I dont agree, their personal lives just get altered. In centuries past it sea-travel would take up years at a time, people adapted to life onboard. When (if) interplanetary travel is possible people who commit to it will probably commit their entire lives to it, i hope they pack a few books.ccesarano said:
140: Mass Effect Saves Humanity - for What?
- Thread starter Ray Huling
- Start date
Isn't the subject here that rather than 'going bonkers' the moment we go into space we actually become something different the moment we do? Every chance changes what we find important... the Romans found every-one who was not a Roman a barbarian and these days we find small animals incredibly important not to suffer any form of suffering at all.
One point that I liked was the question of what makes us human to be important in modern Sci-Fi. The new Battlestar Galactica is a nice example of that question. Mass Effect is just a small rock thrown in a puddle of '80s "this race represents... and we'll pull through together." I didn't like it. The same-sex sex scene was terrible as well. "By the gods, commander." Ptsh.
It's hard to demand maturity from games, I suppose, Sci-Fi already is a genre that is suffers from an abundance of cheap moments that say: "but can robots be human?"
I used to be really offended, but these days when people ask me "aren't games for kids?" I just answer "yes, most are," sometimes adding "but I hope to help make them be something more" when I'm feeling adventurous and when I'm certain it does not diminish my chances in flirtation.
One point that I liked was the question of what makes us human to be important in modern Sci-Fi. The new Battlestar Galactica is a nice example of that question. Mass Effect is just a small rock thrown in a puddle of '80s "this race represents... and we'll pull through together." I didn't like it. The same-sex sex scene was terrible as well. "By the gods, commander." Ptsh.
It's hard to demand maturity from games, I suppose, Sci-Fi already is a genre that is suffers from an abundance of cheap moments that say: "but can robots be human?"
I used to be really offended, but these days when people ask me "aren't games for kids?" I just answer "yes, most are," sometimes adding "but I hope to help make them be something more" when I'm feeling adventurous and when I'm certain it does not diminish my chances in flirtation.
Humans thinking about whether they are still human or not because they travel through space is as useless as a sailor thinking about whether he will still be a sailor when he reaches shore. The only thing humans will think about is how to survive and create. Even if you stopped being human, the knowledge of that wouldn't do you any good. That is why I am surprised at Heidegger's comments. Even for an existentialist like him, I find his comments about space boring, lame, and a waste of time even mentioning.
Sci-Fi is great because you get to philosophize all you want while being entertained by what would really happen if humans traveled through space. Even the instances of humans turning into monsters or ultra humans are touched upon from a human perspective.
Mass Effect doesn't need a unique viewpoint because humans can't understand being non-human in space. If you want to be more or less then human, go right ahead but you wouldn't be conscious of human affairs. I don't know about you, but even if I could attain the knowledge of being non-human, I wouldn't want it. Becoming some type of alien or A.I. intelligence is probably a crap shoot. Odds are against the knowledge being fun or useful in some way.
Sci-Fi is great because you get to philosophize all you want while being entertained by what would really happen if humans traveled through space. Even the instances of humans turning into monsters or ultra humans are touched upon from a human perspective.
Mass Effect doesn't need a unique viewpoint because humans can't understand being non-human in space. If you want to be more or less then human, go right ahead but you wouldn't be conscious of human affairs. I don't know about you, but even if I could attain the knowledge of being non-human, I wouldn't want it. Becoming some type of alien or A.I. intelligence is probably a crap shoot. Odds are against the knowledge being fun or useful in some way.
Hmmm, playing HHGTTG as a roving reporter... Kind of like Pokemon Snap but with more Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters. I could dig that.Darkpen said:
Mass Effect's space opera homages show up all over the place -- I just ran across a reference to Forbidden Planet (for my money the first great space opera) in a planet description. "Monsters from the Id!" And of course it isn't limited to space opera -- the Mass Effect folks pulled from all sorts of movies. The biotic commune quest is fairly explicitly pulled from Apocalypse Now, for instance.
