Excerpt from Julius Paine's Memoirs: Journals of the Wanderer

Published 2035

How is your mother back on Earth? Oh I’m sorry to hear that, at least with the money that you are making here you can pay for her treatments.

At the end of my anti-sovereignty lecture last week Joel asked me a very important question that I was a little too tired to answer.

Do we need war in case there are martial aliens?

That really is a rather important question. Ours is a civilization which is taking its first steps into the solar system; so it is natural to look to the stars. Especially given we are the one taking that step, “ours” is a little more personal aboard this ship too. We haven’t found little green men anywhere that we’ve been… but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. The question really strikes me as another one of those untestable hypotheses.

If there are aliens that can get to us then they possess technology that we do not. Therefore they might be here and we wouldn’t even know. They might be watching every moment of every day of every human being. This all might be a reality TV show for the entertainment of trillions of unknown beings. They might think we are sexy, scary, or clever. The point is they are still seeing the real us… at least that is what those everpresent aliens might think.

Star Trek might have given a name to the prime directive, but the idea of not influencing the native population has been around for much longer than TV. Or maybe not. Maybe sentient beings who discover unblemished civilization are only concerned with raping it for its wealth and beauty. That is certainly what happened in South America.

When I wonder about alien presences, what strikes me is that we have no data about them… so we are reduced to belief. We can’t test any hypotheses about invisible aliens?

I happen to believe that aliens exist. There is life in the universe besides our own. It is a matter of faith to me. When I was starving on the glacier one of the things that kept me going was the thought that I was not alone in the universe. But my belief is no more valid than the belief that we are God’s only creation.

Setting my belief aside, the question that I am to address today assumes that aliens exist. It also assumes that at some point in the lifetime of our species we will come into contact with them. That to me suggests that faster than light travel is possible. Again, that is a belief, but it is one I think must be true for the question to have relevance.

So our assumptions are that aliens exist and have technology that exceeds ours. Now we have to start making more assumptions, basically we have to say that things about these hypothetical aliens are true.

There is one obvious scenario. Aliens exist, and they are like Cortez, they want to steal our gold, convert us to their religion, and seduce our women. If that is the case than war or submission are our only hopes for survival as a species. We have to hope that in all of the weaponry mankind has amassed there is some technology that will counteract alien technology and give us the ability to do war with them long enough to negotiate peace.

Or destroy them? Yes, there is the possibility that our only recourse will be to effect the annihilation of another species. That would be a terrible loss.

It may be that looking into the mirror of non-terrestrial intelligence will allow humankind to make the next step in our own process of self-knowledge. It would also be a terrible loss technologically and spiritually. We would go armed into the future with the knowledge that we are capable of extermination of another form of life. That is something that I wouldn’t wish on my enemies, let alone my brethren.

Barring xenocide, assuming the Cortez-style alien, our priority would be to safeguard the human race. The most rational way that I could see to do that would be to expand the range and type of our weapons and to establish procedures to decentralize the means of weapon production. If the wars of the 21st century have taught us anything, then knowing that it is impossible to destroy an enemy with a thousand heads is certainly one of those things. Guerilla wars cannot be permanently won.

By the same token it is essential that we expand our civilization to as diverse locations as we can: first planets, then suns, then galaxies and dimensions if we can find a way. The more broadly spread the seeds of our civilization, the more powerful an enemy it would take to exterminate or enslave us.

But I don’t think that we will meet a voracious and pillaging alien race. My belief is that such species would never develop the technology to enact a galactic empire without collapsing on themselves.

The opposite possibility is that the aliens we will encounter are universally non-violent. In such a case they would certainly look with little kindness upon mankind. A predatory species such as ours would be a threat to their way of life; if nothing else than for the behavior that we model. We would have to hope that we would find a way to negotiate and avoid their criminal justice reform. Some of my worst nightmares are trying to explain to such an alien why our race is worth saving.

That is, of course, assuming that mankind displays the kind of behavior that would, forgive the term, alienate our new neighbors. If we were to enact a species-wide peace the alien presence would look with greater fondness upon us.

We could perhaps be the beneficiaries and trading partners of an alien society. The potential benefits of membership in such a society keep me awake at night with hope and curiosity. Imagine a laser field that can target only cancer. Imagine a robot that can modify your DNA to prevent aging.

That possibility suggests that we have to find a more peaceful lifestyle and fast. Who can know the patience of an omnipresent alien civilization?

But I don’t think that we will meet such a species either.

I think that life is plentiful and varied enough that any society that we meet will be at least as paranoid as we are. They will have weapons and be willing to use them if pushed, but not on a species that gives them no cause. I say they because of my belief in alien diversity.

It might be more of a hope, really. A faster than light civilization would have procedures in place for establishing contact with a species it was considering for membership in their society. It strikes me that it might be something like an audition, or like the test that God set Isaac. Our behavior during the test would determine if, and how our culture was to be integrated.

Which brings us back to our original point.

