Anticipation Science 7

Jim Dator

Beyond
Identities:
Human
Becomings in
Weirding Worlds
Anticipation Science

Volume 7

Editor-in-Chief
Roberto Poli, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

Advisory Editors
Ted Fuller, Lincoln University, Lincoln, UK
Jannie Hofmeyr, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Editorial Board
Aloisius Louie, OTTAWA, ON, Canada
Anticipation Science encompasses natural, formal, and social systems that inten-
tionally or unintentionally use ideas of a future to act in the present, with a broad
focus on humans, institutions, and human-designed systems. Our aim is to enhance
the repertoire of resources for developing ideas of the future, and for expanding
and deepening the ability to use the future. Some questions that the Series intends
to address are the following: When does anticipation occur in behavior and life?
Which types of anticipation can be distinguished? Which properties of our environ-
ment change the pertinence of different types of anticipation? Which structures and
processes are necessary for anticipatory action? Which is the behavioral impact of
anticipation? How can anticipation be modeled?
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authors can contact the editor-in-chief:
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Jim Dator

Beyond Identities: Human

Becomings in Weirding
Worlds
Jim Dator
Political Science
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI, USA

ISSN 2522-039X ISSN 2522-0403 (electronic)

Anticipation Science
ISBN 978-3-031-11731-2 ISBN 978-3-031-11732-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9

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Preface

This book has one theme—identity—but many, many parts, from many disciplines
and perspectives, from the past and present to very distant futures. It may annoy
specialists and activists who find I fail adequately to express the main features of
their field. I may offend people who think I should not express my own views so
sharply. But I hope it will encourage the many young people who inspired me to
continue becoming, and not to be thwarted by those who insisted they should be
what they are not.
Please read this book as you would read the score of a complex symphony, or as
you would listen to such a symphony being played from the first, fresh note, on and
on through many moods, motifs, expositions, repetitions, inventions, tempi, timbres,
cadences, crescendos, diminuendos, and movements.
Consider especially the movements. The classical symphony has four movements,
though there may be more, or less, each with its own characteristics both independent
of and interdependent with the other movements. Each movement could stand alone
as a harmonious whole requiring no further elaboration. Sometimes, a common theme
or its variations is expressed across all movements. Sometimes, each movement
appears quite separate from the others, and yet in the end, when the last note is
played, when it exists now entirely in your memory, if at all, the movements form an
interwoven whole. It is a fully integrated piece of work from many strands.
Specifically, you might consider the structure and motif of this book to be a
symphony by Mahler or Bruckner—long, loud, sometimes droning on and on in
prolonged, sustained chords, barely moving, just blasting away into the brainpans
of the listener, or else so soft, so strained, the listener must also strain to perceive
anything at all, much less to comprehend it. What are those long, sustained passages
for? What relation do they have to the main point of the main theme? And what
about the poems—the songs? At the least, they prolong a recapitulated mood, a
feeling, heightening variations on the themes. Accept them on their own terms. Do
not juxtapose them against each other. They will magnify the sense of the whole
when the movement, the symphony, finally comes to its end.

v
vi Preface

Personal History
by Kareem Tayyar
This was in the year when
a ship took leave of the water
& floated out across the clouds.

When the clouds became

the opened palms of the angels.

The year when the angels strung

their wings across the telephone lines
like laundry drying in the sun.

Only there was no sun.

Not that year.

That came later,

when the children turned first
into horses & then into ghosts,

when the rain fell in love

with a poet,

when the poet forgot his own name

& then the names for everything else.

That was a good year.

A year without names.

A year when I learned to kneel

without my knees ever touching the ground,

& where the gods all prayed to us.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

I should start at the beginning.

Poetry, Vol. 219, No. 4, January 2022, p. 323

Used with permission from the author.

Honolulu, USA Jim Dator

Contents

1 What I Am Not, and Why . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 Identity, More or Less . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1 Identities Lost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Future Shock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3 Postmodernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4 Immigrants and Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.5 Identity Contested . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.6 Identities Don’t Identify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3 The Big Three: Class, Gender, Race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.1 Beyond Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4 Pioneers Towards Fluid Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.1 Feminists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.2 Confucian Human Becomings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.3 No Filial Piety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.4 Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.5 Race and Ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.6 “Passing”: Then, Now, Tomorrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5 Identity, Hawaii, and Me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.1 More Bemused Than Empathetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
5.2 Stories of the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6 More Pioneers of Fluidity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
6.1 Queer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
6.2 Transexual, Transracial…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

vii
viii Contents

6.3 Disability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
6.4 Carceral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
6.5 Refugees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6.6 Environmental Refugees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
7 Destination Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
7.1 Fact, Fiction and Imagining Future Destinations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
7.2 Space Fiction Versus Fact (Based on Dator 2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
7.3 A Dark Side of Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
8 Weirding Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
9 Humans as Synthesizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
9.1 Modifying and Mutilating Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
9.2 Cyborgs, Biohackers and Grinders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
10 Humans from the Holocene to Anthropocene Epochs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
10.1 The Anthropocene Epoch? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
11 What is a Dator? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
11.1 Robots, AI, AL, A-everything . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
11.2 So, Why Humans? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
11.3 Intelligent Animals, Plants, Trees, Microbes, Fungi… . . . . . . . . . 128
11.4 Past and Next Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
12 Technology, Values and Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
12.1 Indivollectivity Now? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
13 Ad Astra! Sort of… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
13.1 Identities in Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
13.2 Small Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
13.3 Earth Analogs for Not-Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
13.4 Scant Social Science About Humans in Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
13.5 Space: Is it Just a Job? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
13.6 Adapting Humans for Not-Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
13.7 Cyborgs, Artilects, and Intelligent Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
13.8 Neither a Utopia Nor a Dystopa. Just a Topia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
14 Weirding the Queer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
14.1 Coda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Chapter 1
What I Am Not, and Why

Abstract Reared by three women, in the US South, of uncertain paternal ancestry,

rejecting identities ascribed to me against my will—White, male, Southern in partic-
ular—while not adopting other identities instead, I explain why I am not a human
being but rather a human becoming constantly creating and re-creating myself on
the basis of experiences in various places in the world, especially Japan and Hawaii.

Keywords Becoming · Being · Human · Identity · Japan · South · Yugoslavia ·

Verb · World futures studies federation

Appiah (2018: iv) writes, “My main message about the five forms of identity
[creed, country, color, class, culture] is in effect that we are living with the lega-
cies of ways of thinking that took their modern shape in the nineteenth century,
and that it is high time to subject them to the best thinking of the twenty-first.”
I by no means place myself among the best minds of any century, but what I
have written here is an argument for moving beyond identity. Identity as it is most
often currently used as the necessary foundation of a true, authentic, non-alienated,
essential, culturally/historically/ethnically/biologically-grounded self is pathologi-
cally destructive. It is the cause of much individual and collective misery, anxiety,
grief, and violence today and for future generations. That concept of one’s identity
derived from the past needs to be rejected. One’s identity can and must be derived
from the futures, not as a human being but as a human becoming.
Instead of having an identity forced on us at birth, or of spending time and energy
trying to discover our identity in the past and/or in some group in the present, we
should and can create values, processes and institutions that enable each of us, from
childhood onward, continuously to create identities that are pleasing to ourselves
and others, dynamic, interactive, and futures-oriented; that instead of striving to be
human beings, we should create ourselves as continuously metamorphosizing human
becomings.
Moreover, our identities are typically framed in terms of opposition to other iden-
tities that we have been taught to disparage and hate on the basis of past grievances
that continue to fester in part because we actively pick at the scabs.
David Bromwhich observes that “(i)t seems to me that if you’re taught that you
are the product of a culture defined by nation, race, region, religion—that you are
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1
J. Dator, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds,
Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_1
2 1 What I Am Not, and Why

