Otherness

by David Brin

  It is a remarkably successful process, by which our understanding of the universe has evolved year after year, without the traumas or heretic-burnings that used to punctuate advances in human knowledge. This new priesthood is open to all comers, even the daughters and sons of peasants. One peculiar side product, relatively rare in times past, is a strange commodity called "honesty"—(absolutely indispensable in science)—which is probably the least likely marvel ever to have emerged out of self-centered human minds.

  Alas, at times the process also seems staid, un-dramatic, even despotic to those who nowadays portray themselves as brave nonconformists, and science as today's oppressive monolith. Some arty types would seem to prefer going back to older ways of doing things—the way "wisdom" was handled everywhere and everywhen, except in our own narrow sliver of time.

  THE VIEW OF A GOLDEN AGE

  For six thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand years—however far back you assume we were intelligent and able to ask questions—our ancestors had very little idea how the world worked. And we can safely assume that they were terrified most of the time.

  Throughout those millennia nearly every civilization we know of had a belief system based upon what might be called a Look Backward worldview. In other words, people shared a common belief that their tribe, people, nation once had a golden age, a better time when humans were more virtuous, stronger, closer to heaven. An era when sages worked wonders and were wiser than more recent folk. From Sumeria to China, to the legends of Native Americans, this thread of lost glory runs through almost every mythic tradition.

  Except ours. Our worldwide, cosmopolitan, modern culture is arguably the first to take a radically divergent orientation, not necessarily better, but profoundly different. A philosophy that might be called Look Forward.

  There was no golden age in the past, this revolutionary view declares; our ancestors scratched and clawed, and a few of them—the well-meaning ones—tried hard to redress the shabby ignorance they had inherited. Some, in sincerely trying to improve things, came up with dreadful world models, pantheons or social orders that excused, even encouraged, terrible persecutions or injustices. Still, despite all the mistakes and obstacles they faced, men and women managed glacially, generation by generation, to add to our knowledge—and to our wisdom, as well.

  There was no past ancient golden age, say believers in the Look Forward vision. But there is a notion going around that we just might be able to build one, for tomorrow's children.

  This new orientation toward the future, not the past, is especially clear in the scientific attitude toward knowledge. Instead of "Truth" with a capital T, immutable and handed down unchanged through time from some ancient text of lore, today we have the cycle of improvement and revision I've described in this essay. The best world models are found in the latest journal articles, in the most recent textbooks on any given subject—and even they won't be the final word, because in five or ten years there'll be better models still, as results pour in from new experiments.

  To you, a modern reader and member of contemporary civilization, this way of looking at truth may sound obvious. (Note how even the phrases "Look Backward" and "Look Forward" sound biased in favor of the latter, a result of prejudice built into our language.) But I cannot overstate how recently this point of view achieved anything approaching widespread acceptance. This shift in the time orientation of wisdom is an intellectual sea change unprecedented in the annals of human thought. Its consequences, which already include science and democracy, will grow more profound as the years go by.

  IDEAS THAT INFECT

  Let's take a side trip, while on the subject of human thought. To begin, we must backtrack to skim a little biology.

  Richard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene, describes how our genetic heritage seems to have resulted from struggles by nearly invisible clusters of DNA against nature and each other. Nearly all of evolution could be regarded as a winnowing of those genes that fail to achieve the central goal of making and spreading copies of themselves. Of course, molecules do not contemplate goals. "Wanting" is a human emotion. Still, the effects of natural selection often do look eerily as if different genetic heritages have been striving against one another for niches in the ecosystem.

  Put it this way: if, by fortuitous happenstance, a set of genes stumbles onto the right attributes, enabling it to create an organism that, in turn, lives to make and pass on more copies of the genes, then most of those copies will also share the original successful trait and have an improved chance of making copies themselves. And so on. The process works as well for autonomous creatures, like you and me, as for a virus that invades a host organism and uses it as a tool for replication.

  This is but a crude summary of insights Dawkins depicts so well (which led to my story in this volume, "The Giving Plague"). Here it is only a prelude to Dawkins's next step, when he discusses another type of bundle of information with similar traits—not genes, but "memes."

  Memes are raw ideas. Pure concepts that, like conquering genetic codes, seem capable of thriving in and via host organisms, in this case human minds.

  What would such a "living idea" be like? Well, for one thing it would survive by making its host think about it. In contemplating a concept you in effect keep it alive. For example, some time ago I read a notion—the very one we're discussing now—the notion of memes. You could say this idea was successful at "infecting" me, because I've continued thinking about it, giving it continued existence, or "life."

  But a virus or bacterium that just sits inside its host doesn't accomplish much. An effective pseudo-organism must do more. It must reproduce.

  How would a living idea proliferate?

