(Watch on YouTube).

I first became familiar with Raymond Tallis a few months ago, when I was exploring my fury at post-Saussurean thinkers such as Lacan and Derrida. I saw a reference somewhere to a book called Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory. After finding a copy – hard to find at a reasonable price even online – I bought it without review primarily because such engaged critiques (as opposed to off-handed dismissals) of postmodernism are rare.

I was delighted to find that Tallis seemed to the rare sort of academic, much less academic literary theorist, who is at the same time a superb writer and careful thinker, with a serious grasp of both literature and philosophy (analytical and continental).

Recently I was further surprised to find out that Tallis is not in fact a humanities professor but a doctor and researcher in gerontology, specifically the neurology of old age. His publications include “The Clinical Neurology of Old Age,” “Brocklehurst’s Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology,” “Epilepsy in Elderly People,” “Increasing Longevity,” and “Restoring Neurological Function.”

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This is the 12th in the “Discworld” series, a British humor/fantasy bunch of books comparable in style to “Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy,” but it’s only the setting (a flat world resting on the back of four elephants resting on the back of a turtle) that’s consistent, not so much the characters, so it’s not necessary to read the previous ones, though a couple of the jokes are running gags or references to the previous ones.

Why I’m bothering to review this is its picture of gods and how they work, and what this exemplifies about the treatment of the metaphysical in popular, fun fiction, and really, what good religion is to us in these modern times. Plus, there’s a whose section of the book that takes place in a fictional version of Athens with a lot of fine jokes about ancient philosophy, a brand of humor that I’ve not seen in a whole lot of other places.

It’s been posited before in fiction that gods get their power from the attention and belief of their believers. This is a flippant response to the obvious goofiness of why gods (modern or ancient) would have any interest in our belief, let alone worshiping and groveling and sacrificing lambs and such. Were I a god, all this fawning would make me pretty uncomfortable, but of course gods were invented in an age of crushing despots, where the god is super-king and often serves to reinforce the rule of the king.

Well, “Small Gods” explores that line of thought, with the premise that there’s an entire nation (Omnia) devoted to one big god (Om), but the church has become so institutionalized (with a violent “Quisition” torturing and killing anyone even smelling of heresy, or anyone else that its leaders feel like), that in fact almost no one actually believes in Om any more, with the consequence that when Om decides to become an animal and visit the earth for a bit, instead of a big fiery bull or something, he becomes a tortoise, with the mentality and approximate abilities of a tortoise, and it’s only when the SOLE believer left in the country, a low-level monk and gardener, happens to pop by, that Om is able to communicate with him, have some rational self-reflection, and do some minor god-like acts (e.g. lightning bolts on par with a bad static electric shock), and so he wants to use said believer as a vehicle to get his powers back, and so hilarity ensues.

So, what’s the philosophical import? Well, first, religious history is filled with good stuff to make fun of, and however much or little you may think it applies to your modern belief system, that whole “I’m a jealous god and will kick your ass” thing from the old Testament and Greek mythology and such is pretty amusing. So, it sure is fun to play with such ideas, and my reading tendencies have favored this direction (e.g. Mike Carey’s comic book series “Lucifer” is another example, as well as its parent series, Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman,” as well as most of the rest of what Neil Gaiman’s ever written).

…And it’s not just the internal content of old belief systems that’s strange and fun, but the relationship of belief to ordinary life, to technology, to politics, that makes for many a fine plot. I won’t pretend that “Small Gods” has anything profound to say about morality (e.g. that you should not kill in the name of belief) or philosophy (that most of it is useless, except that one idea out of 100 that creates some new massive technological boom), but like any good philosophical fiction, it gets ya thinkin’, which is, really, the best we can hope for, even from a source that claims to be serious, and moreover, the thinking is brought about in a way that is actually enjoyable, unlike most philosophical texts or more ham-handed and less reflective attempts at philosophical fiction (like, say “Brave New World”). Pratchett is working in the tradition of Voltaire (“Candide”), with the added benefit of the advance in years/thinking/distance from the time when religion dominated the earth. So, yes, I recommend the book.

First, let me say that this will not be as long as Mark’s epic stream of consciousness review of ‘Stupidity’.  Second, let me say that this was a very odd movie that took me by surprise, but I think posed some interesting philosophical questions and so is appropriate for this forum.

A quick recap that will get you through the first 10 minutes of the movie without giving anything away:  20 years ago, a giant spaceship comes to earth and settles over the city of Johannesburg, South Africa.  And that’s it.  Nothing happens.  After a couple of months, people decide to go up and take a look.  Commandos board the ship and cut into it and find thousands of aliens inside, starving and aimless.  The aliens kind of look like 7 ft tall praying mantises (in any case bug-like).  The humans ‘rescue’ the aliens and put them in a restricted zone on the outskirts of the city called District 9. 

The suggestion is that the aliens have a ‘worker bee’ like mentality and they are missing their ‘brain bugs’ – so they can’t fix their ship or take care of themselves.  This also means that even though they have limited cognitive and language abilities, they can’t really integrate with human society.  There are tensions and violence between humans and aliens and the District becomes in effect a militarized refugee camp.  That’s the lead-in to the story and the beginning of the movie sees a documentary crew following a qausi-government organization that has been tasked with relocating the aliens from District 9 to a camp much further away from any human settlement.

One of the first questions that presents itself is whether and what ethical position the humans should take vis-a-vis the aliens.  Given that they have space travel, they are clearly an advanced race of sentient beings.  From a common sense perspective, I would think we would consider them as ‘ethical equals’ or at least acknowledge some kind of responsibility to treat them as we would other human beings (as opposed to insects or animals).  And I suppose this means that we would expect the same of them.

But do we treat them as ‘equals’ with ‘human rights’?  Bracketing out the issue of political rights for a second (they are, after all, not citizens of the Earth, much less South Africa) we have to ask ourselves whether we have the same moral obligation to them as we do to a fellow human being.  If so, why?  They are, after all, not human.  Do we assume that ‘human’ has really been a placeholder for ‘sentient being’ and that what we consider to be ‘human’ rights are really for anything that fits some criteria for sentience and perhaps other cognitive functions?

If you can even resolve this issue satisfactorily, the film further complicates the discussion by having humans only interacting with the ‘worker’ types from the alien race, who are more insect/animalistic and do not demonstrate  the necessary cognitive function and awareness to be considered ‘equals’.  Beyond meeting criteria for ethical status, the aliens also really aren’t able to enter into a ‘social contract’ with us.  So we have a sense that we might have an ethical obligation to the aliens really only by inference to the parts of their race that must have been capable of building the space ship, but the actual aliens we are dealing don’t have that capability and don’t appear to be able to breed or develop into it. 

Needless to say, the conscious or unconscious decision that the humans make regarding these questions dictate how they treat the aliens both at a ‘policy’ and a ‘personal’ level.  And, if you are like me, you will find yourself reacting to the events as they unfold in visceral, emotional ways that are clues to how you answer the questions above.

District 9 forces reflection on the nature of ‘natural’ or ‘human’ or ‘inalienable’ rights.  And while there is a clear social message (I read the film at least in part as making a commentary on the treatment of ethnic minorities or aboriginal cultures in Africa and elsewhere),  I think the movie elegantly challenges our assumed anthropocentric concepts of ethical agency and philosophical justifications for moral positions based on rationality or sentience.

OK, I lied.  This is as long as Mark’s post.  I guess we are equally prolix.