rooted in that culture and the culture is what constitutes you—then it becomes a kind
of treachery, a kind of treason against who you are, to want to pull yourself away
from the culture you belong to by birth. Whereas tradition can be a matter of change
and of innovation. Tradition gets bent to new purposes by people who are versed
in what the wisdom of their predecessors may add up to, but who also, for reasons
moral, political, or aesthetic, want to do something different” (Gutkin 2022).
Recently, many discussions of identity have centered on people who seek to resist
and discard their assigned identity and adopt a new one. This is very impressive.
It shows I am not alone in this quest. I offer detailed examples of such identity-
fluid seekers. However even they seem obliged to choose a new identity among an
array of existing ones. I have seen only a few, exciting examples of people who are
trying entirely new identities of their own invention. Everyone should be encouraged
and enabled to experiment continually throughout their lifetimes. A feature of life
from childhood on might become a series of trials and experiments with different
identities, some with long histories while others are tentative novel self-inventions.
Appiah (2018: 217) writes, “There is a liberal fantasy in which identities are
merely chosen, so we are all free to be what we choose to be. But identities without
demands would be useless to us. Identities work only because, once they get their
grip on us, they command us, speaking to us as an inner voice; and because others,
seeing who they think we are, call on us, too. If you do not care for the shapes your
identities have taken, you cannot simply refuse them; they are not yours alone. You
have to work with others inside and outside the labeled group in order to reframe
them so they fit you better; and you can do that collective work only if you recognize
that the results must serve others as well”. I agree with much of what he says here,
but disagree that we have no choice but, in cooperation with others, to loosen the
bonds of our assigned identities so they are tolerably less restrictive and proscriptive.
I believe that fluid, futures-oriented identities orientation are possible, desirable,
healthy, and exhibited in the lives of a growing number of people who have rejected
their assigned identities and assumed new ones. Moreover I will draw to some extent
from my own experience as a human becoming. I was fortunate to have gained
consciousness as a fatherless child of uncertain ethnicity reared by three strong,
capable women, supported over time by a vast array of people in various socializing
institutions—religious, educational, athletic, multicultural.
Though I was born in 1933 in rural, upper New York State when my mother
attended Eastman School of Music in Rochester, I was powerfully and deeply
influenced by having spent my childhood and early adulthood in the racist, xeno-
phobic, patriarchal, evangelical/fundamentalistic, violence-loving, unreconstructed
South (panhandle and central Florida, Appalachian Georgia, North Carolina, and
Virginia) from 1933 to 1959 when I finally left those parts of the world for good.
To be sure, I was also powerfully inspired by southerners I knew (especially several
Anglican priests and Stetson University professors) who were not racist, xenophobic,
patriarchal, fundamentalistic, or violence-loving. I was impressed most powerfully
of all as a youth and young adult by people who were the victims of racism, xeno-
phobia, patriarchy, fundamentalism and violence that I did not personally experience.
I was an out-spoken nigger lover from the earliest times.
1 What I Am Not, and Why 3

I absolutely did not—and do not—identify with, or want to be identified with, the

White, male, culture of the US South. Nor did they want me to be a part of them either!
Without desiring or pretending I was something else, I did my best not to be White,
male and Southern—because in fact I wasn’t objectively clearly any of them. It was
others who said I was male, White, Southern. That was not my identity, chosen or
intentionally displayed. Indeed, I prided myself in having no familial identity whose
destiny I must fulfill. I was a human becoming.
I was significantly reinforced and re-formed during my first fulltime job with a
fresh PhD—teaching political science at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Japan, during
the early 1960s. Japan is a culture into which it is almost impossible for non-Japanese
to assimilate. No matter how I acted—whether doing what was most normal or most
outrageous to me—I was equally weird to most Japanese. No matter how well I
spoke Japanese (never very well), or tried to behave as other Japanese behaved, I
was always hen na gaijin—strange foreigner. At the same time, Japan was an open,
safe, futures-seeking society while I was there. My family and I were never threatened
or discriminated against. My three very young blond and red-headed children freely
roamed all over Tokyo on the subway, rail, and bus transit system in complete safety,
though riders would sometimes touch the hair on their head and arms in wonder.
Living in a culture strongly influenced by Confucian concepts, we had our place,
with certain rules, duties, responsibilities and expectations that we eventually learned
and endeavored to fulfill. At the time, and I think still, most Japanese ranked them-
selves against foreigners—foreigners were not equal in weirdness. Some foreigners
were rather close to Japanese. Others stood very far away (Hayashi 1961–82). As a
reputedly White, male, American professor in a prestigious private Japanese univer-
sity, I ranked relatively high. In some ways too high: It was as though I was perched
precariously one notch above and to the side of ordinary humans; I was a kind of
angel. Nice to have around to grace certain formal or auspicious occasions, but, like
any angel, a priggish annoyance when humans want to be human. Then, I needed to
bow politely and take my leave. So in fact I did experience serious discrimination,
but that of a kind of bland, superficial superiority rather than of the wounds and scars
of a history of inferiority, enslavement, murder, and abuse.
My birthday is August 15—the day Japan surrendered at the end of World War
II. “Should I dare celebrate my birthday,” I asked my Japanese friends. “Of course!”
they replied. “August 15 is the best day in Japanese history! It should always be
celebrated!” And indeed, when serious consideration was given in the 1960s for
Japan to choose a day to celebrate its nationhood, August 15 ranked high among
the dates considered, though it was not chosen. Having lived most of my life to that
point in the US South where the War of Northern Aggression was still being actively
fought, such acceptance of defeat and a deep desire for new directions was beyond
belief. “We Japanese were profoundly wrong, and needed severely to be corrected,”
my friends said. “The way to be successful in the world is not through military
domination! What were we thinking? That was so old-fashioned. The way to rule is
through economic domination,” and so they set out to make Japan as Number One
(Vogel 1979).
4 1 What I Am Not, and Why

Nonetheless, the identity Japanese assigned to me made no sense to me whatso-

ever. I did not want to be categorized in any way, especially in a way that was to my
undeserved advantage sometimes. I yearned to live in Japan with all the privileges and
obligations—oh, the obligations!—of an ordinary Japanese, but the Japanese under-
stood that was impossible: I would not assume those obligations, and the Japanese
knew it from long experience with foreigners. So I played my angel role as best I
could and, sure enough, when Sirens sang from distant shores, we left.
I learned many things from my experiences in Japan. One was to ignore what
others thought of me without my being purposely rude or irresponsible. Eventually,
I came to realize that almost never did anyone think anything of me at all! Each of
us is intently thinking about ourselves, and about what others think of us, which, of
course, is nothing, or seldom anything of consequence. So while I did not set out to
insult Japanese, or Americans, or anyone, I no longer cared what people thought of
me, because I knew they weren’t thinking of me, and when they did, I could probably
find a way to carry on or acquiesce: no point in my being an impertinent jerk. Smile,
nod, turn away. This awareness that I gained first in Japan remained with me and
strengthened for the rest of my life.
Nonetheless, I did what I could to minimize what advantage being White male
might give me not only in Japan but throughout my life. I couldn’t easily become
Black or female, but I could become an offensively unsightly White male. My skinny
ugly hair was always a problem that anyone who wanted to bug me could complain
about. After one criticism too many, I got a crew cut in high school, causing endless
negative comments. Indeed, in Japan, barbers wondered what defeat I had suffered
since athletes losing a contest frequently shave their heads—or have them shaved. So
I let my hair grow as long as the scrawny threads could dangle which caused far more
controversy, first as a dirty hippie. Then, as I porked up with age, I was frequently
addressed as “ma’am” by people who assumed I was a fat old woman—an insult
to fat old women worldwide, perhaps, but not to me. Almost the first question I get
everywhere in the world after a lecture is why I wear my hair as I do—unchanged
(save for color, from brown to gray) after 50 years. I refused to wear a coat and tie no
matter how august the occasion, preferring clean but disreputable clothing. My motto
is “Always make a bad first impression”, and short of staggering on stage drunk with
my fly open, I usually do. My point being, judge me by what I say and do, and not
how I look.
I felt vindicated by an episode of South Park mimicking Wheel of Fortune that
asked a contestant to fill in the missing letters to answer the question, “what do
you call people who annoy you?” The contestant balked when he got all letters but
one: N? GGERS insisting he couldn’t say the word on television. He was repeatedly
assured it was perfectly all right for him to say it, which he did—losing in disgrace
because the correct letter was A and people who annoy you are NAGGERS.
I was also inspired to move beyond being merely human by a few specific indi-
viduals, especially Buckminster Fuller who proclaimed “I am not a human being;
I am a human becoming”. “I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am.
I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an
evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe” (Fuller et al. 1970). This
1 What I Am Not, and Why 5

struck me powerfully, perhaps in part because while nouns and pronouns—especially

