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Elizabeth L. Sydnor For many generations—eons that homo-sapient man has existed, man has wondered, are we alone? This quest of knowledge has catapulted man to the moon, to make probes to explore the galaxy, and possibly to Mars. But, where has this possible knowledge taken man? Has this knowledge taken man away from his humanity or evolved man for the better? The literature that has been discussed in this class attempts to answer these questions. However, these answers provided by the literature alarm us because people can be scared of change. Human have an elites attitude in the way that they understand their own humanity until they are impressed with knowledge that tell them otherwise, and this literature explains humanity through its faults and through its wisdom. People learn ideas in many ways, and some people have to learn through positive or negative reinforcements. The literature discusses scenarios that in some way edify our human nature. The high-tech scenario, “Johnny Mnemonic” about an information keeper that tries to provide this service but ends up becoming a renegade, and through these adventures he learns about his own humanity. “And it came to me that I had no idea at all of what was really happening, or of what was supposed to happen. And that was the nature of my game, because I’d spent most of my left as a blind receptacle to be filled with other people’s knowledge and then drained….” For the first time in Johnny’s life, he is beginning to understand his own humanity; he is questioning who he is. He realizes that he is a “receptacle” that people fill with someone else’s knowledge, not his own. Also, the word drained shows us that he is drained of this knowledge, or he is left empty as a receptacle is of whatever material is deposited. This is very cold terminology, and Johnny wants more. In the same manner, Johnny states, “I saw how hollow I was. And I knew I was sick of being a bucket.” Again Johnny refers to a hollow existence. In Johnny’s high-tech existence, Johnny realizes that he needs to be more, and this quest for more is the spark that has ignited man to create fire or to the moon. This high-tech existence has left Johnny with the sense of going back to his being more human—less technology. “And one day I’ll have a surgeon dig all the silicon out of my amygdalae, and I’ll live with my own memories and nobody else’s, the way other people do.” Even with all these improvements, Johnny still wants his own memories. He still wants a sense of self—his own humanity. In the Low-tech scenario, people learn about their own humanity because they realize the same thing that Johnny did. They realize that they have lost their sense of humanity through high-tech. In the “Onion and I”, the main characters live in cyberspace so much that the characters begin to wonder if they are real are not. “Because it is not Cyberspace. Because it will always be here. Because this onion seed will grows in to an onion, programmed by nothing more than the earth itself. Onion to seed to onion to seed.” The onion is a metaphor for mankind, and this means that mankind grow from mankind. Also the characters “learned to live in both worlds: to dream and to wake, to learn and to imagine, to live between two lives….” The people in this story have learned a balance between both world of low and high-tech. They have learned to ask the questions and answers, but most importantly, they have learned about their human nature. In “Drapes and Folds”, humanity is discussed greatly. The many of the women in the story are used to the old ways that are low-tech. However, the government is trying to make them accept the high-tech world that is working to consume everything that keeps their humanity alive in their minds. However, the people learn that even human contact or family recognition keeps them human. Xera has never called her grandmother “Gran”, until the point that they are about to give up every item that they thought made them human—material things. These women realize that relationships and memories are what will keep them human. This passage shows the need for human contact and the need for human recognition: “I leaned my head on my granddaughter’s shoulder. Yes, for in those few minutes, that’s what she had become. Beneath the cool volymer, beneath her tiny extruded seams, she carried my message. I pulsed inside her, warm as blood.” Sonja Phillips presentation depicts this need for human contact in a high-tech atmosphere. Her presentation gave us a glimpse into a world where no human contact was allowed. People struggle for intimacy this is something that they are driven to find, and this scenario reinforces the need to educate human about humanity, so we don’t drift away from ourselves into a “receptacle” like Johnny. In the scenarios: utopia / dystopia / ecotopia, the material formally teach us about our humanity. These stories are didactic because they instruct us about our humanity. Many of these stories explain through the negative, as to what we have done to our world. The morals of many of these stories imply that humans could destroy our ecostructure. In Kim Stanley Robinson’s introduction to Future Primitive, he explains that this is “a mode of thought that is utopian in its very operating principle, for it assumes that differences in our actions now will lead to real and somewhat predictable consequences later on—which means that what we do now matters.” He continues to say that science fiction “teaches us how to act”. Another words, we learn. In “Chocco”, we learn of a tribal group trying to decide who will be their “memory keeper”. Chocco describes a culture that has survived a dying out period, and that they have improved themselves by incorporating technology and spirituality. But the main thing is that they learn from the dystopia in order to create a utopian society. “We