What should we do about our weapons? In one scenario our weapons are the only chance we have for survival. In another they are a potential cause of our destruction. In the scenario I think the most likely, weapons have a unique role in society: they need to be created but not used.

A paranoid alien would have need of weapons, and our ability as a species to create unique and effective weapons would be of great value to them. But that same alien would need to trust that we would not turn them on an innocent life form.

This proposes to me something of a compromise. Human nature being what it is there are some people for whom a violent lifestyle is life. I think this is a good thing in very small doses. Maintaining a limited capacity for immanent violence is part of keeping the human weapon sharp. Those members of our society that willingly choose a lifestyle of violence are still our brethren and still worthy of life. But their lifestyles must not infringe upon the world’s peace. They are the hunters; the predators that have resisted domestication for all the generations, descended from the ones who kept their tribes safe at all costs.

If we cannot prove to alien judgement that we can keep our own peace, then I fear we will not be granted a place in their house, and we will face a second flood.

[words garbled among many voices]

It is just a theory, remember. That is the power of untestable hypotheses. I planted this idea in your mind and now you will wonder as I do, if this is indeed our reality, what should we do?

What do we do if the world’s biggest conspiracy is that all of the religions are true? Each ancient god embedded their ideas in our world to test our ability to discern the wisdom from the folly, hoping that we would prove ourselves worthy of their inheritance.

There is a judgement day, but we don’t know when it is.

Well, the first thing that I would do would be to establish an international war Coventry: a place for those who have to fight to go fight; a place for those whose research could develop weapons to develop them; a place for violence that is very, very far from everyone’s backyard. We need weapons so that we can defend ourselves if we must; but we must do better at figuring out when that is.

Then I would make world peace a reality by giving everyone what they want.

I think I have disturbed some of you more than I intended. Words are potent things, and I have burned many bridges for throwing them about too hastily. Go home and love your lovers; do your work and hope for the day when these hypotheses are testable.

****

Welcome back everyone.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from people about the law in the last few weeks. What sorts of laws are good and what are bad? What laws do we really need and what laws should go the way of the dodo and just plain die out.

The short answer is I don’t know. Really I don’t know how much I have to say about the law. There are things that I would do to implement a set of ethical standards purposed to protect as many people as possible. There are ways that I think the law has to change. There are things that are illegal now that I couldn’t care less about. But there is no number of rules that if you follow them you won’t go wrong.

If I had to, gun to my head, forced me to implement a set of laws, I would probably just apply Asimov’s Robot Laws to humans.

Let’s talk about the problems; that is certainly easy enough to get this night started.

Here is the first problem. No one knows the law. And by no one I mean exactly zero percent of the human population of the Earth. To memorize every law is a task better suited a computer than a human. To understand them all is another order of difficulty.

I’m sure there are laws that I am unknowingly breaking right now. The single hardest task for any project on the Valuestream is figuring out what papers have to be signed and back scratched to make it legal for a project to be completed. The law students that I had working on that part of the design hated me, the project, and their lives until the day that they catalogued all of the relevant codes and could return to their sun-lit lives.

The law needs to be something that people understand and can learn without struggle. It needs to be simple enough that everyone can follow it. I don’t think anyone is going to argue with me on this point.

OK, next point: the right people are not in charge of the law. Politicians write laws while they are cuckolded by two or three interested parties paying to get the wording exactly how they want it. The actual writing is often done by the interested parties and given to the politicians to rubber stamp. That is very clearly fucked.

Children watching at home, I used that language because sometimes things are so absurd or absurdly out of balance that the only way to make a strong enough point is to use bad words.

When the person writing regulatory code is also the person getting regulated that is a conflict of interest. They happen all the time; but the conflict needs to be in the open. Every single party who could possibly need to have input on a law need to be involved. If there is enough conflict they shouldn’t be allowed to write the rules. The CEO of Exxon shouldn’t be making environmental policy. Period.

I don’t have a problem with the Supreme Court. It has to exist in every society. They are the final arbiter. I just wish that they would see a thousand more cases a year.

Next point; nothing happens to laws that are ineffective. One example is drug laws prior to de-prohibition.

Before the act was passed there was a huge industry in what I am going to call, ‘legal weed.’ ‘Legal weed’ was any of a number of synthetic substances so fresh onto the market that the government hadn’t gotten around to making them illegal yet. The legal shit was completely unregulated, untested, and a twelve-year-old could purchase it at a gas station.

Yet the laws remained in place, despite actively harming citizens who were obeying them. It was the criminals smoking weed who took the healthier alternative. That type of harm done in the name of legality is anathema to a just society.

Each law should have explicit parameters explaining its purpose and the effects that it’s intended to have. It should be ranked based on how well it achieves its goals and on how few unintended consequences it has. There should be limits established with the passage of the bill which indicate when it needs to be amended or repealed.

That just seems like good engineering to me. If every law got immediate and continuous feedback, unjust laws would not be able to exist for too long.

Last point for now I guess is also fairly obvious. Protection from the law costs too much. A lot of that has to do with the first point. No one really knows the law so no one can defend themselves as effectively as a trained professional. And as always, training costs money.