“I”—figure prominently in the English language, Japanese is mainly verbs, adverbs
and adjectives. In Japanese, one has a strong sense of what is going on, and how
to feel about it, but often very little clarity as to whom is acting on whom. And so
maybe I am a human becoming, more a gerund than a noun.
The economist, W. Brian Arthur, also came to realize that economics typically
“expressed via algebraic mathematics, deals only in nouns—quantifiable nouns—
and does not deal with verbs (actions), and that this has deep consequences for what
we see in the economy and how we theorize about it” (Arthur 2021). Biology, he
discovered, points to a better way. “Biology is a procedural discipline, not based on
quantities growing and changing, but rather on processes: processes that determine
the step-by-step formation of structures…; processes that respond to their internal
and external environment…; processes that create novelty….” It may be that in
essence all the social sciences are like economics—mainly nouns with few verbs.
This seems to include many of the people in the various disciplines concerned with
identity. The exceptions seem to be those who are process-oriented and understand
identity as dynamic “processes that create novelty”.
“The natural language of life is algorithmic,” Arthur concludes. So, maybe Fuller
would revise his sense of self. Following Arthur, Fuller might now say, to emphasize
his endless becoming, “I think I am an algorithm.”
Fifty years living and teaching in Hawaii has done more than a little to shape
my understanding of the attraction and pathologies of identity as well. So did my
experiences as Secretary General and President of the World Futures Studies Feder-
ation for two decades and then on the faculty of the International Space University
for two more decades, both of which took me to about 75 countries, many commu-
nist (including North Korea), from the 1970s onward, where I had the extraordinary
opportunity of talking with people, high and low, about their hopes and fears for the
futures. The 1980s were a decade of turmoil for people who sought to change their
identity from communist to social democrat, royalist, chauvinist, or capitalist and I
got to see it first-hand almost everywhere.
I obviously cannot make a fair or convincing argument for futures-oriented iden-
tities on the basis of my experiences alone! Over my lifetime I have observed that
identity—having it, losing it, misappropriating it, recovering it, the centrality of it—
has become a major source of unity and harmony as well as division and bloody
conflict not only in the Disuniting States of America but in many other parts of
the world as well. For a decade, students from the futures program of the Univer-
sity of Hawaii at Manoa and myself went to Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, every April
to participate in a two-week futures course at the InterUniversity Centre for Post-
graduate Studies there. It gave us an unequaled opportunity to engage with people
from Africa, western and eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union that we could not
meet otherwise—people we came to admire and love. We were devastated when
“Yugoslavia”—a hopeful, progressive, harmonious bridge between “East and West”
(meaning communism and capitalism)—collapsed into ethnic slaughter, including in
the 1991–92 bombing by Serbs of the ancient medieval but vibrant city of Dubrovnik
6 1 What I Am Not, and Why

(in Croatia) and the destruction of the buildings of the InterUniversity Centre. Abso-
lutely nothing we had experienced in all our times in that magical city led us to
understand that the façade of unity of the historically-conflicting ethnicities as a
single, peaceful country, Yugoslavia, had been almost entirely held together by the
glue of communism. When the Wall fell, old animosities leapt as all-consuming
flames devouring years of hope and love that I had witnessed as genuine and perma-
nent. Some of my best friends—gentle, humane people of immense intelligence and
wit—instantly became irreconcilable enemies, inhumane monsters or victims in the
killing fields.
Yugoslavia and surrounding areas were among the most extreme case of what
happened in all formerly communist countries. During the 1980s I met not only
ordinary people but presidents of nations and heads of organizations with names like
The Marx-Lenin Institute who said their fondest hope was to go shopping at Macy’s
and eat bananas in winter, which they saw people doing in the “West” on CNN.
They spoke to me openly about this. In May 1989 I gave a talk on “Everyday Life in
the 21st Century” (Dator 1990) to members of Bulgarian President Todor Zhivkov’s
Council of Advisors one day while on the next, a lecture on “Futures of Democ-
racy” in a huge hall at Sophia University in Bulgaria where students filled every
seat, every spot on the floor and stage around me, as well the open windows. A few
days after I left, the students and others took to the streets with increasing frequency,
Zhivkov was replaced by someone even more moderate, and the communist govern-
ment eventually collapsed peacefully. Something somewhat similar happened during
a trip to Riga, Latvia, a few months later: we arrived one evening ready to meet with
various ministers of state the next day, but the system fell overnight so all our appoint-
ments vanished. Somehow, life went on as usual: people who could went to work or
shopping; they stopped at traffic lights. There was absolutely no looting or rioting.
Amazing, I thought.
Nonetheless, no one who most fervently wanted system change was prepared
for the sudden, peaceful collapse of communism when it unexpectedly happened
(almost) everywhere. No one was ready and able to take over governance with a vision
and action plan in hand for the better tomorrow they dreamed about, fully endorsed
by the people. So when the collapse happened there was a vacuum everywhere that
allowed local and international agents of capitalist governments and corporations to
move in to ensure that the dreams of a more liberal, open, and equitable society had
no chance to emerge. Folks might be able to eat bananas from central America in
midwinter, and vote, but that was about it. While feelings differ across eastern Europe,
there are still significant numbers of people—a majority in some countries—who feel
their lives have become worse after the fall of communism, not better (Pew Research
2019). Love—and fear—of Russia never vanished, however, and with the Russian
invasion of Ukraine we see some of the fruit of those long-dormant seeds.
This is the futurists’ curse: “may your dreams come true!” If you have not asked
and answered the question, “what’s next?” the chances are pretty high that your
dreams of a new identity will be dashed and soon become nightmares. Sometimes
old identities revive their appeal long after it is possible to recapture them. You get
the worst of the past instead of the best.
References 7

And yet at the same time I happily note that in spite of oppressive official measures
against them, impressive numbers of people everywhere are questioning identities
now, especially who gets to tell them what their identity is, along with what they
must believe and how they must behave accordingly. They insist that they can and
should chose and proclaim their identity for themselves—sometimes even declaring
identity with groups that refuse to accept them. And yet even they seem to assume
that they should have some kind of a fixed identity and it is that notion also that I
wish to problematize.

References

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2018. The lies that bind: Rethinking identity. New York: Liveright
Publishing.
Arthur, W. Brian. 2021. Economics in nouns and verbs, 5, April 20. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.018
682021.
Dator, Jim. 1990. Everyday life in the 21st century. Sociological Problems, 2. [In Bulgarian.
Published in Sofia, Bulgaria].
Fuller, R. Buckminster, Jerome Agel, and Quentin Fiore. 1970. I seem to be a verb. New York:
Bantam.
Gutkin, Len. 2022. ‘An elaborate new decorum has crept in’ David Bromwich on politics, manners,
and the therapeutics of identity. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/
article/an-elaborate-new-decorum-has-crept-inMarch15.
Hayashi, Chikio. 1961–82. Nihonjin no Kokuminsei. Tōkei Sūri Kenkyūjo, vol. 4. Tokyo:
Kokuminsei Chōsa Iinkai.
Vogel, Eric. 1979. Japan as number one: Lessons for America. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Wike, Richard, Jacob Poushter, Laura Silver, Kat Devlin, Janell Fetterolf, Alexandra
Castillo, and Christine Huang. 2019. Political and economic changes since the fall of
communism. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/14/political-and-economic-changes-
since-the-fall-of-communism/.
Chapter 2
Identity, More or Less

Abstract The history of “identity”, a relatively new concept that was “lost” almost
as soon as it was “discovered”, is reviewed. The dangerously pathological features of
historical, ascribed identity, and the fact that identities fail to identity, are emphasized.
Fluid, futures-oriented identities are preferred.

Keywords Becoming · Being · Future shock · Futures · Homosapiens · Human ·

Identity · Immigrants · Nation · Ningen · Postmodern

The idea of “identity” is both ancient and new. Countless studies state that identity
answers the question, “Who am I?”—as though each of us has a predetermined
identity that pre-exists in the past as well as in certain groups and categories of the
present. It seems to me that the far more important and urgent question for each of us
that we should continuously ask and answer is not “who am I” but, “who do I want
to be…, next? How might I continue to become?” Life as a futures quest should be
instilled in children from the earliest time, and reinforced by formal ceremonies along
one’s lifespan, like—but radically different in focus from—baptism, confirmation,
bar/bat mitzvah, and other coming of age and preparing to die ceremonies that once
may have been sufficient.
I am not saying that people should be taught affirmatively to renounce or disparage
their past, much less the past of their parents, caregivers, community, nation, culture,
language, religion, and the rest—although all of us do need to be sure we don’t live
in the romanticized shadow of unexamined realities. It is rather a question of priority,
focus, and balance. What is of vital importance is not what we were but what we can
or should try to become; not primarily who our ancestors were and what they did
(or was done to them), but rather whether our descendants are able to choose how to
live their lives as a consequence of how we and others live our daily lives now.
It might not be too much to say that we can “know” the futures better than we
can know the past because we have at least some individual and collective agency
over the futures, but none over the actual past. We can and do constantly rewrite
or reinterpret some few fragments from the past, but whatever “really happened” is
beyond our ability either to know in detail or to change at all. We have very little real
control over the present as well, given how swiftly the present becomes the future
before we can act on it. If we are not encouraged and enabled to be routinely but
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 9
J. Dator, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds,
Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_2
10 2 Identity, More or Less

deeply foresightful (and we are not), we become at best reactive, and more likely
perpetually bushwhacked.
Far more important it is to understand and act on the understanding of our agency in
becoming a self of our choosing by interacting with, learning from, and inspiring other
futures-oriented human becomings in co-creating and recreating preferred futures.
The way I have phrased things so far may seem to imply that identity creation is
an act of supreme individualism: it is MY identity that I create all by and for myself.
If I have given that impression, then let me correct it immediately. Identity should be
futures-oriented, dynamic, invented, constructed by each of us interacting with other
questing selves, in part on the basis of precedence but mainly on the basis of conse-
quence. This most certainly is not a solitary individualistic task. Quite to the contrary.
This is an intensive social activity. The word that can be translated as “human”, 人
間, (ningen, in Japanese), is composed of two characters, 人, which means person,
and 間, which means “between”, “among”, “within”, “inside”, “space”—that is to
say, a human is not a solitary selfish individual but a person among other persons,
living, dead, and yet to be born. It is in part by interacting with others, past, present
and futures, that we each are human becomings. In his article, “Bricolaging a public
philosophy for future generations”, Tae-Chang Kim quotes the 20th Century Japanese
philosopher, Tetsuro Watsuji, on the meaning of ningen: “It is a word that signifies
the betweenness of human beings, that is, the public.” “According to it, ningen is the
public and, at the same time, the individual human being living within it” (Kim in
Kim and Dator 1999: 261).
Poem Toward People
By Ariel Yelen

