Monday, March 23, 2009

Renunciation of Technology


On the BSG science blogs, a lot of discussion has taken place around the colonials decision to abandon the bulk of their technology. (If killer robots destroyed everything, and I spent 4 years in a tin can eating algae I might quickly embrace living off of the land too.)

In the Open Thread discussion of Daybreak Part 2, Robert Cruickshank offered this excellent observation:

I have to confess how surprised I am that people aren't willing to accept what General Boy called "the choice of primitivism." It may be because of my own familiarity with the subject as a historian - perhaps those who can't accept it just aren't aware that human beings have often expressed a desire to, or actually have chosen to, do exactly this.

And I don't blame people for not having that awareness - we live in an age in which our technological society is considered superior to the absence of it, where criticism of technology is dismissed as "Luddite" and where people living off the land are derided as "primitives".

The desire of human beings to blame their problems on their present surroundings - whether ideological, technological, or cultural - and move somewhere new and unspoiled to start over again in a kind of New Eden is VERY VERY STRONG in our history. Hell, it's one of the founding myths of the United States.

From the Amish Country to Walden Pond, from the hippie communes of the 1960s to the hardy pioneers of the 1800s who forsake Eastern civilization to "light out for the territories" in Mark Twain's phrase (and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has a very similar ending to BSG), plenty of people have desired a tabula rasa - to get back in touch with their souls, as Lee put it, and start again with a more authentic lifestyle free from the corrupting influences that brought so much suffering.

And that's a point which all those people saying "I could never do that" are missing. If you asked any of those humans before the fall of the colonies where they could make the same choice, nobody would have said yes.

But they have been through a harrowing journey over the last four years in which they learned, repeatedly, that their technology not only won't save them, but that it has frequently destroyed them. Finding Old Earth as a nuclear ruin would have put a profound exclamation point on it.

And so when the find an Edenic place to live - where they don't have to be afraid, where they really can just spread out and explore, you can bet that the desire to give up the past ways and start anew will take over. If I were down there I'd have been in complete agreement with Lee.

One of my concerns with online discussion of TV shows is that too often people criticize the direction of a show because "I would never do that" or "it does not make sense to me." If everyone thought as you did, there would be no diversity of thought at all in the human race. Human beings see things differently. People make what I believe to be stupid and crazy decisions all the time, decisions I would never make.

But the point, especially in art and literature, isn't that they made a bad choice - rather it's to understand why the choice was made. And I think BSG has done that very well here.

Ultimately, good art is NOT about pleasing everyone. It's about making a profound artistic statement that leaves people feeling moved, even if people passionately disagree about what those feelings should be.


You may also find interesting this article by Jared Diamond (author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed) where he suggests that moving to an agriculture based society was the worst mistake humans ever made.





As a whole Battlestar Galactica raises questions and debate around the topic of the technological singularity, and transhumanism. For more on that debate, I highly recommend the essays, Singularities and Nightmares by David Brin, and Why the future doesn't need us, by Bill Joy.

If anyone wants to discuss these topics in the comments, please do.

27 comments:

Ken Arneson said...

I don't think they abandon technology if there weren't already natives on that planet. The issue is this: they just got through a horrible war whose core cause was the belief on each side that We are superior to Them.

If they keep their technology with those natives around, they are setting up the exact same dynamic that got them into this mess in the first place: We (with our technology) are superior to Them (without it).

If you want to break the cycle of violence that arises from that concept, you have to abandon that concept. And in this context, abandoning the concept means abandoning the technology.

Asta said...

I think Robert makes a great point. There was a telling moment for me as to why they would make the choice they did to leave technology behind. Only days after beginning to settle the planet, the first big discussion involved the construction of a city. The ships could be stripped and used as construction material for buildings. And considering this would be a massive undertaking, they could enlist the Centurions as labor to help build. (That worked well for them before.) Or maybe they could round up the primitive indigenous people to use as labor.