must learn a hard and dreadful lesson from the example of the Machine People—that sometimes human beings would rather die out than change their cultural ways.” They have learned a balance. In “House of Bones”, the character learns about his humanity by not killing. He thinks that because he is more evolved than his early man, that he has nothing to learn from them. “All the time that I was congratulating them for not being the savages I had expected them to be, they were wondering how much of a savage I was. They had tested the depth of my humanity; and I had passed. And they finally see that I’m civilized too.” He learns from who he thought were savages about his won humanity. “Shikasta” describes a civilization that is close to ruin. Even though it has a different name, this civilization closely mirrors Earth. With the hypothesis that this is Earth, the Shikastians learn about their humanity from the results of warring and rebuilding. “Within a couple of decades, of the billions upon billions of Shikasta perhaps one percent remained. The substance-of-we-feeling, previously shared among these multitudes, was now enough to sustain, and keep them all sweet, and whole, and healthy.” The concept of we-feeling implies that they embraced their humanity. The main thing that these pieces are trying to communicate is that we as humans need to embrace our history and learn—learn about our humanity. In the scenario, alien contact & near-contact, we learn about our own humanity thorough a discussion of what makes us who we are. In “Homelanding”, Margaret Atwood describes a human, and that the “knowledge of death, which we share, where we overlap. Death is our common ground. Together, on it, we can walk forward.” She is stating that death defines our humanity. But not only does death describe humanity, but what she addresses as important is, and she will say “take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths.” The story continues to say that this is what she is coming for, what makes us human. Through this story, we get a sense of the sheer beauty of what makes us human, and this is an example that teaches us to appreciate the value of being a human being. In “The Poplar Street Study”, we learn about aliens taking over a street to do a study about humans. The story teaches us about the nature of change in humans, and that humans are not willing to accept changes as easily. However, the “children are proving to be adaptable to anything.” This shows that the children have the ability to evolve further than the parents. The parents resist change, and the children accept. The children become the leaders. In “The Belonging Kind”, Coretti desires to fit in with humans because he feels the need to connect with another human. “He ached with jealousy: for the personification of conformity, this woman who was not a woman, this human wallpaper.” He discovers that he cannot fit in with other human, so he evolves—he adapts. In this story, we discover through these transforming humans, what makes us human. We need to be accepted. We need to feel like we belong. In the off-planet scenario, we learn about our human nature. We learn how small we truly are, and that we need our roots that are planted in Mother Earth. In “Newton’s Sleep”, the people go off planet to escape a desolate Earth, but the ship floats over the dying Earth is being run over by ghosts. The humans aboard begin to believe that it is their guilt manifesting itself. They have left the Earth in ruins and the people in ruins with disease. “But we don’t know how to coexist with ghosts. It’s not something we were trained in. We have to learn how to do it as we go along. And believe me, we have to. […] They are here, and what ‘here’ is is changing too.” Humans have to learn to adapt. But through these ghosts and the realization that this is their guilt, these people are forced to learn about their own humanity. This off world story is similar to Kenny O’Brien’s presentation about the possible off world living quarter that humans could have on Mar’s. But would we be like the people of “Newton’s Sleep”, and miss our homeland? In the “Men on the Moon”, we learn about an old Indian man that talks to his relatives, as they are watching the men landing on the moon. The older Indian man does not understand why they are doing this, and the child says that they are looking for knowledge. The child continues to say that they “say they will use [knowledge] to better mankind”. This is human nature to look for knowledge, and this type of story edifies the need for that knowledge. In “Hinterlands”, humans have such a need to learn that they go on a quest through space to find knowledge. This is described as “their hunger to know”. The people that go on these trips are “like intelligent houseflies wandering through an international airport; some of us actually manage to blunder onto flights to London or Rio, maybe even survive the trip and make it back.” This shows the need for humans to learn, and it is through this learning that we discover our own humanity. The exploration for intelligence is not always in the stars but within us. Through descending order of importance to me, I have explained how literature can edify our human nature. Meaning that through this literature, we learn about our own humanity—what makes us human. The literature does not always paint a rosy picture of our nature as human being, but when one instructs in any subject, one must give both good and bad examples. These scenarios either make us cold or hot about our human nature, but one thing that these scenarios do is instruct. This literature helps us to learn about the features that make us good and the features that make us bad, and that we can learn through the best and the worst of humanity. We learn that we may never make contact with other civilizations, but the importance is that we make contact with ourselves. |