I’ve always been obsessed with people—

whether or not I know them. Obsessed
by our knowledge of each other, the quality

of connection, our friendship or non-friendship,

its relation to other connections. Obsessed
by the way a new connection can change pre-existing

ones, reorder them, renew them, fine-tune

or disappear them. By the light pressure
of an other’s existence, which in turn grows

me. Obsessed by memory and lack of memory

for the way things were—I don’t think I’d recognize
you if I saw you on the street, though in the past

so obsessed I thought almost everyone

was you. Obsessed with leaving people
so I can obsess about them again.
2.1 Identities Lost 11

By thinking with and through people, dead

and alive, without whom I’d be a different person,
think different thoughts. Even obsessed

with the version of me I don’t know, walking around

having met different people, thinking different
thoughts, moving in a different direction, away

from people and toward the self,

or the desert, or the sea, or the god, or the page, or the mountain,
or the canyon, or the forest, or the dark (Yelen 2022).

Used with permission from the author.

Yes, that is the point: We are who we are, and are not who we are not yet who we
might become, because of who we happen to have known or known about as well as
all those we have never met and who, if we had (and if we do), would have helped
us be a different person—for better or worse. We owe our thanks, respect, and love
to all, and not just our biological family, tribe, nation, or species.
That is only the beginning of the journey. We must also consider the possibility
and desirability of humans becoming transhumans and posthumans, or rather of the
evolution of posthumans from current homo sapiens, sapiens. Neither our ancestors
nor ourselves now are the ultimate “crown of creation”. We are merely one phase in
an infinite process of evolutionary metamorphosis, but we can and should strive to be
active, caring co-creators within that cosmic process when we have that opportunity.

2.1 Identities Lost

We don’t know who discovered water, Marshall McLuhan used to say, but we’re
pretty sure it wasn’t a fish—though it might well have been discovered by a fish out
of water. We don’t know who discovered identity, but few people gave it a thought
until they lost theirs and struggled to recapture it—or to create a new one. As Kobena
Mercer stated, “identity only becomes an issue when it is in crisis, when something
assumed to be fixed, coherent and stable is displaced by the experience of doubt and
uncertainty” (Gove and Watt 2004).
In some ways, humans are profoundly migratory—Out of Africa, perhaps, across
the globe, sometimes pushing into areas where humans had never been before, but
often contesting with and sometimes eliminating other homo sapiens who were there
before. Nonetheless most people lived and died within a few miles of where their
family’s and friends’ families and friends had lived and died. It wasn’t until people
were forced by theft, (mis)fortune, or famine to move from ancestral lands and ances-
tral ways of living that groups and individuals lost their identity. Many struggled in
12 2 Identity, More or Less

newfound wildernesses often either alone or in fragile nuclear families in compe-

tition and cooperation with thousands of strangers who were similarly struggling.
This became a fact of life for millions of people when the 1000-yearlong Reich of
western Christendom disintegrated when the Renaissance, Black Death, Reforma-
tion, and unusually stable, temperate climate enabled new people with new ideas
and technologies to create ever-newer worlds. While an argument can be made that
the modern sense of “identity” and the “self” arose when Descartes declared Cogito
ergo sum in 1637, the full weight of identity—or its lack—seems to lie in the 19th
Century when globalizing processes, technologies, and ideologies severed people
from their hidden selves and required them to create new ones—over and over as the
pace of social and environmental change quickened and new strangers showed up to
replace old strangers who moved—or were removed—on.
Stuart Hall says that the concept of “identity” developed in three phases. The first
was as a subject during the Enlightenment period. The second was as a sociological
subject during modernity. And the third is the subject during post-modernity. “The
Enlightenment subject was based on a conception of the human person as a fully-
centered, unified individual, endowed with the capacities of reason, consciousness
and action, whose ‘centre’ consisted of an inner core which first emerged when
the subject was born, and unfolded with it, while remaining essentially the same—
continuous or ‘identical’ with itself—throughout the individual’s existence.” “The
notion of the sociological subject reflected the growing complexity of the modern
world and the awareness that this inner core of the subject was not autonomous and
self-sufficient, but was formed in relation to ‘significant others’, who mediated to
the subject the values, meanings and symbols—the culture—of the worlds he/she
inhabited” (Hall 1992: 276).
The post-modern subject has “no fixed, essential or permanent identity.” “Within
us are contradictory identities pulling in different directions, so that our identifications
are continuously being shifted about. If we feel we have a unified identity from birth
to death, it is only because we construct a comforting story or ’narrative of the self’
about ourselves” (Hall 1992: 277).
Similarly, Philip Gleason says that the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary
(OED) defined “identity” as “the sameness of a person or thing at all times or in all
circumstances; the condition or fact that a person or thing is itself and not some-
thing else; individuality, personality.” However, “The original Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences, published in the early 1930s, carries no entry at all for identity”,
while “The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, published in 1968,
has a substantial article on ‘Identity, Psychosocial,’ and another on ‘Identification,
Political’” (Gleason 1983: 910–931).
Beginning in the 1950s in the US, works decrying and searching for lost identity
were in flood tide by the 1960s: David Riesman, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney The
Lonely Crowd (1950)—a book that made a great impact on me, especially the distinc-
tion between inner- and other-directedness; Will Herberg, Protestant-Catholic-Jew
(1955); C. Vann Woodward, “The Search for Southern Identity,” (1958); Peter
Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (1966)—another
very impactful book for me; William Glasser, The Identity Society (1972)—which
2.2 Future Shock 13

contributed to my fascination with human evolution—and many others. One of the

most influential writers overall, Eric Erickson, coined the phrase, “identity crisis” in
his book, Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968).
The 1950s–70s was also a period when specific groups who felt categorically and
historically excluded from mainstream American identity began to reorganize for
integration and equality, or for recognition and freedom, most notably women and
Negroes, as they were sometimes called then. Identity angst now is global, often
specifically inspired by and contributing to local versions while spawning novel
identities.

2.2 Future Shock

One writer during this period who had the most lasting influence on me and many
others was Alvin Toffler. He is best known for his book Future Shock (Toffler 1970),
but I experienced his thought earlier in a piece he wrote for the hardbacked magazine,
Horizon, titled, “The future as a way of life” (Toffler 1965). I read it also as “the
future as a source of identity”, and joined him for a while in several futures-oriented
activities, including creating the Institute for Alternative Futures in the Washington,
DC area, and in considering creating a new political party—the Futures Party—
until we realized “the future” has no consituency. It is only specific futures-oriented
policies and actions that people are concerned about. Not “the future” in the abstract.
Newt Gringrich was a member of that small group, and Clem Bezold directed the
Institute for Alternative Futures for forty years with great success.
Toffler suggested that the root of the many discontents of the time was “future
shock” which many people experienced because the realty of the future-at-a-later
time (i.e., the present) was so catastrophically different from what they had been led
to expect it would be. Future shock is similar to culture shock and homesickness. In
the case of homesickness, you are eagerly looking forward to leaving your old boring
home and heartless parents and going off to camp for a few weeks. You can hardly
wait! You arrive at camp breathless with anticipation and wonder….which rapidly
drains down into fear, loneliness, dread, a deep desire to return home. You begin
moping and crying and wanting to go see your dog NOW. You phone your parents
but they say they won’t come and get you; you have to stick it out. At the end you are
both sad and happy to leave camp and be welcomed and comforted by your boring
parents and loyal dog. You are finally back to normal, where you belong, again.
In the case of culture shock, the phenomenon is similar—eager anticipation, initial
delight and wonder at all you see in the strange new land which soon wears off when
you learn that nothing is as it seems. That foreigners are not exotic, they‘re neurotic,
crazy, with bad food, bad breath, surly manners, unintelligible grunts. You want to go
home NOW! If you were enslaved, indentured, marooned, castaway, a refugee, you
may be stuck and have to grin and bear it, while if you are traveling abroad freely, on
vacation, perhaps, or a “junior year abroad”, you can return home where everybody
knows your name, and you can understand them when they say it.
14 2 Identity, More or Less

Since all life is lived “forward” with our memories, and all education is about the
past, what Toffler called “the premature arrival of the future”—future shock—is far
more devastating and alienating than homesickness or culture shock. You can’t go
back to the past in reality, and so you do it in fantasy—you reject a President who says
to turn the heat down and wear a sweater to conserve energy, and elect a second-rate
actor on an imaginary white horse as president of the United States who declares it
to be “Morning In America” and immediately causes the sun to rise by stealing it
permanently from the future; transforming the US from the Number One Creditor
Nation in the world into the Number One Debtor Nation in three years by fanning the
cooling embers of the Cold War and railing against some Evil Empire while ramping
up military spending, both of which stole wealth from future generations to sedate
current generations. America and the rest of the world fell for the neoliberal shell
game from which we have never recovered. The last politician to try to speak truth
to citizens, Jimmy Carter, was so thoroughly rebuffed and humiliated by the actor
that every politician since has fueled their own fairyland fantasy of the present by
continuing to steal wealth from the future in order to reward the 1% while muffling
the 99% as well as plunging each succeeding generation deeper and deeper in debt
until first brutish neonationalism and then Covid-19 reared up to steal it all and
forever until a new kleptocracy can be rigged again perhaps materialized by China,
India, and Russia while the US is too saddled with denial and regret to conjure up a
future.