I always like it when a game that borrows from other games, films, etc. doesn't disrespect players by trying to conceal those influences -- no matter how hard you try to file off those serial numbers, people will notice. Keep the homages out in the open and fans will love it. That's one of the big pitfalls of heavily-treaded ground like space opera and it's something Mass Effect does gracefully.
I always like it when a game that borrows from other games, films, etc. doesn't disrespect players by trying to conceal those influences -- no matter how hard you try to file off those serial numbers, people will notice. Keep the homages out in the open and fans will love it. That's one of the big pitfalls of heavily-treaded ground like space opera and it's something Mass Effect does gracefully.
Of course we'll eventually lose our humanity. If we do end up amongst the stars groovin' with the alien, then - give or take a few million years, of course - we'll look completely different. This is not the worst thing that can happen. If simple change is all that we need to do to progress, I'm all for it.
The Mass Effect book deals with this a bit at the beginning. The character John Grissom talks about how humans romanticize space exploration and compares it to the cold "reality."ccesarano said:
I think someone already touched on it but it's all about how we percieve our "humanity." A lot of people see losing their humanity as a loss of compassion or control over themselves. Sentences like:
still conjure up mystical feelings inside about the universe having a hidden purpose for all life. But we really are the centre of our own universe and I think we can still bend while being selfish. If you read about Satanism (Anton LaVey) you can see that to be selfish isn't necessarily about being a bad person but doing things that bring gratification. I think to really lose your humanity is to try to be completely selfless, as it isn't natural human desire.Anton P. Nym said:
I'd say the problem with space travel is homesickness and that the rest of the emotional problems are caused by that. The fear of the unknown is one of the worst feelings. I'm sure they could think of training regimes to help combat that but it depends on the person's psychological strength.
Even if I haven't experienced any out of earth adventure, just to appreciate how much I cherish this dustball, I know my place in space, that is, as a frakin microbe that lives on the surface of a big apple in a miraculously thin, special, exclusive and extremely fragile atmosphere.
Everyday I step outside, I know that above the sky, there's just nothing, safe more void, silence and big, cold lumps of rock and metal.
One of the entertaining answers to the blue hot canadian chick problem is Hyperion, and pretty any decent work of cyberpunk.
I am waiting eagerly for the posthuman future. I want to download the latest patches for my genetic code from the Datasphere. I want to live on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. I want gaze across the abyss without this pesky atmosphere clouding my view.
I too am terrified of the eternal silence of the endless void, but I've always been drawn to things that terrify me.
In my opinion Mass Effect was more than a bit corny and could have gone much further with the setting. This is the case with most science fiction. The classics, like Solaris, are classics for a good reason.
I too am terrified of the eternal silence of the endless void, but I've always been drawn to things that terrify me.
In my opinion Mass Effect was more than a bit corny and could have gone much further with the setting. This is the case with most science fiction. The classics, like Solaris, are classics for a good reason.
The "Bring Down the Sky" Addendum
Hi all,
Thanks for taking the time to comment and for developing such an interesting discussion. I'd like to respond to your thoughts by talking about the recently released downloadable content for Mass Effect.
"Bring Down the Sky" consists of a brief adventure involving a species mentioned in the core game but previously unrevealed: the Batarians. Bad blood exists between Batarians and Humans, because the Galactic Council made a judgment favoring Humans over Batarians in regard to colonization rights over a sector of space. The Batarians cut off diplomatic relations with the council and went to war with Humans. The game refers to Batarians as a "rogue state". In the DLC, a group of even more radical Batarians, labeled "terrorists" in-game, has set an asteroid on a collision course with a Human colony. The hero's job is to re-direct the asteroid.
I found a great encapsulation of how "Bring Down the Sky" disappoints on the gamefaqs Mass Effect message board. This run-on sentence by catsimboy illustrates some of the issues I was talking about in the article:
"...the introduction of a new alien race isn't that big of a deal since they fight like every other humanoid, if they made it so you could recruit one to your team that would rock but it ain't happening because the Batarians are jerks."