Looking at it from Lee's perspective, he was witnessing how quickly humanity was settling into it’s old patterns and reverting to the old cycle. This time, there wasn't just the possibility of the Cylon race being enslaved, but the same fate befalling those already there. It would eventually happen anyway, but Lee was trying to stop it by leveling the playing field. It’s harder to dominate people when you don’t have the weapons to do it.

Jack said...

I loved the finale, but have had the biggest problem reconciling this element of the story.

Part of it is that the decision was just thrown out there by Lee and somehow accepted by every single colonist in a fleet that had done nothing but disagree for 4 years. The idea that everyone would have gone along with it just seems implausible.

But my main issue has been that for four seasons we'd been brought along on this struggle to maintain civilization and humanity, only for the last 45 minutes to say, "Eh, we didn't really mean that, we meant THIS."

While Jared Diamond's article did change my opinion on whether the colonials' change to the simpler way of life was essentially an intentional collapse of civilization, I still find it difficult to believe that it would be anything but extremely tough going without technology.

Even with what they could salvage from ships - which we don't know they did thanks to the scene of people marching off with only what they could carry - it would still be hard for people who had few if any of the needed skills, such as hunting, gathering, building a shelter, etc.

Helo and Athena talk about teaching Hera to hunt. With what if not a gun? And if it is with a bow or spear, do you know how to make it? How to track animals so you can use it? If not, can you learn how before your algae rations run out? And can you do this while also building a shelter? Finding fresh water? Fending off predators and the humanoids who were already there?

Throw in an unknown planet with unknown weather patterns and microbes, and they're just setting themselves up for failure.

I didn't watch the show for four years to see the civilization essentially commit suicide at the end, even if it is in fields of green grass, so I didn't see this as a necessarily happy ending.

Oscar said...

After four years at each others' throats while hunted to extinction by their own creations, laying the city plans for New New Caprica probably felt like prolonging the agony.

The Colonists were a dying civilization. They could never get back everything they once had; most of their culture, technology, history, etc were already lost. Their new home would in no way resemble the homes they had lost. It's no coincidence that the final few episodes focused on what constitutes a home anyways.

They did, however, get to birth a new civilization, the most any mortal entity can hope for. You could say the Colonial remnant fertilized Earth with it. Like any parent, they could pass on a few traits -- language, crafting, agriculture -- and hope for the best, but not prescribe any particular shape or future. Having children doesn't make us immortal or let us hang on to what we are. Eventually we die and get out of the way.

vrbnks said...

Just because primitivism is a strong and recurrent through Western history doesn't legitimate it, whether it be frontier mythology, counter-culture, or narrative fiction on television. The issue of whether or not I would identify with the desire to spread out over "an Edenic space" is beside the point. I have no interest in arguing how "realistic" it would be to feel one way or another at the end of the journey. The issue for me is how the writers constructed that Edenic space:

1. The fleet literally colonizes Africa. Lee drives this point home when he says the fleet can bring language to the world, i.e., civilize them. I can't believe the brazen irresponsibility of this device to end the series.

2. The social bonds are renounced. It's not just that they send their technology into the sun, they send their books and culture -- their shared history. The series ends by giving up on the collective social body in favor of individualism/"the nuclear family". This dovetails nicely with the way "faith" supersedes collective agency at the end of the series as well.

Of course the series wasn't about pleasing everyone, but these are NOT very profound statements. They are recapitulations of bankrupt themes which work against every interesting question the show wonderfully developed over the course of the first three seasons, questions that revolved around how humans relate to other humans, how humans relate to artificial technology, how humans relate to technology. Pointing to individualism and fate/destiny was the least satisfying to end the show.

Logan Gawain said...

I'm not sure they sent their books and culture into the sun. (Adama probably got all his books back form the Cylon baseship, unless the Centurions wanted reading material.) I can't believe Cottle would get rid of all of his medical equipment.