  By getting its host not only to think about it, but to make and spread copies . . . by telling other people! And now, if you've been paying attention, you'll realize that's just what I've been doing the last few minutes for one particular meme—the meme of memes! By telling you about it, I am doing the memic equivalent of coughing on you. Infecting you with the transmissible, self-replicating notion of these infectious ideas. If it's a successful self-replicating notion, some of you will go out and tell others about it. And so on.

  Of course life would be impossibly dull if we didn't share ideas, while constantly mutating and adapting them to our purposes. But let's imagine that some of these self-reproducing ideas pick up more attributes. What if one of them helped its host become prosperous, charismatic, or influential—to spread the meme more effectively. Or what if another meme caused its hosts, or host tribe, to keep other memes out. To expose their children only to old, familiar ideas. What a powerful trick that would be!

  Does this sound like some bizarre science-fiction scenario?

  Or is it, rather, a pretty good model for what's been going on throughout most of human history? Examples abound. Take the dogmatic exclusion rule of most religions, which call competing idea systems "heresy."

  One of the Iranian ayatollahs once said of America—"We don't fear your bombs, we fear your pagan ideas." Why would he say such a thing? Dawkins's theory seems to offer as good an explanation as any.

  MEMES AT WAR

  Now comes the truly sci-fi part of this scenario. (After all, you bought this book for entertainment, no?) So let's play with these notions for a little while as I paint a rather unconventional picture of our familiar world.

  Let me suggest that until recently five major memes have battled over the future of this planet. These combating Zeitgeists had little to do with those superficial, pompous slogan mills people have gotten all lathered about during this century—communism, capitalism, Christianity, Islam. They are deeper, older themes that continue to set the tone for entire civilizations even today.

  Feudalism is one of the oldest. It may appear to be rare nowadays, but some philosophers and historians have called it the "most natural" of human societies, simply because it cropped up in so many places throughout the millennia—everywhere, in fact, that metallurgy and agric
ulture combined to let close-knit elites establish and enforce an inherited aristocracy.

  (If one tallies a list of history's few, short-lived flowerings of freedom and enterprise, it is clear that aristocracy toppled and crushed far more of these frail renaissances than socialism ever did.)

  Has modern life made feudalism obsolete? Maybe. But if so, why do so many in the West go all teary-eyed over inbred European royal families, including one that we Americans kicked out with just cause, long ago?

  Or take the raging popularity of fantasy novels with feudal settings. Can it be possible that the descendants of rebels—true heroes who fought to free us all from a beastly, oppressive way of life that doomed nearly everyone to ignorance and peasantry—that those descendants prefer to fantasize "heroic" adventures featuring despotic kings, egocentric princes, and curmudgeonly wizards? Apparently it is so.

  Clearly the pull of the feudal meme is still strong in us, tugging at our sympathies even today.

  Machismo is another powerful worldview—the leading meme—in many parts of today's world. Wherever women are stifled and vengeance is touted as a primary virtue, wherever skill and craftsmanship are downgraded in favor of "strutting" and male-bonded loyalty groups, it's a good bet machismo sets the agenda.

  And don't underrate it! Throughout human history macho was an effective way of running small clans. Countless stirring, heroic epics come down to us from such tribes. (Or take the way many today swoon over how Klingons are depicted, in Star Trek!) Indeed the inevitable ferment of this male-centered zeitgeist was tolerable when human numbers were small, and hunter-warriors were central to clan life.

  Different versions of machismo today dominate whole regions, even continents, conveyed across generations by myths children absorb at an early age. For example, in one Middle Eastern culture, nearly every fairy tale focuses on one theme—that of revenge. In another land mothers are known to sit their little sons on their knees and say—"Someday you will deflower virgins and ravish other men's wives, but if this happens to your wife or sister, cut her throat."

  This may sound bizarre to some of you, but it would be a mistake to dismiss it as an aberration. As worldviews go, machismo has a long tradition—a lot longer than ours. The biggest argument against this meme is not that any alternative is intrinsically better . . . only that, if it prevails, the Earth will surely die.

  Then there's paranoia, another venerable family of memes. For example, one can understand the Russian tradition of xenophobia, given their history of suffering terrible invasions, on average twice a century. Still, that worldview of dour suspicion and bludgeoning distrust made for a brittle, capricious superpower, worsened by a deluding, superficial dogma, communism. If paranoia had won, or even lasted much longer, the world would probably have become a cinder sooner or later. We'll see, in the course of the next decade, if this meme really is fading. Watch how the other culture families devour its remains, as some parts of the empire hurry to join the West, some tumble into the macho orbit, and still others become Eastern with stunning rapidity.