2.3 Postmodernity

There was a time when I would have had to say something about Foucault about
now since his influence on notions of identity across the academic disciplines was
so overpowering. But I think that time has passed. It might seem like discussing
Christianity without mentioning Christ—or at least Paul—but that might not be a
bad idea either.
In the 1990s, the futurist, author, and president of the World Academy of Art and
Science, Walter Truett Anderson, wrote several books and articles on “the future of
the self”. In “The self in global society” (Anderson 1999) he discussed what he called
“postmodern psychology”. Futurists, feminists, nonwestern thinkers and others were
“questioning the traditional model of mental health expressed in Erik Erikson’s influ-
ential views on how a person ideally grows, gets through his identity crises, avoids
the perils of ‘identity diffusion’, and becomes a stable adult with an assured sense of
inner continuity and social sameness. Instead, they are describing the consciousness
of contemporary people with such terms as ‘multiphrenic’, ‘protean’, and ‘decen-
tered’. Feminist theorists…have added a fourth term: ‘relational’. They argue that
women tend to be more ‘context-dependent’ or ‘relationally-oriented’ than men”
(which sounds a lot like other-directedness to me). Brain scientists “have abandoned
the Cartesian image of a single observer within the brain. Contemporary investiga-
tions reveal instead a multicentric brain in which different functions are distributed in
2.4 Immigrants and Identity 15

complex ways, but not simply located in a single place.” (Anderson quotes Michael
Gazzaniga as observing that “metaphorically, we humans are more of a sociolog-
ical entity than a single unified psychological entity”. Moreover, “cyberspace is an
entirely new kind of social environment, containing a multitude of communities and
offering enormous opportunities for self-diversification” (Anderson 1999: 804). To
put it mildly!
The idea of the solitary self was revealed to be very ethnocentric—a western
pretension: “Anthropologist Clifford Geertz believes ‘The Western conception of
the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive
universe… is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the
context of the world’s cultures’ that may be fading away even in the west” (Anderson
1999: 805).
In 1999, Anderson posited two future scenarios for the western self.
One sees a world of no boundaries where nationalism and ethnocentrism are gone.
The diverse religions have merged into one world religion of many amorphous and
emergent features. “Governance, society, religion and ecology are all now recognized
as art forms” (Anderson 1999: 810–811).
The other future is “back to basics” featuring “a utopian return to communities,
ancient ethnic identities, local economies, and traditional spirituality.” “But then—to
the surprise and great dismay of the idealistic devolutionists—their ideology is seized
upon with even greater enthusiasm by religious fundamentalists, political conserva-
tives, ethnic nationalists, racists, and neo-fascist paramilitary groups” (Anderson
1999: 811).
To put it mildly, indeed! We now know which forecast was correct, and that
Anderson understood its potentiality well ahead of many people. The world is
currently locked in the second future, while, as we will see, more and more individ-
uals and groups are struggling to break free of it and be the ever-evolving human
becomings they desire.

2.4 Immigrants and Identity

The 19th and 20th Centuries were periods of substantial immigration from Europe
to North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Europeans immigrated
for many specific reasons, some in the hope and expectation that they could create
better lives for themselves and their families in these “new worlds” than they could
in the places of their birth. Some of these immigrants could and did return to their
homelands frequently or permanently, and/or kept close ties with relatives and friends
in the communities of their birth. Most of these became citizens of the country
to which they moved when it became independent, creating new identities in new
nations.
Other immigrants escaped grinding poverty or famine in Europe by signing on
as indentured servants for a period of time, while others still left Europe to escape
religious or cultural persecution. At the same time significant numbers of people
16 2 Identity, More or Less

were captured from their homes and forcibly sent to the new lands to live and die
as slaves—both completely cut off from their cultures of origin and yet unable to
become full creators of the cultures in which they were forced to labor.
None of these new worlds was unpopulated before the immigrants moved in, unin-
vited and unwelcomed. With a few individual exceptions, the new arrivals system-
atically sought to remove and exterminate the indigenous people in order fully to
control the land and other resources entirely for their own purposes. New immigrants,
often from different parts of the world, or from different classes and cultures of the
old worlds, sought to immigrate during the second half of the 19th Century, often
clashing violently with the earlier immigrants who now saw themselves as the proper
owners of the stolen land. People from some specific countries or parts of the world,
such as the Chinese, were initally admitted to do specific work. However all Chinese
were soon forbidden to immigrate to the US.
The first immigrants to North America came from a few European nations with
very similar cultural roots—as well as histories of bloody wars against each other
going back many centuries. However the various initial colonies of Europe soon
formed two new countries—Canada and the United States—with many similarities
as well as some fundamental differences. One of the differences was their attitudes
towards the next waves of immigrants—should they assimilate as soon as possible
with, and become indistinguishable from, the first immigrants (the analogy of the
melting pot where individual ingredients lose their unique features and become part
of the whole—as is said to be the case in the United States), or should they both keep
and celebrate their old culture while also becoming full participants in the new culture
(the analogy of Canada as a rich stew made up of many distinguishable components)?
These analogies are not mutually exclusive in practice, and may more truly be cari-
catures than accurate descriptions. Anti- as well as pro-immigrant factions exist in
both countries. Moreover, while people from some cultures and ethnic groups assim-
ilate quickly, others—especially descendants of first people who have lived in North
America “forever”, as well as former slaves who have lived in the US for many years
and have no home culture to which they can return—continue to face massive and
pervasive obstacles both to assimilation and to separate but equal cultural identity.
And then there is Mexico, the Caribbean islands, and Central and South America
with fundamentally different stories and lessons.
It was not just the Americas and Oceania that were colonized by European nations.
Most of the world was formally or effectively parceled out to Europe whereupon every
effort was made to extinguish the original cultures and remake them in the image of
the colonizing nations. Moreover many of these colonies were cobbled together into
single jurisdictions from bits and pieces of distinctive cultural communities without
regard for their compatibility with one another, or of the damage done to the original
communities when segments of one were placed under the control of one European
nation and other portions taken over by other European nations.
The challenges to coherent identity formation were profound during the coloniza-
tion period. They were devastating when rapid “decolonization” occured after World
War Two, and then again when the Soviet Empire disintegrated in the 1990s. Almost
all wars and conflicts in the world now find their roots in the ruthless expansion
2.5 Identity Contested 17

of Europeans into the rest of the world during the 17th-early 20th Centuries, and
then their sudden abandonment—though that word also totally distorts the reality
of economic and military imperialism which continues to flourish throughout the
world.
In short, identity and identity conflict is built into the very warp and woof every
aspect of every day life today everywhere.