The point they want to make is that their culture became imparted into our culture, at a deep level over time.

But, we don't have their AI technology or FTL drives... yet.

It's also valuable to examine the ending non-literally, and think about it's allegorical qualities.

Unknown said...

On the topic of the singularity :

I thought I'd share this link to the excellent SETI podcast on the subject :

http://podcast.seti.org/episodes/When_Machines_Rule

Weird BE said...

What I haven't seen discussed - and what Lee should have said, I think, since it's much more practical - is, how, exactly, they would sustain a technological society? There are 38,000 people left and not a single building on the planet. No electricity, no heat, no running water, no pipelines.

The idea that somehow you could take everything on the fleet and transport it to Africa and suddenly everything would be A-OK is pushing it. Frankly, the conceit that algae could sustain an entire society for several years, and that there would be an endless reservoir of bullets, bombs and medicine was already unbelievable. Of course, without this conceit, there would be no series.

How soon until all of the supplies would run out on Earth and they would have to get everything from the land anyway? It was already established that toothpaste had slipped the surly bonds of space. Yes, it's better to have a gun than a rock, but they're the same if you don't have a bullet to go with the gun. Also, Adama mentions that supplies were evenly distributed anyway, so what you're really talking about is the idea of technology that would...what? Lead to immediate prosperity?

Think of it this way. 38,000 people. That's a mid-sized town. Let's say there are the same amount of Cylons on the baseship. Plus say 2,000 Centurions - who, of course, you wouldn't necessarily want as the labor, since wasn't that what started the whole mess in the first place? 80,000 people. You think 80,000 people on Earth would have a clue what to do if we gave them a dozen ships and then tossed them onto the grasses of Tanzania and asked them to re-create Chicago?

New Caprica wasn't exactly a shining beacon on the hill, and the Colonials had decided that was going to be their final destination. Presumably they had done their damndest to transport whatever tech they were able to transport.

The frightening truth is that no matter how smart any of us are in the developed West, if we had to start over from scratch tomorrow, even if we had the building blocks, it would take centuries or millennia to replicate anything halfway approaching modern civilization. Given the survivors were tired and restless already, does it stand to reason they'd be willing to work every day of the rest of their lives to begin this transition?

Judging by the fact that Hera died a young woman, it stands to reason most of the Colonials who settled on Earth died within a few decades. That's sad. But it probably would have happened anyway, even if they hadn't embraced a Luddite way.

Anonymous said...

God wanted it that way...

Unknown said...

Amish and hippies seem like a good example, but there is a huge difference. While both groups intentionally chose to live a certain lifestyle, they did not throw all everything away.

The Amish choose to limit their connections to the outside world and don't own automobiles. But they still take advantage of a great deal of technological innovation, ranging from solar power, to gasoline powered farm equipment and generators, to artificial insemination of livestock, to pesticides and fertilizers. They go into town regularly to shop. They use modern medicine. It isn't the same.
Hippies, likewise, though choosing communal lifestyle, did not shun technology. In fact, later hippies embraced it, choosing more efficient "green" methods such as solar power over older more polluting technologies.

The decision to destroy all old technology wholesale, without attempting to build an agricultural and industrial base that can support a growing civilization is fool-hearty. Not even the staunchest frontiersman would suggest it. Quite the opposite. Those who moved west built up, they did not tear down.

Realistically, they wouldn't have been able to maintain a space faring civilization without the help of the Centurions. But they would have been able to use the equipment aboard the mining, processing, factory, and agricultural ships to bootstrap an early agro-industrial civilization capable of surviving an iceage or two.
And if the Centurions stayed, then they would have been back to space travel in no time, with the ability to branch out in a century or two.

Robert Cruickshank said...

Personally I think this is a good discussion to be having given the overall arc of the series - "what does it mean to be human? to be alive?" Among the numerous fundamental questions BSG has raised, from war to torture to religion to suicide bombing, it also raises the matter of how much technology and innovation is good or desirable.

