The Expanse and Philosophy. Группа авторов
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sublime, we could be forgiven for thinking that a good hiding place is the best response. What can an animal do during a big storm or during an earthquake? Only obey instinct. The forest is intensely silent just before a thunderstorm—every creature alive in the vicinity goes to its home. Except human beings, we just might want to hang around and feel what happens. However, if you wanted to, you could stand out in a field during that thunderstorm. You could dance a jig in the middle of the street during an earthquake, if the impulse so moved you.
That option, of staying around and feeling what happens, is an experience of our own freedom in direct contrast to our instincts. All of the animals have gone to ground because that is what their programming demands. We can face the infinitely powerful, defy our instincts, and in the confrontation with the sublime, experience a pure intuition of our own freedom. Yes, we feel wonder and awe. These are the emotions that arise, not from the challenge of the infinite and infinitely powerful, but from the recognition that we are free. For Kant, because we are free, we are greater than the whole of the power of nature.
Holden, as he descends alone in his space suit to the Ring station, discusses why he is doing what he is doing with Miller. Miller says with a smile, “You are following your program, just like me.” Holden replies, “I always had this crazy notion about free will.” Miller replies, “Then how come it is that every time there is some clusterfuck shitstorm situation in the universe—there’s James Holden?! Shrugging his shoulders, saying, ‘How the hell did I end up here?’” (“Dandelion Sky”). Holden has the correct intuition of his own freedom. He just does not have Kant around to tutor him on what to say to Miller. But Holden has had the experience of the sublime—repeatedly. Ironically, his conversation with Miller is set within the mathematically sublime experience of space.
You are free and responsible for that freedom. The experience of the sublime is one proof of your freedom. Because you are free, you are different from the rest of creation. You are significant. The absence of your ability to know the significance of what you do in the context of the infinite does not diminish the significance of what you do. The characters of The Expanse know this. They act because they know they must, and they have faith that what they do matters.
It may seem strange to end with a quote from Amos, whose amorality is more on display in the show than his morality. But the truth is, Amos spends the show looking for guidance and slowly, but clearly, articulates the moral situation the characters are in. In a heated exchange with Alex, he says, “Do you want me to say this is some weird shit? Yeah, it’s some weird shit!” Alex replies, “Thank you! We are playing way out of our league here!” Amos finishes, “That’s been true ever since we’ve been sharpening sticks and going after lions, but we’re still here” (“Dandelion Sky”).
Look again at The Expanse. You will find the cinematography, the art direction, and the film direction, all try to bring the sublime into artistic representation. That feeling you have when you see infinite space represented on screen that tickles you at the back of your psyche may be an intuition of your own freedom.
It may be proof that you are more than the infinity that is the setting of The Expanse.
Notes
1 1. By “infinite” in this chapter we don’t necessarily mean literally without end. Instead, we mean inconceivably large or great.
2 2. Alexander Pope, “Epitaph on Sir Isaac Newton,” in James L. Ford and Mary K. Ford, eds., Every Day in the Year: A Poetical Epitome of History (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1902). Online https://www.bartleby.com/297/154.html.
3 3. Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), §199.
4 4. Pascal, §102.
5 5. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgment (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1987), §§23–24 and 28.
2 Interplanetary Expansion and the Deep Future
Margarida Hermida
“Platinum, iron, and titanium from the Belt. Water from Saturn, vegetables and beef from the big mirror‐fed greenhouses on Ganymede and Europa, organics from Earth and Mars. Power cells from Io, Helium‐3 from the refineries on Rhea and Iapetus.”1 At the start of The Expanse, human beings live all across the solar system; on Earth, Mars, in space stations in the asteroid belt, on the moons of Jupiter, and beyond. A vast interplanetary commercial exchange is in place.
While the details might differ, our solar system is indeed full of resources that could support a much larger human population than Earth.2 Contemporary philosopher John Leslie, author of The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction, argues that we have basically two options: either humanity has a long and prosperous future, expanding beyond Earth, and possibly even spreading across the galaxy; or else it is likely to go extinct within the next few centuries.3
So, which is it going to be? We can’t answer that question without considering the challenges facing humanity.
Does Humanity Have a Future?
In The Expanse, the future of humanity is constantly at stake. Danger comes from the protomolecule, with its uncanny capacity not only to turn every human in its path into a contagious vomit zombie, but maybe even to terraform Earth under unknown alien instructions. After Eros crashes on Venus, the protomolecule’s inscrutable activities continue, suggesting the possibility that it could destroy the entire solar system. Additionally, humanity faces the threat that the alien civilization that built the protomolecule might return. Even more worrying is the threat from whoever or whatever killed the original protomolecule makers. Most of all, though, a constant threat to humanity is all‐out war between Earth, Mars, and the Belt, culminating in the catastrophe of the Free Navy asteroid attack against Earth, killing billions of people.
Although the death of billions of people is immensely tragic, it pales in comparison to the threat to the very existence of humanity. The philosopher Derek Parfit (1942–2017) devised a thought experiment that asks us to consider three alternative scenarios:
1 Peace
2 A nuclear war that kills 99 percent of the human population
3 A nuclear war that kills 100 percent of the human population4
Everyone agrees that (b) and (c) are both much worse than (a), but Parfit’s point is that (c) is much worse than (b). In fact, he believes the greater difference lies there—the extinction of humanity is a much worse outcome than most people think.5 Extinction is not the worst just because it would mean the non‐existence of a great number of people in the future, which—assuming their lives would be worth living—would be a great loss. The loss of possible happiness of future people pales in comparison with the loss of our entire species. Human extinction would entail the loss of all possible future achievements of our species, for instance in the arts, the sciences, and in “the continued advance towards a wholly just world‐wide community.”6
Contemporary philosopher