They are jerks! The problem is: they're only jerks. You see, by placing itself within the space opera tradition, Mass Effect raises the expectation that its characterizations of aliens will have some meaning. The terms "rogue state" and "terrorist" certainly have relevance in today's world. What, then, are the implications of a four-eyed species that has gone rogue and terrorist in the future established by Mass Effect?
There are no implications.
Just as it doesn't mean anything for the Asari to be an all-female species or for the Krogan to be super-masculine and on the verge of extinction.
Instead of establishing backgrounds for these species and then following them to interesting conclusions, BioWare creates aliens to fill standard roles that appear in all of its RPGs. You need aliens to fight and aliens to fuck. In other words, there's no reason for the Batarians to be Batarians. They're just jerks; they could be any species with any history. Really, there's no reason for Mass effect to take place in a science fiction setting. None of its conflicts occur as a result of any thinking about what human life in space might mean.
BioWare just likes Star Wars and made their own version of it.
Now, the point of bringing in Heidegger has to do with time. I'm going to guess that every single person who commented here was born after 1966. None of you is human.
We all grew up thinking of Earth as a planet. We all saw pictures of Earth from the moon in our childhood. In Heidegger's view, our experience of the world cuts us off from the whole mass of humanity who lived before us.
That includes George Lucas. He didn't write Star Wars for us; he wrote it for his peers, for his generation.
Let's talk then about humanity and space travel. Jeffers, R.O., and sammyfreak all analogize space exploration with naval exploration. There's a fine tradition of this analogy, but it is very likely inadequate. A while back, I heard Peter Ward, an astrobiologist, on bloggingheads, an on-line discussion show. He speculated that, to accomplish space travel, we'll have to engineer ourselves into creatures about half our size and hardened against radiation.
It's not just the boredom, in other words.
Nor nihilism. As L.B. Jeffries suggests, loss of meaning is a danger, but the issue isn't really about people becoming depressed or even suicidal. The idea is that new societies will develop that have no essential connection to the human society we know.
As Xaositect points out, you don't need space travel for this. Or, as Jeroen Stout says, space travel could have this effect immediately. Both true, I think. We only need a change in our perspective to scare Heidegger (and, yes, it's important to explore ideas that scare Nazis).
But we also have before us today actual technological changes that may accelerate us toward post-humanity. Someone out there is almost certainly cloning people right now. That's not merely a shift in perspective. It's a physical change.
A whole bunch of science fiction writers have been exploring these themes for, well, more than twenty years now. Arbre recommends Dan Simmons. I do, too. I'd also point people toward Vernor Vinge, Richard Morgan, Chris Moriarty, and, my favorite, Alastair Reynolds.
I'd especially recommend Alastair Reynolds for those who have played Mass Effect. If you want to see "genocidal alien machine race" done right, check out his Revelation Space Trilogy.
Whew!
Thanks again for reading, everyone, and thanks more for commenting.
Best regards,
Ray.
Hi all,
Thanks for taking the time to comment and for developing such an interesting discussion. I'd like to respond to your thoughts by talking about the recently released downloadable content for Mass Effect.
"Bring Down the Sky" consists of a brief adventure involving a species mentioned in the core game but previously unrevealed: the Batarians. Bad blood exists between Batarians and Humans, because the Galactic Council made a judgment favoring Humans over Batarians in regard to colonization rights over a sector of space. The Batarians cut off diplomatic relations with the council and went to war with Humans. The game refers to Batarians as a "rogue state". In the DLC, a group of even more radical Batarians, labeled "terrorists" in-game, has set an asteroid on a collision course with a Human colony. The hero's job is to re-direct the asteroid.
I found a great encapsulation of how "Bring Down the Sky" disappoints on the gamefaqs Mass Effect message board. This run-on sentence by catsimboy illustrates some of the issues I was talking about in the article:
"...the introduction of a new alien race isn't that big of a deal since they fight like every other humanoid, if they made it so you could recruit one to your team that would rock but it ain't happening because the Batarians are jerks."
