do not belong to the same society we belong to, we create a bubble that blows us away at the end of each election season. We are fond of using phrases like “mindless violence”. Violence is almost never mindless. We lose any chance of doing away with it by refusing to accept that the violent ones may have reasons for doing the things they do.

The next time you get into an argument with someone you can't see eye-to-eye to, try to have a conversation anyway. It will not be the most comfortable conversation of your life. The other guy will question your motivations, he will bring your parentage into the picture. Still... talk. You are not better than him. You are both equals when it comes to the society you live in.

If it helps, get sarcastic sometimes. But bear in mind that the conversations must happen. They are what will save the world.