2.5 Identity Contested

One of the drivers of my dissatisfaction with identity is not that systemic anxiety
about individual and group identity is relatively new in human history and has gone
through (and is still going through) changes of meaning and centrality. Rather, I am
distressed that identity is used as a political weapon to force people to embrace and
perform certain definitions of self, and to reject and attack other understandings. The
very notion of an identity group, or of identity politics, and especially the politics
that pits one identity group all for itself and all against others, I find problematic
not only because of the intergroup violence that it causes and perpetuates, but also
because of the trauma it causes within people who find it difficult to be all for one
and all against others; who resist some of the beliefs and actions of their group and
admire those of Others. This is especially tragic for people who are somehow part
of two or more groups, but are forced to choose only one as their identity.
Who gets to say what one’s identity is? May each of us choose the identity we
prefer, or must we accept what others say we are when we know that we are not?
Just because we accept an assigned identity at one point in our lives are we obliged
to stick with it forever even when it diminishes us from becoming?
I wonder about the categories themselves, especially if we acknowledge that they
are social inventions and not essential—who/what is a woman? So also with Jews,
Blacks, queers, transsexuals, incels….? Who gets to define and act on the definition?
The problem I seek to overcome is the continuing use and abuse of these terms since
they are almost entirely political and historical, and in no way essential.
Nothing I say here questioning assigned identity and favoring fluid multiple
personal and communal identities can or is intended in the slightest to deny the horror
and evil of the atrocities that existed and still exist when one set of identities plunders
others. Women are not to blame for their oppression nor should they be forced to
deny it. Men consciously and continuously oppress them. Jews in no way “deserve”
discrimination or extermination. Blacks are not inferior and thus warranting of their
enslavement and continuing depredation. How can anyone insist on only one mode
of sexual expression—or love—and forcefully ban all others? Are there “disabled”
people? Or differently abled? If disabled, why are there obstacles to their abilities?
Who determines what is normal? Should abnormals be normalized? Are policies
attempting to achieve some kind of atonement and reconciliation for past horrors
justified now? Yes. Is affirmative action still needed? Given the political realities of
the present, yes. But it doesn’t end there.
18 2 Identity, More or Less

All identity groups—most certainly including that of a “nation” in the “nation-

state system” (another relatively new social invention that solved a problem in Europe
several hundred years ago and is the cause of endless problems and the solution to
very few now)—are more or less pathological, producing pathological people who
engage in pathological behavior against other identity groups as well as frequently
against members of their own group by insisting on correcting or condemning the
behavior of other group members.
My position here is very well stated by Lennard J. Davis who wrote that “main-
taining a category of being just because oppressive people in the past created it so
they could exploit a segment of the population, does not make sense. To say that one
wants to memorialize that category based on the suffering of people who occupy it
makes some sense, but does the memorialization have to take the form of continuing
the identity? Even attempts to remake the identity will inevitably end up relying on
the categories first used to create the oppression” (Davis 2013: 269).

2.6 Identities Don’t Identify

Moreover, if the purpose of identity is to encompass all the important aspects of each
person’s characteristics into a single label, they fail.
If I say “that person is a communist”, what do you know about that person?
Nothing for certain. You can’t even be sure that I believe that person is a communist
merely because I utter the statement. It could be a slur, a mistake, a joke on my
part, but even if I believe it is true, what do you know now about the person you
did not know before? What does “a communist” believe, and what not? How does a
communist behave and not behave? Am I saying something positive about the person
or something negative? What if that person denies being a communist? What if she
denies believing a list of things I insist a communist should believe? What if she has
never acted as I insist a communist should act? What if she believes exactly what I
say a communist believes and acts as I say a communist should act but still denies
she is a communist?
What if I call her a feminist? Or a woman? Or a bitch? Or a man?
Those labels tell me—and you—nothing for sure about the person. If she denies
every label I put on her are you to believe me or her? If I say she is a woman and
she says she is not, is she displaying “false consciousness”, like manual laborers
who insist they aren’t Marxists and don’t believe in Marxist theories, even though
Marxists maintain they must, and if they don’t, then need to be re-educated—like
unemployable coal miners who vote Republican, clearly against their “class interest”?
If dark-skinned people whose ancestors were slaves in America enthusiastically
vote for and tithe in support of Trump, are opposed to affirmative action, reject food
stamps, decry HBCU, and deny that Black Lives Matter—if they insist that their dark
skin, African ancestry, and previous conditions of servitude don’t matter to them—is
it your duty to help them see the errors of their ways, or can you conclude that not
everyone you think is “Black” is Black in the way you think the term means; that,
2.6 Identities Don’t Identify 19

instead, it is your duty to accept people as they wish to be seen, and not as you think
they ought to be seen—and ought to want to be seen?
What if a person you say is a woman agrees that she is a woman, as well as a
mother, a wife, happy to be protected and corrected by her husband who is a man, a
breadwinner, a wife-beater and physically abusive to their children. Yet this woman
also claims she is a feminist who cares deeply for and acts sincerely on behalf of
women? Is she a feminist or is she pathetically deluded, urgently needing to be either
corrected or shunned by True Feminists?
Who gets to define what the labels mean? Much of the conflict in the world is
between people with different labels—White versus Black, capitalist versus commu-
nist, protestant versus catholic versus jew versus muslim, versus hindu and the rest.
However, at least as much and often more bitter conflict is between people who insist
that they are White and you are not; that I am Black and you are not; that I am a true
protestant and you are not a protestant at all even though you say you are because…..
During the 1950s, many people called and calling themselves “Negroes” and other
people called “White” rallied together in the cause of “integration”—striving to co-
create a society where people could live and work together harmoniously sharing the
fruits of their labor equitably regardless of their “race”. “Separate”, they said, is not
“Equal”. We must integrate.
But then powerful voices argued that this was a mistake—just another way for
Whites to exploit Colored People. Before we can talk about “integration”, we need
to understand that Black is Beautiful and that Black Power is able to balance White
power, some said. So ways of thinking and goals of action changed, as did proper
ways of dressing, speaking, greeting, behaving. For a while there was confusion
and resistance. While many embraced it, some Blacks said they did not want to be
Black as others were defining it for them. Many Whites who had risked their lives
and livelihood in support of integration were shocked when they were told to go
back to where they had come from and do their work within the White community.
Something similar happened to men who supported “women’s liberation” early on
and were told to go liberate men so women can get on with their work. This all made
sense.
And it didn’t.
Labels are sociological statements, not physiological ones. If they have any rela-
tion to reality at all, they may be statements of mean, medium, or modal features
around what may appear to be a neat bell-shaped curve with two tails, but isn’t.
Certainly gender is not and never has been a dichotomy—either male or female.
If the term has any meaning at all, a gender distribution would display a complex
N-dimensional U-shaped curve with hypothetical hyper femininity at one end and
hypothetical hyper masculinity at the other with all sorts of variation in between.
There are many more manifestations or indicators of gender than just two—biolog-
ical, physiological, psychological, social, cultural, political—and they are not fixed.
Individuals may flow back and forth, in and around many gender possibilities over
their lifespan. “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t”, the old ads for
Peter Paul Mounds and Almond Joy used to proclaim.
20 2 Identity, More or Less

And there is more to any person’s life than either being a nut or not. Each person has
many identities—woman, mother, wife, Southern Baptist, Puerto Rican, Democrat,
Registered Nurse living in Detroit…. Sometimes the diverse identities of individuals
coalesce into groups that function as coherent and powerful communities unified
in opposition to everyone else with other mutually exclusive sets of identities and
groups—as America is said to be tending now: Republicans are Anti-Democrats,
Democrats are Anti-Republicans, and that is all that matters. Independents are just
lazy, stupid, or lying. Battle lines are clear—you are either with us or against us.—
Hatfield or McCoy. So loyalty tests, purges, traitors, assassinations, and suicides
(real and metaphorical) become frequent, bloody, and triumphant. As Stalin’s Show
Trials, Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Hitler’s Sondergerichte,
and Senator Joe McCarthy’s Anti-Communist hearings of the US Subcommittee on
Investigations each illustrated very well (and impending Woke/Anti-Woke legislative
hearings will soon illustrate), there is no end once purification and loyalty to your
group are the prime aims of life. There are always evil people to exorcise from the
group with extreme prejudice.
However, in reality all the cross-cutting identities are never lined up clearly on
one side or the other, even within each individual, much less within each group. It is
very hard indeed to be a True woman, a True mother, a True wife, a True Southern
Baptist, a True Puerto Rican, a True Democrat and Registered Nurse living in Detroit.
The more True Identity is required, the more uncertainty, recrimination, guilt, angst,
doubt, hypocrisy, and defection reign, amid battle cries of “inauthenticity”. And yet
it sometimes seems it is very difficult to be a bishop who loudly and notoriously rails
against homosexuality while not also trolling for little boys.

References

Anderson, Walter Truett. 1999. The self in global society. Futures 31: 804–812.
Davis, Lennard J. 2013. The end of identity politics: On disability as an unstable category. In The
disability studies reader, ed. L.J. Davis. Routledge.
Gleason, Philip. 1983. Identifying identity: A semantic history. The Journal of American History
69 (4): 910–931.
Gove, Jennifer, and Stuart Watt. 2004. Identity and gender. In Questioning identity: Gender, class,
identity, ed. Kath Woodard. London: Routledge.
Hall, Stuart. 1992. The question of cultural identity. In Modernity and its futures, eds. Stuart Hall,
David Held, and Anthony McGrew. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kim, Tae-Chang. 1999. Bricolaging a public philosophy for future generations. In Co-Creating
a public philosophy for future generations, ed. Tae-Chang Kim and James A. Dator. London:
Adamantine. https://therisingsky.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/kanji-tip-1-人間-human/.
Toffler, Alvin. 1965.The future as a way of life. Horizon. Summer.
Toffler, Alvin. 1970. Future shock. New York: Random House.
Yelen, A. 2022. Poetry 219(6): 567, March.
Chapter 3
The Big Three: Class, Gender, Race

Abstract Focusing mainly on the United States, the main markers of identity—
one’s social class, gender, and race—are discussed, ending with a summary of the
argument of the necessity and possibility of moving beyond fixed human beings to
endlessly fluid human becomings.