They are jerks! The problem is: they're only jerks. You see, by placing itself within the space opera tradition, Mass Effect raises the expectation that its characterizations of aliens will have some meaning. The terms "rogue state" and "terrorist" certainly have relevance in today's world. What, then, are the implications of a four-eyed species that has gone rogue and terrorist in the future established by Mass Effect?
There are no implications.
Just as it doesn't mean anything for the Asari to be an all-female species or for the Krogan to be super-masculine and on the verge of extinction.
Instead of establishing backgrounds for these species and then following them to interesting conclusions, BioWare creates aliens to fill standard roles that appear in all of its RPGs. You need aliens to fight and aliens to fuck. In other words, there's no reason for the Batarians to be Batarians. They're just jerks; they could be any species with any history. Really, there's no reason for Mass effect to take place in a science fiction setting. None of its conflicts occur as a result of any thinking about what human life in space might mean.
BioWare just likes Star Wars and made their own version of it.
Now, the point of bringing in Heidegger has to do with time. I'm going to guess that every single person who commented here was born after 1966. None of you is human.
We all grew up thinking of Earth as a planet. We all saw pictures of Earth from the moon in our childhood. In Heidegger's view, our experience of the world cuts us off from the whole mass of humanity who lived before us.
That includes George Lucas. He didn't write Star Wars for us; he wrote it for his peers, for his generation.
Let's talk then about humanity and space travel. Jeffers, R.O., and sammyfreak all analogize space exploration with naval exploration. There's a fine tradition of this analogy, but it is very likely inadequate. A while back, I heard Peter Ward, an astrobiologist, on bloggingheads, an on-line discussion show. He speculated that, to accomplish space travel, we'll have to engineer ourselves into creatures about half our size and hardened against radiation.
It's not just the boredom, in other words.
Nor nihilism. As L.B. Jeffries suggests, loss of meaning is a danger, but the issue isn't really about people becoming depressed or even suicidal. The idea is that new societies will develop that have no essential connection to the human society we know.
As Xaositect points out, you don't need space travel for this. Or, as Jeroen Stout says, space travel could have this effect immediately. Both true, I think. We only need a change in our perspective to scare Heidegger (and, yes, it's important to explore ideas that scare Nazis).
But we also have before us today actual technological changes that may accelerate us toward post-humanity. Someone out there is almost certainly cloning people right now. That's not merely a shift in perspective. It's a physical change.
A whole bunch of science fiction writers have been exploring these themes for, well, more than twenty years now. Arbre recommends Dan Simmons. I do, too. I'd also point people toward Vernor Vinge, Richard Morgan, Chris Moriarty, and, my favorite, Alastair Reynolds.
I'd especially recommend Alastair Reynolds for those who have played Mass Effect. If you want to see "genocidal alien machine race" done right, check out his Revelation Space Trilogy.
Whew!
Thanks again for reading, everyone, and thanks more for commenting.
Best regards,
Ray.
I don't think its very fair for you to shoot down his article or response because of "art-babble" and "pseudo-psychological-waffle" when all of your counter-arguments are based on your moral ethics and opinions. At least he made a thought-out point, don't criticize something just because you don't understand it.
You say that real humans don't have to see Earth as a home and they shouldn't connect their identity to it. Why not? Every single cell, code of DNA, and idea banging around in your head was founded on Earth. It has spent hundreds to millions of years developing here. Everything you know, practice, and even fantasize about facilitates one function: live on Earth.
You say humanity is based on moral precepts: cruelty, value of life, etc. But all of those are still products of living on this planet and establishing co-existence. Going with Hulings Space Dwarf analogy, how would you feel if, by necessity, they would kill themselves off to control the population? If they did this on the ship, like there wasn't enough food? Are they no longer moral? Does the fact that they have a variation of human DNA make them still human? Everything you do is about survival, and that concept comes from Earth. The moment you stop living here, whether it's someone like us or a genetic variation, they are now operating under different survival parameters. Morality is just one of those.
Post-Humanity would be the growing acknowledgment that humans as an animal are changing. The same survival skills are no longer needed, different ones help while old ones no longer work. I highly doubt someone from a 100 years ago would consider many of us moral or proper. I highly doubt if you met someone from a 100 years in the future you'd think they were very cool either.
