The Ishmael Imperative

When considering how an advanced non-human intelligence (ANHI) might view life on this planet, we humans almost always assume that it would be interested in interacting with us, because we are the dominant life form. This assumption, however, is more the product of our egotistical view of our own importance, and less about actual reality.

A few quick points to consider:

1. Relative to an ANHI, there might not be any real difference between we humans and other inhabitants of this planet - dolphins, for example, or elephants, or chimpanzees. In much the same way as we tend to lump most animals in together under the category of "animals", perhaps the ANHI would see Earth species in much the same way.

2. We have absolutely no idea how an ANHI would communicate, or what it might be interested in. It stands to reason, looking at things objectively, that it would be just as likely to be interested in a dolphin as it would be a human being. Indeed, perhaps certain animals are more receptive to ANHI communication than we humans are, being less cluttered in their thoughts. Or perhaps they are "smarter" than us, but in different ways?

3. Finally, perhaps a truly advanced NHI would be much more interested in communicating with / interacting with the oppressed and downtrodden, given that they may have evolved into a truly empathic consciousness. Within human society, that would include the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill / challenged, and those who for one reason or another have become social outcasts. It would also include all third world cultures in relation to the developed, Western world. But even those divisions might ring untrue to a truly empathic ANHI when compared with what is arguably the greater divide - how we humans, regardless of class, religion, or any of the other things that divide us from each other, as a species treat all the other inhabitants of this planet.

Is the life of a human being worth more than the life of any other inhabitant of this planet - like this chimpanzee that I saw at the Los Angeles Zoo the other day? We would say yes; an ANHI might not make that distinction. As I wrote on my Facebook status after coming back from the Zoo by way of a stop in Beverley Hills, I saw more "humanity" staring into the eyes of this sad little chimp than I did on all of Rodeo Drive.

I recommend that everyone read the wonderful and thought-provoking book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.  The novel is a philosophical examination of the captivity of mankind under a distorted, imprisoning and damaging "civilization". In the end, Ishmael, a gorilla which can communicate telepathically, tells the narrator:

The story of Genesis must be undone. First, Cain must stop murdering Abel. This is essential if you're to survive. The Leavers* are the endangered species most critical to the world - not because they're humans but because they alone can show the destroyers of the world that there is more than one right way to live. And then, of course, you must spit out the fruit of the forbidden tree. You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on this planet.
 * All "primitive" cultures

I think any truly advanced non-human intelligence would agree.

I believe that we will be judged by how we treat the other inhabitants with whom we share this planet. As things stand now, we would be found sorely wanting. Change is imperative -  and not just "at the margins" change which would still have us at the top of the "planetary pyramid", but rather radical and revolutionary change that replaces that pyramid model of order with a different view - a circle, where everyone and everything is interconnected. 

We must become neither "takers" nor "leavers" as envisioned in Ishmael - we must become sharers. Our future depends on it.

This might all sound very "new age" to many readers. To those who would see it that way, I ask one simple question - isn't it about time for a "new age" given how the "old age" has worked out for us, and our fellow inhabitants of this fragile world?

As I wrote in 1992:



In other words, who are we, and more important - who do we want to become?

Paul Kimball

A.D. - After Disclosure review: addendum

Further to my review of A.D. After Disclosure, by Bryce Zabel and Richard Dolan, here are a couple of photos I took the other day whilst walking through Westwood, in Los Angeles, just a couple of blocks from UCLA.

 

Meanwhile, this lady was busily searching for some spare change to feed the meter where she had parked her Lexus, before she realized that she could use one of her credit cards - all while talking on her mobile phone.

A society that celebrates and rewards such conspicuous consumption, at the same time as it ignores abject poverty and human misery, is nowhere near ready for contact with an advanced non-human intelligence.

As Charles Bukowski wrote:

We are like roses that have never bothered to
bloom when we should have bloomed and
it is as if
the sun has become disgusted with
waiting.

If such an advanced non-human intelligence exists, I'm pretty sure it agrees.

Paul Kimball

Advanced Intelligence... Without Art?

Continuing my riffing on the question of a possible advanced non-human intelligence and art, as originally posed by Rich Reynolds, one can look to science fiction for some clever, and I think realistic, speculation about how such an intelligence could evolve and be totally devoid of a need or use for anything even remotely resembling what we would call the arts.

Perhaps Doctor Who has covered it best over the years, with the creation of two classic villainous races, the Daleks and the Cybermen.

And of course there are the Borg from Star Trek, perhaps the greatest villain that the series ever had, because it was the one which represented a completely alien and truly existential threat to the Federation in a way that Klingons, Romulans and the Dominion did not - at least until the writers ruined it all by trying to make the Borg more... well, human. The Borg appeared as cybernetically enhanced humanoid drones of multiple species, organized as an interconnected collective, the decisions of which are made by a hive mind, linked to subspace domain.

They were scary, because they spoke to our fears about mechaization, artificial intelligence, and our own possible future someday.

None of these sci-fi villains would have had any use for art - the Borg and the Cybermen were concerned with assimilating technology, and humans to replenish their ranks, not culture, whereas the Daleks were bent on simple conquest, and all other species were considered inferior.

The point is that if we project into the far future (or is it really that far?), we can imagine such a cybernetic reality for ourselves, or any other advanced species... or perhaps a world where our creations have superceded us.