Keywords Affirmative action · Black lives · Class · Diversity · Donald · Future

generations · Gender · Identity · Population · Race · White

We are each awash in a stream of identities almost without number. Some identities
are more pernicious than others, and some are thought to be far more fundamental
than others. Class, gender, race are often said to be the big three. These three twirl
around in an endless dialectical waltz, sometimes one or two rising to more visibility
and provoking more sturm und drang than the other one or two. In the US, class
seldom gets the recognition it deserves and does get in other countries. This in part
may be because it is so utterly un-American to imagine there might classes in the US;
it is, shall we say, déclassé? We are obliged to recite over and over the All-American
creeds that justify an unnecessary WAR for Independence from England and all
subsequent gratuitous acts of bloodshed while denying that some men are created far
more equal than others, with liberty and justice for a few in the pursuit of happiness via
material acquisition. Any mention of the facts of grotesquely-increasing economic
(and hence, power) gaps is immediately labeled “Socialism!” and that is the end
of the conversation. No True Patriot can be expected hold such a repulsive concept
in mind long enough to rebut it much less to use it as a tool for understanding the
foundations of identity. Yet social classes do exist in the US even if most people deny
being a member of one. (See: “false consciousness” in action!).
Recently, some scholars have sought to resurrect the term “caste” to designate
the American system of stratified, birthright inequality, perhaps to separate the
phenomena from the (gasp!) Marxist roots of class, but I don’t expect caste to gain
traction anytime soon. It is a foreign concept for a foreign condition that can’t happen
here. Family ties don’t matter to us! We are all born with the same silver spoon up our
nose. Trump is wealthy because he earned every penny of it. Losers aren’t, because
they didn’t, and stupidly paid taxes on what they did earn.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 21

J. Dator, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds,
Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_3
22 3 The Big Three: Class, Gender, Race

In the early days of the reign of The Donald, I wrote a kind of tepid “class analy-
sis” of Trump’s popularity among America’s working and lower middle classes. He
presented himself as the kind of unlearned, pussy-grabbing, self-absorbed, raucous,
vacuously-religious, fragile, frightened, Good Ole Boy family man that folks in
laboring and farming communities know and love too well. On the other hand, his
behavior shocked and deeply offended those of the professional classes who struggle
mightily to be curious, respectful, empathetic, thoughtful, spiritual, polite, and alto-
gether woke. Trump’s hourly, increasingly outrageous lies and tantrums perpetu-
ally insulted and provoked them, which perpetually goaded him and his enraptured
followers to go ever lower and more obscene. They loved to see their haughty masters
convulsively twisting their nappies into wetted knots while he crossed his arms and
smirked like Il Duce.
To comment on this is to be concerned with class at what might seem to be a
superficial level. But it worked because a lot of the most telling differences between
the classes are not their differing relationships to the modes of reproduction, as
Marxists have it, but to modes of communication, especially to modes expressing
humor. Taunts usually sting more than puns and droll wit.
The Donald showed his true class allegiance with all the perks, privileges, and
praise he poured upon the rich and superrich, through tax breaks most spectacularly
but also by destroying environmental, economic, and cultural rules and regulations
that gestured towards the slightest hurdle to unrestrained exploitation and greed.
There was a thought at first that Trump would be a populist in policy as well as
in rhetoric and behavior, but that thought faded quickly. The words were crudely
populist, but the actions were capitalist of the rawest sort: a winning combination,
substantially aided by America’s carefully-crafted undemocratic structures of gover-
nance which irrevocably give much more political weight to some parts of the country
than to others.
In any event, no class analysis ever caught on with the media or people. So how
about a feminist, queer, or other gendered critique? Wasn’t Trump the epitome of the
gross, ruthless, privileged, hetero/cisnormative male? Feminists never had a better
target: Puerile Patriarchy Personified! And yet, smack in the middle of “Me Too”
and LGBTQIA triumphs, Trump and his Trumpettes were undeterred and unscathed,
indeed, they were emboldened.
What stuck was race. I suspect one reason we are unable to perceive class or
even patriarchy at work in the US is because from the beginning we have seen the
world through colored glasses. It is not clear to me that Trump’s extravagant racism
is more pronounced or putrid than his views and actions on class, gender, disability,
and the rest. His public mocking of a disabled reporter; his touting of his perfect
scores as a Stable Genius on simple tests of comprehension; his skillful mishandling
of the pandemic topped off by a bizarre performance as Superman cum Il Duce
cum Howard Roark on a White House balcony after returning from Walter Reed
Hospital following very special treatments for the Covid-19 virus, and much more
were merciless taunts to anyone who is sick, poor, handicapped, in need of assistance
and care—he and only he is strong, invincible, alone.
3 The Big Three: Class, Gender, Race 23

Finally, somehow after one police brutality too many, it seemed Black Lives
REALLY Mattered—in spite of centuries of killing, persecution and neglect. Now
justice was to be done. Statues were torn down. Apologies proffered. Restitution
guaranteed! Well, that didn’t last long. I have been through all of this before in the
1950s, 60s, 70s only to see what little, grudging progress there was in both govern-
mental policies and ordinary behavior grind to a halt and reverse from the 1980s
onward when The White Man on the White Horse declared that it was Mo(u)rning
in America as Voodoo Economics was let loose on the world.
But soft! Will demographics actually be the key to ending racism? For most of
human history, the “average human” was a woman living in China and/or India.
“Whites” have always been a minority globally. During a brief period in the eigh-
teenth and nineteenth centuries, Europe grew and exported its surplus population
to the “New World” and other imperial outposts, and so the ratio of “Whites” to
“nonWhites” on the planet approached 50/50 for the first and only time, with narrow
White majorities briefly in North America and Oceania. Since the Whites at that time
also had superior technologies for more efficient killing and exploiting, and a God
who commanded they subdue, disappear, and/or convert all heathens, Whites were
able to rule globally and in some countries for a while. They deluded themselves
into believing that their dominance was a fitting, natural, and eternal demonstration
of their superiority instead of an extraordinary blip in viable births and lifespans due
to clean water, sewage removal, and other public health measures happening among
some White communities first. But the demographic wave that Whites rode up has
been plunging downward for quite some time, while the nonWhite wave continues to
rise steeply. If trends continue, ratios and numbers of White people may be vanish-
ingly small by the end of the 21st Century while Black Lives will Matter Big Time.
There may be calls then to hold “walks for Whitey”; to “take a White person home
for Christmas”; to construct reservations in the badlands where the quaint ways of
some White folks may be preserved from total extinction.
Surely this will be the end of racism!
Not likely. First of all, as Garrett Hardin liked to say, “trends are not destiny”, and
they frequently reverse. Fertility is a fickle lover. Global depopulation was viewed
as a huge problem in the 1920s and 30s. Commissions were formed nationally and
internationally to address the catastrophe. Raymond Pearl, writing in Natural History
of Population in 1939, said:
It seems reasonable to conclude, from the data already presented, that the mean annual
growth-rate percent for the world population is steadily decreasing at the present time, and
during the recent past. In other words, the decline of fertility that has been noted and discussed
in an earlier chapter appears not to be exclusively confined to highly ‘civilized’ countries,
where the populations are mostly sophisticated and eager and adept at birth-controlling. It
seems rather to be a world-embracing phenomenon--something affecting man as a species
(Pearl 1939: 256).

On page 258, Pearl displayed a graph that showed the population of the world from the
seventeenth century to 1932. Because of declining fertility, the curve took a typical
“S” curve shape, rising rapidly from 1600 to about 1900, and gradually leveling off.
The curve showed the population of the world as reaching a little over 2.4 billion in
24 3 The Big Three: Class, Gender, Race