I genuinely do not know where I stand on that matter. But it is a discussion that never ceases to fascinate me.

Anonymous said...

When you think about the lives of most colonists since the flight from New Caprica it may not really have been much of a sacrifice to dump their tech. Medicine was getting scarce even by the end of season 2 with only the pilots getting the good stuff, and aside from booze and smokes what did the rank and file really have? Lights, running water, sanitation... That was all tied to their ships and they certainly weren't going back to those. The only really hard part to take is the notion that they wouldn't first get establised before flying everything into the sun.

Vintruvious said...

This has happend before, and it will happen again.

Babylon, Alexandria, Athens, Rome. Whethr by choice or circumstance human civilization has lost or forgone millenia of technolgy. From the fall of Rome in 476 it was almost 1200 years until the same level of technological societal advancement was reached as at the fall.

General Boy said...

I'm eager to join in the discussion, but I haven't had the time. Let me submit this for your consideration, though:

Baltar is the personification of the return to primativism. He was raised a farmer and became a scientist. On Earth, well, "You know, I know about farming".

That line kills me. Callis nails it. It's so poignant, for reasons perhaps I don't fully appreciate right now.

Anonymous said...

Two comments:

We really don't know how much technology they kept with them. It could have been enough to keep them comfortable, but not enough to stand the test of 150000 years. That's a long time.

Second, it's a story, and certain devices have to be deployed. If they want us to believe these are our progenitors, they could not keep enough technology to alter the basic history of the planet. Otherwise, we'd know about it. Also, it made a really nice scene to show the ships sailing off into the sun, with the old BSG music behind it. Those devices were in place to tie the plot together.

Unknown said...

I really enjoyed the finale. I don't think any episode of television has been as emotionally engaging as this was, ever.

But. I have some problems with the end. The decision to totally abandon technology - of course they can't recreate Caprica City, but I'd think they'd want to use every last resource they had to ensure their survival. I get that people would be happy to live on the land after living in tin cans, and being hunted almost to extinction by robots. But. Compromise seems like it would have been possible.

Also, the epilogue... Mitochondrial Eve is NOT a name scientists have given for our Most Recent Common Ancestor. This is a very basic mistake. The Most Recent Common Ancestor for all humans alive today is believed to have lived between 3000 and 8000 years ago. I have no problem with the notion of Hera being Mitochondrial Eve, because 150 000 years ago is about right (and NO, it does NOT mean that all the other colonists died out, or that their lines died out - why do people keep making claims like this without taking the time to read up on what Mitochondrial Eve means?) but that line near the end is just wrong.

On an emotional level, I loved it. My initial reaction was the it was perfect. But on reflection, I've found that there is quite a bit that bothers me.

Marie said...

I agree with Weird be, General Boy and Mythical bird (others as well, but these are the messages I remember).

I think we don't know the extent of what they left in space and what they took with them. They were at the end of the line, they just wanted to live the rest of their lives peacefully, not sure about if they would survive after a few generations, especially with cylons involved... You can't have technology in a world with no technology, you need power to use it, you need labs to replicate it, it was just impossible on the long term, so honestly, it makes sense.
I loved it, I though it was very logical in the end, after having spent 4 years stuck in a confined space with no real air, and no real light, I think I would pretty much go "Into the wild" instead of trying to stick to what I had before.
I love the fact that this show brought such an interesting topic to talk about, only BSG would do something like that :D

Michael J Mahoney said...

Weird BE makes some great points. How long would the technology have lased, anyway.

As Logan said, I'm sure they are taking some stuff. What they can carry, hand tools, medicines, what provisions they have. But that would have been in short supply soon. Would their supplies have lasted a decade? I doubt it.

I would also imagine that some of their literature would have survived. There was a lot familiar in BSG to our own society. The implication is that WE got it from THEM - some sort of racial memory or cultural continuity. Our societal structures are theirs, not the other way around.