Still never played 'Mass Effect', but since the vast majority of science fiction is just escapist nonsense I don't expect it to try to be any different. I still think the article made a good point: it'd be nice if sci-fi bothered to challenge us occasionally.
You say that real humans don't have to see Earth as a home and they shouldn't connect their identity to it. Why not? Every single cell, code of DNA, and idea banging around in your head was founded on Earth. It has spent hundreds to millions of years developing here. Everything you know, practice, and even fantasize about facilitates one function: live on Earth.
You say humanity is based on moral precepts: cruelty, value of life, etc. But all of those are still products of living on this planet and establishing co-existence. Going with Hulings Space Dwarf analogy, how would you feel if, by necessity, they would kill themselves off to control the population? If they did this on the ship, like there wasn't enough food? Are they no longer moral? Does the fact that they have a variation of human DNA make them still human? Everything you do is about survival, and that concept comes from Earth. The moment you stop living here, whether it's someone like us or a genetic variation, they are now operating under different survival parameters. Morality is just one of those.
Post-Humanity would be the growing acknowledgment that humans as an animal are changing. The same survival skills are no longer needed, different ones help while old ones no longer work. I highly doubt someone from a 100 years ago would consider many of us moral or proper. I highly doubt if you met someone from a 100 years in the future you'd think they were very cool either.
Still never played 'Mass Effect', but since the vast majority of science fiction is just escapist nonsense I don't expect it to try to be any different. I still think the article made a good point: it'd be nice if sci-fi bothered to challenge us occasionally.
The vast majority of everything is "just escapist nonsense", including the 6 o'clock news. I wouldn't write off the Internet or TV for that any more than I'd write off SF for the same. Indeed, it was SF writer Theodore Sturgeon who wrote, "Ninety percent of science fiction is crud, but that's because ninety percent of everything is crud." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law]L.B. Jeffries said:
If you want SF that challenges the concept of humanity, go look to Blish's Seedling Stars [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Blish#The_Seedling_Stars_.28Pantropy.29] series of stories where genetic engineering is the least of many techniques used to adapt colonists to alien environments, or Clifford Simak's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Simak] City for a different take on that, or Harlan Ellison [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_ellison]'s "I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream" when the same is inflicted as punishment, or pretty much anything by Philip K. Dick [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_k._dick] (whose work has been adapted, with greater or lesser succcess, many times in Hollywood; Blade Runner, for instance) because he explored the split between perception and reality, or... well, alas I'm out of time.
Still, "keep looking and you'll find the good stuff" applies here as it does elsewhere. To do differently is to condemn all North American cooking after one trip to a McDonalds.
-- Steve
Edited to fix some misspelt names and to linkify some references.
The problems that arise from space exploration are similar to problems that science have created all through its history. These problems are existential in nature. How do we define humanity, soul, love and the meaning of life when science continues to scrap our romantic and spiritual notions of these subjects?
Because of millions of years of evolution we have developed a so strong connection to Earth, nature and mankind that it seems spiritual to us. All lifeforms are products of their environment. If that environment goes through drastic changes the lifeforms must adapt to those changes or become exinct.
In the book 'Slapstick (or Lonesome no More!)' by Kurt Vonnegut, the Chinese discovered a way to create ultra-intelligence by uniting human minds to form sort of collective minds. Soon the Chinese broke off all contact to other humans and began to modify themselves to become ever smaller until they were about the size of bacteria. However ridicilous this might seem, I think it is much more likely than the future mainstream scifi offers us.
Because of millions of years of evolution we have developed a so strong connection to Earth, nature and mankind that it seems spiritual to us. All lifeforms are products of their environment. If that environment goes through drastic changes the lifeforms must adapt to those changes or become exinct.