So what can we do to change the law?

Well, by yourself, nothing really.

You can’t change the law. You can ask someone else to, but you can’t propose a law to be voted on by your fellows. You can vote for someone who says that he will change the law, but whatever happens when our representatives are inducted into Washington can overcome a campaign promise. But you can’t take back your vote until next time. Your opinion is important to the government, on one topic, once every two years.

It doesn’t matter how well you have run your company. It doesn’t matter how many of your foster children have graduated from college. The only thing that matters is whether you think one guy will do a better job than the other guy, occasionally. It doesn’t matter whether you think either will do even a decent job. The only thing that matters is candidate a or b.

I think that isn’t right either.

A real empowerment would be if all citizens in this country were actually equal under the law. If everyone had the same rights to vote on laws and on rules maybe they would be more interested and more educated. A real enfranchisement would let everyone be lawmakers in the same way that everyone can be on a jury.

But what I would actually do would be to establish a panel to try to define the smallest set of laws that all people would agree to. If I had my way I would follow the laws that my peers demanded I follow and no others. The social contract need not be stifling. It need not be the same for everyone. It just needs to work.

Some people might want to live in communities with more laws. They could. But no one could be forced to stay in any community unless they violated one of the common laws—I think of them like the robot laws.

These are my ideas. I share them with you so that they can grow and change and become shared ideas. Maybe someday they will be ideals.

Thanks for listening

I’ve got to get back… Lauria got a shift off and I promised I would be there.

****

That’s how it went. I would cook, talk, and make new friends. I loved every minute of it and never kept score.

Then we detected the ‘alien’ probes. I pretended to be as surprised as everyone else. We five conspirators had known that they were coming soon, but none of us had known the specific day.

****

We listened to speeches and pundits and wondered what the rest of the world was thinking.

Those times when I talked to Grace she assured me that the political climate in China was unstable and that I had given her enough to present a plan for a Common Constitution. She showed me drafts of a document that was circulating through political action committees in several countries. It was strictly illegal in China, so, naturally, it was everywhere.

It outlined a set of laws and methods for modifying them that she thought the Chinese had a good chance of adopting.

****

I gave a speech on the night before our fake alien probes were to enter the atmosphere.

It was interrupted by Questro’s best experiment.

****

It’s kind of a crazy time, so I figure I should talk about something crazy.

I still see a few new faces every week. I like that.

There was a symbol that I kept drawing a few years ago. I put my favorite thoughts into it. The most important things for me to remember and incorporate into every aspect of my daily life is put into a picture and drew it on myself in permanent ink.

I tattooed a memo to my future self.

It reminded me of Mein Kamf. It was one of the most important books of the 20th century, not because of the lunatic that wrote it, or any of the psychotic goals it espoused, but because of what it did for that lunatic. He wrote down all the things that he wanted to be and to do. Then he did them.

He used the power of his own words to change his life. I did it with ink on my body, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know how I would look down and see my life changing because of the things that I was telling myself every day.

The things that I did as I saw myself change changed the world.

I didn’t intend to change the world when I set out. I was just trying to change myself, to treat my friends better and to live more comfortably in my own skin. I let the ideas burn so deeply into my personality that I was not the same afterwards.

Maybe people never stay the same. Maybe the constant state of flux in the universe is identical to the state of flux in people. Maybe I just lost control because I was a bad self-regulator. But lose control I did.

I thought that if I trusted myself I would do wonderful things. Some of the things that resulted from my loss of control, from my utter self-faith, are beautiful, but I cannot say how they came to be. I let the sails of my mind turn my ship where it may.

I woke up a creative entity in myself that did not have the caring that I did. Sometimes it was cruel where I would want to be kind. I am not afraid to say this. If there is a common theme in my generation—it is disease. We are all sick; none of us is whole. The drugs that we took made us see that life is more complicated than we ever imagined.

The world we inherited is polluted in every way: physically, morally, and legally. It is no shame to think that there is something wrong with the world when there so clearly is.

I find myself preaching something strange for me: caution. The person whose values I branded myself with is changed. In his place is one who would caution that one cannot always trust oneself. Though such a thought makes my heart vibrate like a plucked iron string, it also makes my stomach churn. One cannot always hear truths when people speak. One cannot always speak truths when people are listening.

That is one of the lessons that I learned from the Valuestream project. When you submit to the ‘stream, every statement that you make is pure science fiction. Your thoughts on the nature of reality are projections that your mind generates. What makes them into science is the process of testing them against the common perceptions of your fellow. What makes them into science is the process of verification. The world would be a more peaceful place if everyone understood that simple fact.

My friends, honestly, it is my life’s honor to be among you today, and I hope that you will remember that I am merely human; I am merely trying to live as you are.

****

If I had had the chance I would have gone on to explain about the self that I had woken up to discover. I would have gone on to explain the dangers of living in a reality governed by the most persuasive speakers of science fiction. As it was, Questro’s experiment fired and all of us were thrown onto the ceiling during one of my lectures.