We’re not hierarchical, you see. We never were. But we are powerfully acquisitive. We acquire new life—seek it, investigate it, manipulate it, sort it, use it. We carry the drive to do this in a minuscule cell within a cell—a tiny organelle within every cell of our bodies. Do you understand me?
--Octavia E. Butler, Dawn
my wife is a big sci-fi fan… i like sci-fi too… our local book store, Stanza, runs a sci-fi reading group… we joined it…
last month we read Dawn, by Octavia Butler… the book is remarkable… nuanced, imaginative and thought provoking… a compelling exploration of human nature…
Dawn is the first book of a trilogy chronicling the human/Oankali story… it takes place on an Oankali spaceship orbiting earth… Lilith, a human who has been brought out of suspended animation after a 250 year slumber, is the main protagonist… she is one of the few survivors of nuclear war on earth… the far more advanced Oankali “rescued" her and others from certain death, and are in the process of resuscitating the species and returning them to earth… but, there is a catch… humans have been resurrected by the Oankali to “trade," as they put it, genetic material with them, which is what the Oankali have evolved to do…
the Oankali have spent a very long time searching for a species to resuscitate… they choose a species that has come to its end because of its own destructive actions… they distinguish between species that truly want to cease to exist and commit species suicide, and species that still have a will to exist… it will be no surprise that the humans are not entirely enthusiastic about their “good fortune"…
the humans are a pretty sorry lot as rendered by Butler… they are fearful, suspicious, intelligent, stubborn, scheming and violent… any affection one could have for them comes form being one of them, or being the Oankali, who are enraptured with them… upon being woken up, the humans immediately begin fighting and trying to kill one another and their captors…
the Oankali come off much better than humans… they work hard to undersand and manage their humans in a “humane” way, and to establish a viable repopulation and recombination strategy, while maintaining strong, Oankali, ethical treatment boundaries… they are not intentionally cruel… in many ways they are kind, caring and loving… and they are beneficial… in addition to rescuing humans from complete oblivion, they cure them of cancer and provide them with the most profound sexual experiences they will ever have…
we are given reasons to dislike the Oankali… they manage humans like children, giving them agency only within the boundaries they set, which widen as the humans “mature” by adapting themselves to their circumstances… as long as humans pursue constructive goals with the agency they are granted, the Oankali don’t intervene…
the Oankali are incredibly ugly and frightening to humans… they are controlling, coercive and manipulative… they are borderline parasitic… they indulge in something adjacent to date drug rape in pursuit of their own pleasure and a strong bond between the humans and themselves… still, they believe their actions are benefiting humans even as they benefit themselves…
The principle of evil consists in messing into other people’s affairs.
i preferred the Oankali to the humans… it wasn’t even close in my mind… but i was surprised to find i was in the minority on this… 2/3’s of the reading group thought the Oankali were creepy at minimum, and many seemed to think they were downright evil… i argued my case as best i could, but did not persuade any of the “humanists" to my point of view…
when one group member said this was their second reading of the book and that they found the Oankali much more creepy than they had the first time, i decided to re-read the book to see if i had missed something that would bring me around to the majority opinion of the Oankali… having read it twice now, i am prepared to double down on my Oankali fandom…
Butler clearly intends for the option to side with the humans against the aliens to have a strong pull… we are tribal creatures and stick with our tribes… my country right or wrong… my political party/candidate, right or wrong… my species, right or wrong… Butler creatively plays on fear of "the other" while presenting the Oankali as a species we can learn to love if we can get past their otherness, particularly their ugliness, and their total control of us… i wondered if siding with the humans was a matter of human solidarity… my species, love them or leave them…
for a long time i have had the idea that humans almost universally assume they are at the top of the intelligence pyramid and that any further development of intelligence will happen through and because of them (thus AI?)… i think this in spite of all the literature and cinema we have that suggests we know better… cinema in particular is full of encounters with more technologically developed (and therefore more intelligent?) alien life… aliens are almost always hostile and well equipped to subjugate us… we prefer happy endings, so we almost always find a way to free ourselves from alien dominance and carry on… we live to fight another day…
in Dawn, humans had already defeated themselves--an uncomfortable truth about the likely outcome for the human species that we also constantly explore in art, literature and cinema, even as we stick our collective heads in the sand and fail to act…
i had no trouble accepting the idea that humanity was fatally flawed--though i am not sure i agree that intelligence + hierarchy = self immolation… for me it is primal instinct + technological advancement that will do us in… or, our tendency to become genocidal/suicidal extremists… Hitler and Nazi Germany for example… or the evangelical Christians who are all in on nuclear war as long as it starts in the Middle East per prophecy… many actively work to bring it about while others pass memes around declaring their acceptance of Jesus Christ as savior and lord, and their preparedness for nuclear immolation and the rapture…
Butler’s premise aligns with my own conclusions about humanity… as far as i am concerned, humans had blown their chance at unfettered agency by destroying themselves with it and were likely to do so again if given the chance… the Oankali offered some level of existence into the future, which would be cancer free, long lived, and offer the most profound sex ever… i could imagine myself accepting the Oankali gene trade bargain…
and so, i wonder, why am i open to the Oankali proposition when most of my group of fellow humans are not?… is my lack of loyalty to my species pragmatic?… evolved?… or a failure of self and species preservation instincts?…