|
A
peer-reviewed electronic journal published by the Institute for Ethics and ISSN
1541-0099 20(2)
– December 2009 |
Film review: District 9
Seth D. Baum
Department of Geography and Rock Ethics Institute,
E-mail: sbaum@psu.edu
Journal of Evolution and Technology - Vol. 20 Issue 2 – December 2009 - pgs 86-89
http://jetpress.org/v20/baum.htm
The recent film District 9 (dir. Neill Blomkamp, 2009) raises several issues of significance to transhumanism. These issues include whether it is
permissible to give a human being superhuman powers against his will, under
what circumstances humans will be accepting of transhumans
or posthumans, and what roles space colonization and
extraterrestrial encounter may play in the future of humanity. Consideration of
these issues deepens the viewing experience, and it can inform current
decisions about transhumanism’s future as a cultural
movement.
The film depicts an encounter between humanity and
extraterrestrials. While it develops the theme of tensions between the two
civilizations, it is anything but a standard-issue war of the worlds. Whenever
violence breaks out, it is limited to localized police operations,
insurgencies, and crimes, not focused efforts at extermination. Furthermore,
the film offers ambiguity about which civilization we should be rooting for and
even about where one civilization ends and the other begins
– where do we draw the line? This ambiguity – and the audience reaction it
generates – is of much interest to transhumanism. In
this review, I explain these themes and their significance. In doing so, I will
give away much of the plot (so please be warned), but I also offer some
suggestions for how to proceed with future viewings of the film.
District 9 involves a large ship full of
extraterrestrials (referred to in the film as non-humans) who seek
refuge on Earth. In a symbolic nod to apartheid, the ship lands above
By highlighting corporate greed, the film casts at
least part of humanity in a negative light.
(There are some more positive human characters, but these play only
minor roles.) The corporation, blandly named
Multi-National United (or MNU), seeks to harness non-human weapons technology
for considerable profit. To this end, MNU considers any means justified,
including numerous painful and fatal medical experiments on non-humans. (The
experiments are performed because non-human weapons are genetically encoded so
that only non-humans can use them.) Similar viciousness is displayed by
Nigerian gangs living in District 9; they barter with non-humans while making
their own attempt to harness non-human weaponry.
The Nigerians take one rather noteworthy step that the
other humans decline: they eat non-humans in attempt to gain their powers.
Thus, one can argue, these Nigerians are transhumanists
of a kind, seeking to transcend their original biology in order to enhance
their capabilities. But the crudeness of their attempts at transcendence makes
them appear paradoxically at once primitive and transhumanist
in their goals. Ultimately, however, all their efforts are unsuccessful,
including an attempt to eat Wilkus.
Wilkus is not at all a transhumanist,
even though he is very much a transhuman – a human
being in transition to something else with superior abilities. His mutation is
entirely accidental, and he laments it so much that he goes to great lengths,
throughout the film, to attempt to reverse it. This raises ethical issues of
broader significance to transhumanism. Is it
permissible to give someone beyond-human capabilities against his, or her,
will? Perhaps not, all else being equal, but what if these
capabilities serve some greater purpose? And how much greater must that
purpose be?
The exploitation by others of Wilkus’s
mutation against his will reaches a peak when he is taken into MNU custody. MNU
attempts to use his mutated body for its commercial advantage, even knowing
that this would bring Wilkus a painful death. The
film emphasizes the episode’s gruesome nature, leading the audience to reject
MNU’s tactics. The rejection is that much stronger because MNU’s broader
objective – development of lucrative weaponry – is not seen as noble, even
though the film does not explain what purposes the weapons would be sold for.
Those fellow moviegoers whom I asked about this
replied that they would reject MNU’s tactics even if the ends were more noble,
for example to cure major diseases. This scene is thus at heart a classic case
of consequentialist versus deontological ethics. By
highlighting the gruesomeness, it induced a deontological reaction in my
companions: no ends could justify this terrible means. As someone who is
consciously consequentialist, I had a very different
reaction: I found myself agreeing with MNU’s tactics, contingent on the
assumption that their ends were worthy. Likewise, a deontologist might argue
that it is impermissible to give someone new capabilities against his/her will.
