Finding humanity in movie aliens

Princeton was graced last Tuesday by the presence of eminent philosopher Bernard Williams, who delivered a reflective and provocative lecture defending "The Human Prejudice." Williams' lecture was a ranging exploration of the unavoidability and even desirability of "the human prejudice," namely that preference that human beings exhibit toward other humans by means of such concepts as "human rights." He argued that accusations of "specieism" are without merit by noting that, unlike such prejudices as racism and sexism, there is no expectation that animals will ever speak up in defense of their rights as has been the case of human members of repressed races or genders. The unavoidable question for humans is how we will treat animals and humans, since beasts cannot speak for themselves.

Williams concluded with a set of reflections about science-fiction scenarios in which, typically, the human prejudice is either justified by imagining horrific aliens that seek to snuff out human life (such as scenarios portrayed in "Independence Day"), or reinforced by means of the portrayal of "cute" aliens such as E.T. or Chewbacca who, in spite of their visual similarity to animals, are in fact human-like and therefore fall within our range of preference. Williams instead suggested alternative scenarios that would more directly challenge the human prejudice, such as morally superior animals that would offer to take over all human governance with humanity's agreement. I can't begin to summarize the richness of Williams' reflections on this score; suffice to say, he concluded that it would be no simple matter to agree to such an offer, since our human prejudice would justifiably disallow it at a certain level.

As I thought further about Williams' analysis, however, I began wondering if he was quite right to suggest that the human response portrayed in "Independence Day" — self-defense — was morally uncomplicated and easily justified. Of course, Williams meant that any hostile enemy that began blowing up cities should be resisted. He rightly suggested that this response is uncontroversial according to nearly any philosophical system, although one can imagine the Princeton Peace Network immediately calling for protests. Yet, recalling the particulars of the film, I began to suspect that more was afoot.

The merciless extermination of millions of humans by violent, vicious and destructive beings rightly invokes our visceral abhorrence. The slimy, tentacled appearance of the invaders only emphasized their "alienness." Yet, as is suggested by the film's loopy scientist in Roswell's Section 51, the aliens were not very different from humans. They breathed oxygen and needed moderate planetary environmental conditions to survive. More importantly, they did not act out of instinct or unreflective biological urges: They were highly civilized, technologically advanced, "rational" beings. Their devastation was not wanton or gratuitously cruel, but rather was undertaken with very familiar human justifications: The extension of their domain, the quest to use the resources of the universe for their own survival and advancement, the evolutionary imperative to inhabit spaces wherever their species could flourish aided by means of their own inventiveness and creativity. In short, all attempts by the film's makeup artists to the contrary, the aliens were extraordinarily familiar creatures. At a certain level, their very inhumanity revealed a core of humanity.

The film portrayed a unique moment of planetary harmony as humanity united in its self-defense. From another perspective, however, humanity was combating a version of itself, fighting against a rapacious species that consumed without limit, that sought the dominion of nature as a means of aggrandizement and luxury, that regarded the universe as a kind of filling station or bazaar that could be bought and sold, owned and employed, used and destroyed. Indeed, the film left unexplored an ironic connection: Since the Enlightenment, it has been held as a tenet of faith that human conflict could be overcome by means of turning our hostility away from one another — hostility based on divisions created by culture, religion and base prejudice — and instead redirect such energies toward the conquest of nature. Revealingly, the aliens of "Independence Day" appear to be internally united in their common cause, living peacefully on their planet-sized mother ship that serves as a platform for the rape of planets. One imagines that the aliens had their own tentacled version of Francis Bacon sometime during their own Renaissance.

To see the movie in this light is to raise some problematic questions about "the human prejudice." It is a prejudice, in the first instance, to perceive these creatures as "inhuman" — indeed, the very word reveals a prejudice. It is a prejudice to view the universe as a resource for our benefit. It is a prejudice to believe that antagonism toward nature will result in human harmony. Even if true, such a belief gives priority to human comfort over nature and its creatures, of which we are only one. Bernard Williams is undoubtedly right that the "human prejudice" has done some good, such as by means of the promotion of human rights. But it may be that this benign prejudice is intimately, perhaps inextricably linked to other prejudices about which we should be more suspect, and against which we should fight with as much ferocity as humans fought against the aliens — those "inhuman" beings that ought to remind us of that most alien of creatures, humanity. Patrick Deneen is an Assistant Professor in the Politics Department. He can be reached at pdeneen@princeton.edu.