But honestly, how long could a paper book last? A century? Two? Certainly not 1500. Unless there are a couple sealed in a buried raptor deep under the Serengeti. :)

Unknown said...

Gah! I thought the "Daybreak II" thread was the place to post comments about the 'return to nature' aspect of the ending.

I won't repost my entire comment, but as I said there, "The overall plotline of the show can now be expressed as follows: an advanced race of humans create Cylons; the Cylons revolt; after an initial truce the Cylons kill almost everyone; the surviving 39,000 humans subsequently die after a series of adventures and are not remembered by anyone."

It's really not important in the overall scheme of things that Hera becomes our 'Mitochondrial Eve' because there were human natives on the planet before the Colonials arrived. If it hadn't been Hera, it would've been one of them.

This ending is therefore almost as nihilistic as if they'd all died in space. They don't use their shared experience or knowledge to do anything other than cease being a culture.

As Robert Cruikshanks adroitly pointed out, this is entirely believable and makes sense as their choice. But it's only a "happy ending" for those who believe the human race is better off without shared cultural experiences and instead simply exists as tribes of savages.

Demiath said...

Cruickshanks' useful historical analysis notwithstanding, the choice to "go native" is not a believable one in the context of the show. On the contrary, the starry-eyed primitivist utopianism espoused by Lee (in a remarkably sort of offhand way, too) is utterly at odds with the grimly realistic and coldly pragmatic approach to survival which has characterized the major BSG character's reactions to their desperate situation from the mini-series onwards (I'm thinking in particular of Admiral Adama, President Roslin and other leading figures).

The "let's all live in tipis and die painfully at the age of 25 of perfectly treatable diseases and/or clan warfare resulting from the lack of central government" mentality is such an extreme departure from the usual ideologies and sentiments expressed on the show that I wouldn't even expect to hear one of Baltar's most fanatic harem/cult girls advocate it...

Greg Cotten said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Athelstane said...

I think Mr. Cruickshank makes a very good point - and he could emphasize even more that it's hard to put yourself in the mindset of a people who have gone through what the refugees had been through for the last four years. Remember that we mostly saw just the military living environments, not the hell that the civilians were living with. I can well believe that some might choose such a radical option.

Just the same, however, the difficulty is not that some wanted to go "primitive," but that EVERYONE did. Out of 38,000+ people, everyone agreed on this course of action?

Romo's comment on that odd fact smelled, I fear, more than a little of hanging a lantern (look up the phrase) on a resolution designed to explain why we haven't found 150,000 year old spaceship hulks in East Africa. It's hard enough as it is to explain the fate of the raptors, vipers and shuttles which couldn't just be autopiloted back into orbit to join the solar oblivion trip.

Having said all that, I am willing to forgive a lot for those final scenes with Roslin and Adama.

Logan Gawain said...

In Ron's podcast commentary he notes that originally we would see them blowing up the raptors and vipers on the ground, much like Cortez burning his ships.

shager said...

Another thing that I haven't heard in the post-finale discussion: Part of their decision making in favor of abandoning their technology could include the fact that they know that there was no way they could sustain it. Just imagine if all but 39,000 people in the real world all suddenly died in an apocalyptic event. Within a generation or so, would not the vast majority of our technological capacity be substantially diminished? In the show, the human colonies developed over the course of centuries. The economy of resources, knowledge, and diversity of labor it took to create their technology were obliterated in short order when the cylons attacked. From that point forward, the means for the humans to sustain their tech began to exponentially diminish. Example: As medicines ran out, no pharmaceutical industry was there to replace them, and there was no way they could have re-developed that capacity, as they were focused on immediate survival. (if the world was reduced to just 2 trained nuclear engineers, how long do you think we would be able to sustain nuclear power? Do you think the remaining humans would be able to create something as simple as a computer? How about after 4 generations of scrappy living?) Instead of trying to futilely sustain high technology with low technology means, they chose to start over more practically. The other comments highlight their other reasons for doing so well.