By contrast, I would permit this given adequate ends, in particular to reduce
existential risk (see Bostrom 2002; 2003).
In any event, Wilkus escapes
MNU, leading to his and Christopher’s emergence as the film’s protagonists. The
two are imperfect, but likable, characters. They are also, most notably, a
non-human and a human/non-human mutant in a film with many human characters. I
found it interesting to watch the audience develop empathy for these two
instead of the film’s humans. Clearly, the humans in the cinematic audience
develop empathy for whichever film characters exhibit such traits such as
fairness and compassion, even if other characters are more genetically similar.
This result is an important one for transhumanism. A major impediment to transhumanism
is a strong backlash that includes an argument that transhuman
or posthuman beings should be rejected because of
their differences from humans (for discussion see Bostrom
and Ord 2006). But if transhumans
(and perhaps also transhumanists) exhibit desirable
character traits, then perhaps they can gain acceptance, just as the transhuman Wilkus gains
acceptance from the audience in District 9.
The transhuman characters
and the audience reactions that the film causes are not District 9’s
only important attributes. Also important are the themes of space travel,
survival, and inter-civilization interaction. Regarding space travel, one
simple fact is paramount: the non-humans can travel through space whereas the
humans cannot. The non-humans’ space travel capability offers them a resilience
in the face of home-planet disaster that human civilization currently lacks. If
such resilience is desirable – if our collective survival is important – then
we should concentrate on developing (now or eventually) space travel
capability, whether through superior tools or by technologically-mediated
evolution (i.e., by transhumanist means).
Regarding inter-civilization interaction, District
9 suggests the complex interactions that can take place. (For a discussion
of the likelihood of humans encountering extraterrestrials, see Ćirković 2003.) Such complexity parallels the
multiple relationships found in historical encounters between different human
populations, such as the European-Native American encounters. It may thus be
mistaken to treat each civilization as a monolithic entity and to assume that
an encounter would have one homogenous outcome.
I have been guilty of these mistakes myself (see Baum forthcoming). To
be sure, in an encounter between civilizations of different planets, the most
likely result may be the rapid destruction of one or both civilizations, as a
result of warfare, disease, or haphazard destruction. We neglect these
scenarios at our peril. Given that some protracted interaction occurs, however,
as District 9 reminds us, we should not assume a simple zero-sum
interaction.
District 9 thus offers opportunities for reflecting upon
humanity’s place in the grander scheme of things. These reflections are of
immediate relevance to decisions we face about transhumanism,
space colonization, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. To my disappointment, the film does not set
aside adequate time to highlight the very deep issues it raises. Some quiet,
reflective moments would have made it more memorable – like, for example, The
Matrix (dir. Larry and Andy Wachowski, 1999),
with its moments of reflection on artificial intelligence, free will, and the
blissfulness of ignorance. Nonetheless, District
9 is an enjoyable watch. I recommend viewing it with these issues in mind,
as a basis for reflection and discussion.
Acknowledgments
I thank Travis Gross, Jacob Haqq-Misra,
Stefan Little, and Tracy Vrablik
for insightful discussion during the development of this manuscript and Russell
Blackford for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
References
Baum, S. D. Forthcoming. Universalist
ethics in extraterrestrial encounter. Acta
Astronautica,
doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2009.07.003.
Bostrom, N. 2002. Existential risks: Analyzing human
extinction scenarios and related hazards. Journal of Evolution and Technology 9.
Bostrom, N. 2003. Astronomical waste: The opportunity cost
of delayed technological development. Utilitas 15: 308-314.
Bostrom, N., and T. Ord. 2006. The reversal test: Eliminating status quo
bias in bioethics. Ethics 116(4):
656-80.
Ćirković, M. M. 2003. On the importance of
SETI for transhumanism. Journal of Evolution and Technology
13(2).