May
7
A Means to an End
“That’s insane!” — Jared Dirac, Special Forces soldier
The following conversation — technically just half of a conversation — is an excerpt from the science-fiction novel The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi. Normally, I would be more likely to share something like this on my “Heroes and Aliens” blog. But, this section (and the book as a whole) touches on a number of issues and concepts that are relevant to this blog, e.g., science, politics, worldview, war, ethics, the nature of consciousness, self-identity, etc.
So, while I’m not going to comment on it (much), I thought some of you might find it interesting. A warning, though, for those who might want to read Scalzi’s book and the series it is a part of; this excerpt contains a few…
SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!
Just to give the scene some context: Dr. Charles Boutin is a traitorous, human scientist — sane(?) but ethically-challenged and seeking revenge/”justice” against the Colonial Union (i.e, humans). He faked his death and has allied himself with one of the CU’s most powerful enemies, i.e., the mysterious and dispassionately brutal Obin race. Jared Dirac is not only a member of the CU’s Special Forces but also a clone of Boutin specially grown to help figure out Boutin’s plans. At this point, Jared has managed to find Boutin but got himself captured by the Obin. The two are now in Boutin’s secret lab, where Jared is physically incapacitated.
— — —
“That’s insane,” Jared said. “The Obin wouldn’t start a war just because you asked them to.”
“Really?” Boutin said. A sneer crept onto his face. “And you know this from your vast, personal knowledge of the Obin? Your years of study on the matter? You wrote your doctoral thesis on the Obin?”
“No species would go to war just because you asked them to,” Jared said. “The Obin don’t do anything for anyone else.”
“And they’re not now,” Boutin said. “The war is a means to an end — they want what I can offer them.”
“And what is that?” Jared asked.
“I can give them souls,” Boutin said.
“I don’t understand,” Jared said.
“It’s because you don’t know the Obin,” Boutin said. “The Obin are a created race — the Consu made them just to see what would happen. But despite rumors to the contrary, the Consu aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. And they made a huge mistake when they made the Obin. They gave the Obin intelligence, but what they couldn’t do — what they didn’t have the capability of doing — was to give the Obin consciousness.”
“The Obin are conscious,” Jared said. “They have a society. They communicate. They remember. They think.”
“So what?” Boutin said. “Termites have societies. Every species communicates. You don’t have to be intelligent to remember — you have a computer in your head that remembers everything you ever do, and it’s fundamentally no more intelligent than a rock. And as for thinking, what about thinking requires you to observe yourself doing it? Not a g_______d thing. You can create an entire starfaring race that has no more self-introspection than a protozoan, and the Obin are the living proof of that. The Obin are aware collectively that they exist. But not one of them individually has anything that you would recognize as a personality. No ego. No ‘I’.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jared said.
“Why not?” Boutin said. “What are the trappings of self-awareness? And do the Obin have it? The Obin have no art, Dirac. They have no music or literature or visual arts. They comprehend the concept of art intellectually but they have no way to appreciate it. The only time they communicate is to tell each other factual things: where they’re going, or what’s over that hill or how many people they need to kill. They can’t lie. They have no moral inhibition against it — they don’t actually have any real moral inhibitions against anything — but they can no more formulate a lie than you or I could levitate an object with our mind power. Our brains aren’t wired that way; their brains aren’t wired that way. Everybody lies. Everybody who is conscious, who has a self-image to maintain. But they don’t. They’re perfect.”
“Being ignorant of your own existence is not what I’d call ‘perfect’,” Jared said.
“They are perfect,” Boutin insisted. “They don’t lie. They cooperate perfectly with each other, within the structure of their society. Challenges or disagreements are dealt with in a prescribed manner. They don’t backstab. They are perfectly moral because their morals are absolute — hardcoded. They have no vanity and no ambition…. And they have no fear.”
“Every creature has fear,” Jared said. “Even the non-conscious ones.”
“No,” Boutin said. “Every creature has a survival instinct. It looks like fear but it’s not the same thing. Fear isn’t the desire to avoid death or pain. Fear is rooted in the knowledge that what you recognize as yourself can cease to exist. Fear is existential. The Obin are not existential in the slightest. That’s why they don’t surrender. It’s why they don’t take prisoners. It’s why the Colonial Union fears them, you know. Because they can’t be made afraid. What an advantage that is! It’s so much of an advantage that if I’m ever in charge of creating human soldiers again, I’m going to suggest stripping out their consciousness.”
Jared shuddered. Boutin noted it. “Come now, Dirac,” Boutin said. “You can’t tell me that awareness has been a happy thing for you. Aware that you’ve been created for a purpose other than your own existence. Aware of memories of someone else’s life. Aware that your purpose is nothing more than to kill the people and things the Colonial Union points you at. You’re a gun with an ego. You’d be better off without the ego.”
“Horse____,” Jared said.
Boutin smiled. “Well, fair enough,” he said. “I can’t say I’d want to be without self-awareness, either. And since you’re supposed to be me I can’t say that I’m surprised you feel the same way.”
“If the Obin are perfect I don’t see why they would need you,” Jared said.
“Because they don’t see themselves as perfect, of course,” Boutin said. “They know they lack consciousness, and while individually it might not matter much to them, as a species, it matters a great deal. They saw my work on consciousness — mostly on consciousness transference but also my early notes on recording and storing consciousness entirely. They desired what they thought I could give them. Greatly.”
“Have you given them consciousness?” Jared asked.
“Not yet,” Boutin said. “But I’m getting close. Close enough to make them desire it even more.”
“‘Desire’,” Jared repeated. “A strong emotion for a species who lacks sentience…. Why would knowing they lack consciousness matter to them?” Jared asked.
“Why did knowing that she couldn’t eat from the tree of knowledge matter to Eve?” Boutin said. “It shouldn’t have mattered but it did. She was temptable — which, if you should believe in an all-powerful God, means God intentionally put temptation into Eve. Which seems like a dirty trick, if you ask me. There’s no reason the Obin should desire sentience. It’ll do them no good. But they want it anyway. I think it’s possible that the Consu, rather than screwing up and creating an intelligence without ego, intentionally created the Obin that way, and then programmed them with the desire for the one thing they could not have.”
“But why?”
“Why do the Consu do anything?” Boutin said. “When you’re the most advanced species around, you don’t have to explain yourselves to the rock bangers, which would be us. For our purposes, they might as well be gods. And the Obin are the poor, insensate Adams and Eves.”
“So this makes you the snake,” Jared said.
Boutin smiled at the backhanded reference. “Maybe so,” he said. “And maybe by giving the Obin what they want, I’ll force them out of their egoless paradise. They can deal with that. In the meantime, I’ll get what I want from this. I’ll get my war, and I’ll get the end of the Colonial Union.”
— — —
Please feel free to comment on any aspect of Dirac and Boutin’s conversation. What caught your attention? Did either of them make unwarranted assumptions or some other logic error? (For example, Boutin’s strangely limited definition of “fear”.) Was there any seeming confusion of terms? Any point you particularly (dis)agree with? Let us know below…
And if anyone can tell me the correct pronunciation of “Boutin” (which I think might be French), I’d really appreciate it.