Also, no one said thaydidn't hang on to basic tools in order to get started.

Tez said...

The other thing that I think is overlooked is the issue with politics and government. Lee knew that a democratic open government was impossible and his recourse was to maintain the theatre while the fleet was running.

With the seperate groups on different continents, as well as abandoning most of the tech that they know they couldn't easily redevelop or maintain. Everyone to a limited degree are now responsible for their own lives, a liberty they haven't had while stuck in a metal box for 4 years. Plus they had enough problems when they settled on New Caprica before the Cylons turned up (even though Baltar was a crap President, all their ills cant really be blamed on him).

The other thing I like is how it guts some of the groups like the Sons of Ares, since they lorded themselves as the bullies of others... not so now they will no doubt have been disarmed and separated, everyone's focus is now on self survival and survival of their own groups. As for the cult of Baltar, well unless Paulla maintains control they're definitely split since 'half the fleet' won't be settled into one area.

Hopefully the DVD release has a few extra scenes to polish off stuff that Ron has addressed (i.e. the Colony falls into the black hole since it got nuked).

The end of this series has been akin to a good friend moving away, to be seen no more except in memory and reminiscing. No other TV series has had such an effect on me and I put that down to Ron's "It's the characters, stupid" mantra towards this adventure as well as the brilliant acting and post production. I just hope to get more friends into the show in the future because I love it that much.

Digressing a bit, the only thing I've been surprised about is the 'fan' backlash against the finale. Either people had such a narrow view of what they wanted it to be, or just wanted 100% action. I thought the finale was perfect, and welcomes a large amount of discussion and debate. The elements left ambiguous are questions that mankind has had since, well, forever. You have people complaining that 'God' did it is a cop out, yet forgetting that this has been part of the series since the beginning! Also people moaning about how "they were making it up as they went along", what the hell is wrong with that? It's the end result that matters... do fiction writers have the same accusation levelled at them?

Alex said...

The thing that gets me about the whole abandoning technology idea is that RDM does not seem to get the fact that when Baltar spots a good location for his farm he’s actually advancing Earth technology by about 138,000 years. Whilst I can believe that the colonials would want a more basic way of life, avoiding the threat of AI and weapons of mass destruction, we are seemingly asked to believe that the colonists choose a very hard course indeed. Agriculture signalled the need to stop chasing animals (a hard way of life) for growing crops (which don’t run away) and the founding of the first towns and cities. The first cities on earth are believed to have arisen 12000 years ago in the middle east, so to be consistent with the technology of the time Lee apparently persuaded the colonials to take up a cave man style existence, migrating with animals and killing them with sharpened rocks and sticks. While I agree a space faring technological society was unsupportable , I think the adoption of such an extremely primitive way of life by people used to at least having a roof over the heads is completely ludicrous. I say Lee must have persuaded his people to do this because the establishment of colonial colonies using even such simple technologies as growing crops, building wooden houses and keeping written records is completely incompatible with actual history, which RDM appears to be trying to tie the BSG universe into. These advances should have led to moon landings in about the year 126,000BC.

On the whole I have loved the re-imagined series of BSG but I felt very let down by the finale. The series has drawn me in with its complex plots and mysteries. Having waited with baited breath to find out just how so many plot lines could be concluded to I was disappointed to be presented with a final show that either left plot lines unresolved or answered them with a simple “God did it with his superpowers and unfathomable motivation”. Additionally, the implausibility of the colonial’s actions and the lame attempt to incorporate the BSG timeline with our own just compounded the crime.

I accept that fiction writers are entitled to make things up as they go along, but I just wish the many apparent clues, cultural references to modern earth (quoting Shakespeare and the “all along the watchtower song” for example) and historical mysteries (who were the Lords of Kobol?) had been answered with a more sophisticated and complete set of answers than the finale provided.

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