In the book 'Slapstick (or Lonesome no More!)' by Kurt Vonnegut, the Chinese discovered a way to create ultra-intelligence by uniting human minds to form sort of collective minds. Soon the Chinese broke off all contact to other humans and began to modify themselves to become ever smaller until they were about the size of bacteria. However ridicilous this might seem, I think it is much more likely than the future mainstream scifi offers us.
I am an ardent fan of Phillip K. Dick, but the most morally and ethically challenging sci-fi writer I've ever read is still Olaf Stapledon. 'Last and First Men' pretty much changed my whole outlook on life. You're the fourth person to tell me to read the Seedling series, but the list of books I need to read never ends.Anton P. Nym said:
I certainly don't write games off for being purely escapist (judging by the mountain of Stackpole books in my attic), but it's still fair to say that plenty are fun but still get the brain wheel turning.
'System Shock 2's discourse on the problems between individual authority and the communist 'Many' alien species, with both screwing you over in their own unique way. KOTOR's grand (albeit done better in Planescape) take on identity and the tabula rasa. 'Ur-Quan Masters' had several great anecdotes about different species and their relationship with their home planet, not to mention comments on pacifism and species genocide. The list goes on & on...
Ha!
I thought I'd capped this discussion off! A little farewell before tomorrow's new issue (in which I may have another piece...).
But Jeffers has raised some interesting points. I'll try to address them briefly, and then I'm out.
First, "none of you is human" is both tongue-in-cheek and good English. 'None' uses notional agreement to conjugate its verb, because it's a contraction of "not one", but can also mean "not any". I'm old-fashioned and so intended the former.
Space Dwarves: the problem isn't that we might find them repellant. The problem is that they would be manufactured to do a job. That's an extraordinarily dangerous idea. Bladerunner pretty much consists of a meditation on it. Genetic engineering would not necessarily make the subject of the engineering post-human, but it would completely alter the society that carried out the engineering.
Electricity: Heidegger actually maintained that electricity was the technological development that put all of humanity in danger.
Post-human societies: Chris Moriarty, whom I mentioned above, wrote about a society of genetically engineered humans that models itself on ants. This sort of change goes further than architecture. In fact, these are the changes occurring today that I think Mass Effect alludes to, but takes no position on. For example, no society in human history ever had a majority of its population over fifty years old. That will soon happen. There's no telling what that may mean for us.
Both extreme longevity and cloning threaten humanity as we know it. Cloning is the opposite of sexual reproduction; it reduces genetic diversity. Longevity does, too. Human society developed to deal with very narrow parameters: the life-cycle that humans evolved over millions of years. That life-cycle is now at stake.
Sci-fi may want to pay attention to that. That's all I'm sayin'!
I thought I'd capped this discussion off! A little farewell before tomorrow's new issue (in which I may have another piece...).
But Jeffers has raised some interesting points. I'll try to address them briefly, and then I'm out.
First, "none of you is human" is both tongue-in-cheek and good English. 'None' uses notional agreement to conjugate its verb, because it's a contraction of "not one", but can also mean "not any". I'm old-fashioned and so intended the former.
Space Dwarves: the problem isn't that we might find them repellant. The problem is that they would be manufactured to do a job. That's an extraordinarily dangerous idea. Bladerunner pretty much consists of a meditation on it. Genetic engineering would not necessarily make the subject of the engineering post-human, but it would completely alter the society that carried out the engineering.
Electricity: Heidegger actually maintained that electricity was the technological development that put all of humanity in danger.
Post-human societies: Chris Moriarty, whom I mentioned above, wrote about a society of genetically engineered humans that models itself on ants. This sort of change goes further than architecture. In fact, these are the changes occurring today that I think Mass Effect alludes to, but takes no position on. For example, no society in human history ever had a majority of its population over fifty years old. That will soon happen. There's no telling what that may mean for us.
Both extreme longevity and cloning threaten humanity as we know it. Cloning is the opposite of sexual reproduction; it reduces genetic diversity. Longevity does, too. Human society developed to deal with very narrow parameters: the life-cycle that humans evolved over millions of years. That life-cycle is now at stake.
Sci-fi may want to pay attention to that. That's all I'm sayin'!