A Hollywood movie inadvertently brings up some intriguing issues. If you needed to save a remnant of the human race, with limited resources, who would be chosen?

I watched the movie Voyagers just in time for Columbus Day. As the earth is becoming uninhabitable due to warming and disease, the earthlings decide to colonize a likely inhabitable planet 86 years away, as the crow flies. The journey therefore will require three generation before reaching the goal.

To ensure success, they genetically engineer thirty babies by in vitro fertilization. They are raised together without family, outdoor life, normal human contact, in short, anything that would encourage attachment to earth life. The spaceship takes off with 30 young children and one adult overseer.

Things seem to be going well until they reach their teenage years. They having been unknowably taking a daily drug that reduces libido and helps with anger management. A couple of the boys discover the purpose of the drug, which they then stop taking; by mimicry, they all stop taking the daily dose. This decision brings violence and sexual desire into the ship for the first time.

When the adult dies in an accident (or deliberately murdered), the group is on its own. They conduct an election to appoint a new ship’s caption. Not surprisingly, factions arise and Romulus kills Remus for control of the spaceship. Then a female saviour steps in and unites them by promising to rule by consensus on all matters … or else. Apparently that system worked well for the next 70 years or so, which were peaceful.

Avoid the temptation to view her as the embodiment of Sophia, because Wisdom does not arise from majority vote. They eventually reach the planet, where they can spread anthropogenic evil across the galaxy. We don’t know if they will encounter indigenous beings on the planet.

The movie is barely watchable, but it does raise some interesting questions.

Platonic Forces

The creators of the new generation recognized the three Platonic forces and tried to anticipate their effects. However, they tried to control them via physical methods. This is the true schema.

• Rational Soul
  • Nous: This is the intellectual force that is the drive for knowledge. It is experienced as thought.
• Animal Soul
  • Thumos: This is the inner drive toward self-actualization. It is experienced as emotions.
  • Eros: This is the drive toward something external. It is experienced as desire.

These are not medical issues, nor even psychological, but rather spiritual. The Rational Soul needs to dominate and regulate the animal soul so that the emotions and desires follow a rational course.

This cannot be achieved genetically nor medically.

The Drake Equation and Intelligent Life

The Drake Equation purports to estimate the probability of finding other life in the universe. The premise is that the universe is so old and so large that there must be life somewhere other than earth. The values chosen to estimate the probability of other life are so arbitrary so as to be rather useless.

On the other hand, there may be a scientific basis for the size and age of the universe. The Weak Anthropic Principle relates the mass and the age of the universe. Its definition is:

The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirement that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so.

If an extended time period is necessary for the appearance of intelligent life, then the size of the universe would need to be correspondingly large. The total mass of the universe can also be estimated. For example, if the universe contained just the Milky Way galaxy with 10¹¹ stars, then the universe would stop expanding after one month, not long enough for planets and life to appear. We are thus assured that the size and age of the universe are necessarily what they are so that human beings can appear.

In other words, there is nothing arbitrary in the size and age of the universe. There should be no surprise, therefore, to discover that human life on earth may be the only intelligent life in the universe.

Consensus and the Common Good

There is a fundamental incompatibility between voting and consensus as we demonstrated in Majority Rule. Rather consensus is reached by discussion in order to provide for the Common Good. This requires a commitment to rule by nous, rather than by thumos or eros. Rule by factions or political parties is incompatible with consensus.

Environment vs Sin

You can’t have it both ways. Either humans are products of their genetic blueprint or their environment. The scientists are on the side of the genetics. Otherwise, they would have chosen embryos at random instead of eugenically engineering them. And they would not have developed the drug that numbs the animal soul without affecting the nous.

Be Fruitful and Multiply

30 Settlers are hardly sufficient to sustain a civilization. Hence, they will be required or expected to reproduce. Since resources for an 86-year trip need to be minimal, there will be no room onboard for those disinclined to reproduced. Women will be more valuable than men for obvious reasons. Moreover, abortion will likely be discouraged since fetuses are scarce and desired resources.

Founding Myths

Future generations on the new planet will have a founding myth. They will hear stories about the planet Earth which self-destructed. They will believe that they are the chosen ones, exiled from earth to colonize the galaxies. They will hear legends of the two brothers who vied for control. But only the primal woman was able to restore peace and harmony to the mission. Their story will be a reversal of the story of the Garden of Eden:

The earth was a place of sin, decadence, violence, self-destruction. A new race was created, genetically selected and immaculately conceived without sexual intercourse. They escaped the Earth in order to create a new Paradise, free from conflict and rivalries, where the most intelligent rule.

Death and Stupidity are the ineluctable problems of the human race. Even if the colonists have eliminated Stupidity, the spectre of Death remains.

Spaceship Earth

Buckminster Fuller popularized the notion of Spaceship Earth which can, in principle, be treated like the spaceship of the colonizers. Assuming that the scientists knew what type of human beings gave the best chance for the success of the mission, then why did they not use that knowledge to make the earth inhabitable? That would require rule by the most intelligent, by way of consensus. Clearly, the scientists in the movie have no solution for Spaceship Earth given its current population.