Future-Thinking

Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, died today and his obituaries are all over the news. I am one of those news-readers in the age of electronic media who follows the links to “other stories you may be interested in” or “for a deeper look”—I’m always a sucker for recommendations.

Following one of those links about Clarke I discovered that not only was he a well-respected science fiction writer and hobby-astronomer, he was also an avid reader of a philosopher named Olaf Stapledon, someone I had never heard of before. Partially out of curiousity and partially from embarrassment of my ignorance, I decided to search cyberspace for information about Olaf Stapledon. Apparently, Stapledon was himself a science-fiction writer as well as a philosopher. According to several websources he is credited with developing philosophical notions of “transhumanism” and “posthumanism” before the words themselves existed. Eventually I found a website which maintains online full-text versions of his out-of-print or difficult to find writings. So I started reading. One article from 1949 entitled “Personality and Liberty” struck me as especially prescient. In this article, Stapledon attempts to explain an ethical method for balancing personal liberty with community interests—as a contemporary Critical Theorist and Feminist myself, I find this goal particularly endearing and important.

Initially, I was struck by text that seemed a direct indictment of the current political practices in America (and elsewhere). Anyone who knows me personally knows that I feel very strongly about—what I perceive to be—glaringly unethical behavior in the handling of the Iraq War and related American domestic policy. Stapledon writes:
“Finally, there are some liberties which, because they flagrantly violate the most sacred moral principles current in the particular society, must not be allowed at all. Of this kind, freedom to murder, torture and rape are well established examples. In our own age mankind is beginning to feel that the class of absolutely forbidden liberties should include freedom to use private money power to exploit the labour of others. A final point may be added. For a government to indulge in such practices as judicial murder and torture and gross perversion of the truth, even in a cause regarded as supremely good, is always bad, even if only for the reason that any advantage that might be gained by such practices is outweighed by the damage done to the moral custom of the society.”
This direct and unabashed criticism of torture as a social practice corresponds well with my own appraisal of torture’s ethical value and, for that matter, actual efficacy. As a Neo-Marxist I am also critical of current global economic policies manipulating labor forces both in the developing world and domestically. I am impressed that Stapledon recognized the social and governmental responsibility of economic power before the era of globalization.

But self-righteous philosophical affirmation of my own critical attitudes only reinforces the doom and gloom. Upon closer reading, the most remarkable thing I found in Stapledon’s essay was an overarching value and defense of love and hope as foundational concepts for a free society. Stapledon writes:
“In contrast, the true view of the good society is that it neither merely individualistic not merely gregarious, nor merely a mixture of the two. No society can be satisfactory unless it is held together not solely by these primitive impulses but also by the conscious will of its members for community. And this will for community is impossible save to those who have had some experience of the microcosmic society of personal lovers. Thus in the good society genuine personal love must be a widespread experience. And also the conscious recognition of the spirit as the supreme value must sufficiently common to exercise an influence on the whole society. Needless to say, no actual society approximates to the ideal save in a very low degree; but in some actual societies the motive of genuine community is not a wholly negligible factor.”
I believe that the real lesson of this essay isn’t the indictment of current global practices, but Stapledon’s measured hope and estimation of love’s role in society. To my mind, future-thinking—whether in science-fiction, philosophy, or day-to-day life—must contain this glimmer of hope and possibility to be effective.