Indeed, the late Mac Tonnies was hardly alone in his fascination with the idea that someday we may be able to transcend our humanity, and become posthuman. But would such a species have any use for "the finer things" of life, particularly art in all of its myriad forms?

What use would Debussy string quartet be to a Dalek, or a Cezanne painting to a Cyberman, or the works of Bertolt Brecht to the Borg?

There is a very real possibility that art would be of no use at all. Indeed, for beings that in all cases came from "organic" origins, one might expect that they would view any form of art, with its attendant appeal to "humanity" and "emotion", as an abomination - an affront to the perfection of being that they had achieved.

Of course, this is just one possible answer to the question Rich raised about why ET doesn't seem interested in our art and culture, should it exist "out there" and be coming here. In fact, if life "out there" has developed beyond the biological form into something that we would call "artificial", it might well be that "they" have no use for, or even concept of, art and culture at all.

A sobering thought, particularly as it might also be a portent of our own bleak, emotionless future as a species.

Paul Kimball

The Road to Contactus

Of all the people who claim to have had direct contact with a non-human intelligence, regardless of the human perception paradigm through which they interpreted that experience, the most famous was undoubtedly Saul of Tarsus, better known as the apostle Paul, who went on to become perhaps the most important figure in the creation of one of the world's great religions.

In the New Testament, Acts 9 tells the story of Paul's experience as a third-person narrative:

And as he journeyed, it came to pass that he drew nigh unto Damascus: and suddenly there shone round about him a light out of heaven: and he fell upon the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: but rise, and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. And the men that journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but beholding no man. And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw nothing; and they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and did neither eat nor drink.

If someone was to describe such as experience today, he or she would probably be sent along to a psychiatrist and placed on some sort of medication, particularly if they were to choose a different way of explaining the experience... as an encounter with an extraterrestrial intelligence, for example.

And yet try to get elected President of the United States without affirming your belief in the non-human intelligence that Saul supposedly encountered on the road to Damascus two thousand years ago.

It won't happen.

The question that needs to be asked is: why does Saul / Paul remain a foundational figure of faith for over a billion people, treated with respect even by people who don't believe the supernatural explanation for his experience, while modern UFO contactees receive almost nothing but scorn, even from within the ranks of "serious" UFO researchers?

When one considers the nature of "contact" throughout human history, what one really sees are distinctions that may have been drawn without a real difference. Perhaps the central narrative is the same, whether "contact" happens on the road to Damascus, or the road to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and whether the non-human intelligence presents itself as the son of God, or the pilot of a spaceship from Zeta Reticuli.

Paul Kimball

UFOs as performance art

At his UFO Iconoclasts blog, Rich Reynolds has recently been musing about the lack of any art exhibited by the mysterious extraterrestrial creatures who supposedly pilot UFOs from somewhere "out there" to here.

He writes, in part:

No UFO or flying saucer reports have identified music as endemic to the sightings. And no art, aside from those militaristic or corporate-like insignia/symbols, has been registered – none like that which Lemarchand thinks would be intrinsic to an advanced extraterrestrial race.

What does this tell us about UFOs? That whatever they are, or whomever “mans” them, are either not advanced in a way that would include moral imperatives (as Lemarchand articulates) nor are they as advanced in even a small way as that of the Neanderthals or early man was, as indicated by the art in the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet-Pont d’Arc.

This means, for us, that UFOs are either created by Earthlings or are artifacts without a cultural or living species origination - a physical manifestation of some kind - or UFOs belong to a race or races that are without moral imperatives (ethics) and refinements which would ameliorate contact between us and them as (we hate to note) some abduction accounts seem to warn.

While it is true, so far as I know, that no UFO or its supposed occupants has ever produced an alien Rembrandt or Van Gogh for our inspection, nor have they treated us to any alien version of Bach or the Beatles (although, as I have posted elsewhere, it is possible that they have, but only through interaction with individuals who have the ability to comprehend what the non-human intelligence might be trying to communicate), Rich misses the proverbial forest for the trees, even as he raises an excellent topic for discussion.

So, to Rich I would say - what if the UFOs themselves are a form of non-human "performance art"?

After all, one can find not dissimilar displays of the lights often shown by UFOs in our own culture.

Black light theatre is a wonderful example, and one I've been lucky enough to experience. Here's a sample:



Then, if one were to travel to Nevada for the annual Burning Man festival (something on my "bucket list"), one might see something like this:



Perhaps a non-human intelligence, whether from another solar system, or another dimension, or even another time, is doing something similar for us with UFOs?

After all, our art is capable of as many manifestations as there are human beings with imagination and creativity. Think of  how much more a non-human intelligence with the same desire to create, and a greater capacity to do so, might be capable of achieving.

Paul Kimball

Evolving Consciousness, Empathy and Advanced Hon-Human Intelligence

Fascinating video, which raises an intriguing question - how might it apply to a more advanced, non-human intelligence (NHI) that may have gone through the same development?

What if, for example, an NHI is actually us, from the future (making it an advanced human intelligence, of some sort), where we have moved much further along in terms of empathic development, and where our "sense of identity" really has broadened to a communal outlook? Could "we" be trying to help our less developed selves along the way, to lay the groundwork for a truly empathic civilization.

Or perhaps the NHI, if it isn't a future "us", has developed itself into a truly empathic consciousness, and feels obliged to help less developed species to the same destination, without directly interfering in their society?

Possibilities worth considering...

Paul Kimball