  That fourth worldview, which I call "The East," is one zeitgeist that is demonstrably both traditional and sane—after its fashion. During most of recorded history it was dominant on this planet. Its theme: homogeneity, uniformity, respect for elders, and discipline. People should subsume their sense of self in favor of family, group, nation. One can see how such a meme would make governing large populations easier. Capital is not wasted on male strutting, or excessively on arms. Stoical labor and compound interest have a chance to work wonders.

  If the East wins, you will probably have some preservation of the environment, no pandas but some trees. Both violence and the egregious excesses of hyperindividualism will certainly abate. Humans might even slowly, eventually, get out into space.

  But when or if we ever meet aliens, we would not understand them. Because by then the very notion of diversity, let alone the idea of finding it attractive, will have been extinguished.

  I wouldn't find it much fun living in a human civilization dominated by sameness. But then, if I'd been brought up differently, I might not think "fun" such a key desideratum, after all. (In many languages there is no word for the concept.) In any event, the Eastern worldview is the only one with a proved track record, having operated civilizations for millennia in a manner that, while despotic, was calm and orderly, in its way.

  "Calm" is the last word you would use to describe the fifth meme, one that has always been a lesser theme, carried by an eccentric minority in each culture . . . until ours. What is the fifth meme? You've heard me call it the Dogma of Otherness, although that only scratches the surface. It is a strange, rebellious worldview unlike any of its predecessors. One that actually encourages an appetite for newness, hunger for diversity, eagerness for change.

  Tolerance plays a major role in the legends spread by this new culture, plus a tradition of humorous self-criticism. (Look at the underlying message contained in most situation comedies. It is always the most intolerant or pompous character who gets comeuppance before the final curtain. And never before have leaders of nations, commanders of armies, had to accept the fact that they routinely will be objects of critique, even ridicule.)

  Another thread pervading countless films and novels is suspicion of authority. A plethora of writers in Hollywood and elsewhere have worked this vein, each of them acting as if he or she were inventing rebellious individualism—an ironic twist, since each of them was raised on myths extolling eccentricity and solitary defiance! (From Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, to Rebel Without a Cause, to the latest exercise in self-flagellation directed by Oliver Stone.) You can earn a good living as an iconoclast in the West today, especially if you make your idol-smashing entertaining.

  Few seem to have noticed how odd this message is, as propaganda. Name one other culture in history that ever spread hypertolerance myths like Steven Spielberg's movie E.T., in which a generation of children were taught—"If you ever encounter a weird stranger from an alien race, by all means, hide him from your own people's freely elected tribal elders!" To me this is a far more startling break with history than wonder drugs, or moon landings, or computers that talk, with good and bad consequences swarming forth with every passing day. No longer is the emphasis on looking to the past, or on conformity as a principal virtue. Youth-fixation replaces reverence for age, and all ancient idols and gods are replaced by a new figure on the altar, the Self.

  What a strange, unprecedented meme! One that encourages an art form as compulsively questioning as science fiction, and that, in turn, is spread quite effectively by science fiction.

  In olden times, in societies where the few ruled the many, aristocracies used to rally the masses by pointing to some outside threat and whipping up paranoia. One sees similar efforts taking place today, in efforts to combat Otherness—dangerous efforts to pander to racism and fear. Efforts that may succeed here and there, but that I hope and expect will be largely in vain. I expect it because the rich and powerful no longer control this new myth. It has outgrown the grasp of even the "enlightened" intellectuals who originally set it on its way.

  For better or for worse, we all now appear to be along for the ride.

  To those of my readers who have been shaking their heads for some time, saying—"Sheesh! What an optimist Brin is!"—I can only answer that I am well aware of the problems, the flaws, the dismal and depressing failures of a system that promises freedom, justice, and plenty for all, but has fallen so far short of that ideal. It has succeeded far better than any other culture since we left the caves, but by the new standards we have set for ourselves, it is a poor record indeed. One worthy of much criticism.

  (Anyway, what if I'm simply doing my own iconoclastic bit? Optimism, in a world rife with copycat pessimists? Do a head count. I'll bet I'm the one who's being different!)

  It would be an exaggeration to suggest that this meme I call Otherness "owns" territories like Europe or America . . . or even California. Where
it is strongest it must still contend ceaselessly with macho, paranoiac, homogenizing, and other traditional forces that continue battling over the minds and actions of women and men—forces that may indeed be far more "natural" to us human animals, who are so innately egotistical and afraid. Add to this a plague of self-righteousness, in which both individuals and political factions seem more interested in the sweet mantras of their slogans than in finding pragmatic solutions to modern problems, and you have a formula for troubled times ahead.

  It may be that the best time for Otherness has already passed. Clearly part of the basis for this renaissance has been wealth, especially the unprecedented comfort enjoyed by the vast majority of Westerners since World War II, in which very few of us can even conceive of starving—therefore, why not fight for the rights of sea mammals? (The Japanese still remember needing them for food. Is it any wonder we disagree?)