2000 (when in actuality, it hit 6 billion) with a peak world population of 2.6 billion
in 2100 (whereas many demographers expect world population to peak at 11 billion
around 2100).
However, when World War II happened and ended, the Babies Boomed worldwide.
Changes in sanitation, public health, and agriculture greatly reduced infant and child
mortality while extending the average life span. The Number One problem globally
suddenly became overpopulation. I believe it still is a major challenge, but people
who favor economic growth (and larger numbers of White people) over human and
environmental sustainability now are fretting not only about low fertility locally but
also about possible global depopulation by the end of the 21st Century.
In the 1990s, some American courts became aware of the racial chasm between
court officials and their “clients” in criminal proceedings. The former were largely
White and the latter disproportionately of color. So there was a movement towards
achieving greater diversity among the personnel of the court by educating and hiring
more Black and Hispanic lawyers, judges, and clerks. Strangely, alternative sugges-
tions for diversifying the kinds of people who appear in court instead—or as well—
somehow failed to win the day. But if “affirmative action” ever could play a role in
correcting racial imbalances, then surely applying it to decisions about who is appre-
hended and arrested by police and who is sentenced to prison by judges seems perfect,
as Wendell Bell pointed out some time ago. Blacks don’t commit commensurately
more crimes than Whites but Blacks are overwhelmingly more likely to be appre-
hended, arrested, convicted, and imprisoned than are Whites. There is no way the
enormous differences between Black and White statistics here are due to chance, Bell
showed. It must be due to something else—personal and systemic racism, perhaps.
Correct the imbalance through the honest application of affirmative action criteria at
each step and you will likely end up with a more representative sample of criminals
in prison. If young Black men are overrepresented and old White women are vastly
underrepresented, for example, the sentencing judge should release or parole young
Black men and incarcerate old White women (Bell 1983).
Some time ago I was asked to work with several US State judiciaries on “diver-
sity” and other issues in various “Future and the Courts” projects. I recall attending a
workshop of the Wisconsin judiciary in Milwaukee. Before the formal meeting began
I suggested that prior to looking forward, we look backward. In the 1990s, racial or
ethnic friction in Milwaukee was largely between Blacks and Whites, I was told,
whereas 100 years earlier it had been somewhat between “Indians” and Whites, and
Blacks and Whites, but mainly between German Catholics and Polish Catholics, and
between Catholics and Protestants, largely over the scandalous outrage of intermar-
riages—apparently nonissues now. Might not a similar change in the manifestation
of racism appear in the future, I inquired? Don’t focus on Blacks and White alone, I
urged. What’s next in racism or other forms of seclusion?
People of color aren’t naturally progressive Democrats. As their social and
economic status changes, so might their ideologies and voting behavior. The
vanishing of Whites most certainly does not guarantee that progressive policies will
flourish. Racism may persist, but the prime victims of racism often change signifi-
cantly over time. Not long ago in the US, Irish and Italians were regarded as Colored
3.1 Beyond Identity 25

People, the riff-raff of slum gangs and grifters, despised by the original noble White
Anglo-Saxon “settlers”. Now Irish and Italians have dissolved into the White estab-
lishment trying to stem the flood of raping immigrants and predatory Blacks. To be
sure, some racist, ethnic, and cultural conflicts persist over millennia, such as Jews
versus Christians versus Muslims versus Hindus, but partly because these religions
base their identity largely on indelible conflicts that allegedly happened long, long
ago, instead of on seeking to create mutually preferred futures.
If we don’t work to avoid it, not only will other old forms of racism continue
but also new targets of racial and cultural conflicts will arise. Some of us have been
tracking racism against robots and other mobile artilects for many years. This may
seem to some an irresponsibly-crazy thing to worry about, but the fear and hate
humans manifest against artilects is rising, and more of us need to address it now.
For the sake of harmonious and just futures, we must move beyond identity, from
being to becoming.

3.1 Beyond Identity

It is quite clear that the change I am seeking is a long-range goal that will not occur
overnight, and certainly not by law, fiat, or force. If it emerges and thrives it will be
the result of a long, patient process, learning as we go along, from initial actions that
lead to others and then still others, with set-backs expected, and errors and excesses
corrected.
One of the first steps to be taken is to begin to achieve a balance of emphasis
between our concern with the past, present, and futures. While it is necessary for
us to seek honesty and atonement for past insults while striving to eliminate those
in the present, we should even now also place equal emphasis on considering and
exploring future identities—by, among other ways, beginning to “touch fingertips”
with future generations.
In a brilliant essay, “To Hold the Grief & the Growth: On Crip Ecologies,” Kay
Ulanday Barrett writes, “if we were to imagine beyond, we could connect ourselves
to our ancestral roots, and really listen, and really give our care in the ways that we
are able, what a beauty and what a bounty that would be” (Barrett 2022: 319–320),
Someone at Poetry was so impressed with this statement that it was printed and
included separately on a large card mailed with the magazine.
Well, yes, but in the magazine itself, Barrett immediately follows this familiar
sentiment with a quotation: “The day will come when crip world will be the only
world that survived. Crips will do anything to survive and that’s what they want to
deny when they kill us … our will to live is greater than your ability to get rid of us.”
—Maria R. Palacios, Sins Invalid, “We Love Like Barnacles”. (Barrett 2022: 320.
Italics in original).
Ah yes, that is the point—to live our lives for the sake of future lives; to focus not
too much on the past or one’s condition in the present but rather on the obligations
26 3 The Big Three: Class, Gender, Race

we living owe to those yet to be born whose lives we influence by the way we live
our lives today.
By definition, “future generations” are not our own children. Future generations
are not living now in the present. They are always becoming. They are yet to be. But
since we do inevitably act in ways that impact their lives, we have a profound and
confounding ethical obligation to think about how our daily behavior may impact
them, and thus we should strive to act responsibly so that future generations will
desire to thank rather than chastise us for doing our best to act positively on their
behalf, or not.
Futures studies is not about “predicting” “THE” “Future”. It is about considering
alternative futures and envisioning and striving to create and experience preferred
futures, continuously trying out new alternatives and preferences as lessons are
learned as time goes by.
In order to help bring a carefully articulated preferred future into reality, one needs
to address three things—(1) Identify processes that are moving in the direction of
our preferred future that we can utilize and strengthen; (2) Identify processes that are
opposed to our preferred future that we can try to change, overcome, neutralize, or
recruit; (3) Identify new processes that need to be invented, tested, and used in order
to move forward.

References

Barrett, Kay Ulanday. 2022. To hold the grief & the growth: On Crip ecologies. Poetry Magazine,
January.
Bell, Wendell. 1983. Bias, probability, and prison populations: A future for affirmative action?
Futurics 7 (1): 18–25.
Pearl, Raymond. 1939. The natural history of population. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chapter 4
Pioneers Towards Fluid Identities

Abstract A summary of the work of people in the US especially who show in

their own lives how to move beyond identities others laid on them to those they
prefer—feminist, Black, Confucian, human becomings.

Keywords Asian · Authentic · Becoming · Childhood · Christian · Confucian ·

Ethnicity · Feminists · Filial piety · Golden rule · Hawaiian · Human · Identity ·
Interracial · Latinx · Passing · Race

The heroic, dangerous, inspiring examples of many people who resist assigned iden-
tities and seek new ones has emboldened me to move beyond my own experiences
in order to encourage others to create future-oriented identities. This quest is often
framed as throwing off identities that they have been expected or required to embrace
so that their true identities can live and breathe. Through their lives they show that
this can be done, but they also make clear that this is difficult, perilous, contentious,
dynamic business indeed, with many initial paths tested, rejected, redefined often
very significantly. I am more interested in people who are exploring novel identi-
ties—and perpetually fluid identities as well—perhaps recognizing that in a wildly
weirding world, fluid identities may best slip-slide through the cracks towards life.
They are vanguards from whom we can learn, I believe.

4.1 Feminists

In many ways, women set the stage and carried out roles and actions that we will
see replicated as other groups come to struggle with defining and fulfilling their
identities.
It is common to say that female identity went through four waves:
1. Obtaining for women the right to vote as well as some other political actions in
the late 19th/early 20th Centuries.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 27

J. Dator, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds,
Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_4
28 4 Pioneers Towards Fluid Identities

2. Expanding the range of women’s rights such as equal pay for equal work, safe
and legal abortion, control of their sexuality, and protection against domestic
violence, from the 1960s.
3. Further expanding the range of identity and meaning greatly during the 1990s,
challenging conventional assumptions of what a woman is, and endeavoring to
include issues of race, class, as well as various sexual orientations equally within
the feminist sphere.
4. The fourth wave currently is intensely action-oriented while endeavoring to
be inclusive of all possible marginalized women and post-women, as the label
LGBTQIA+ manifests.
In an article titled, “Feminist theory today,” a treasured colleague, Kathy Ferguson,
points out three features of feminist theory now: It is “reliably suspicious of dualistic
thinking”; it is “generally oriented toward fluid processes of emergence rather than
static entities in one-way cause-and-effect relationships’” and it is “a political as
well as an intellectual enterprise. It is rooted in and responsible to movements for
equality, freedom, and justice.”
“Feminist theory,” she says, “has generally followed Beauvoir’s insight that we
are not born, but rather we become, women.” This creates a dilemma: “To challenge
oppressive power relations, we have to develop our voices. But who are ‘we’? For
identity-oriented feminisms, the enemy has been essentialism, sometimes to the
point that it becomes difficult to speak of biology at all, lest we reinvoke patriarchal
‘biology is destiny’ bromides.” “Yet, articulating a voice requires attention to bodies
and locations that are unavoidably material” (Ferguson 2017: 78).
Feminist theory’s orientation “toward fluid processes of emergence rather than
static entities” is of special importance to my concerns about identity.
Even more directly, Allison Weir persuasively shows that identity is “a source
of individual and collective meaning, that enables one to be oneself.” But it also is
“a source of oppressive constraint, …an obstacle to self-creation and a barrier to
freedom” (Weir 2009: 334). Her goal is to reconcile these two, and she does so by
arguing that “the quest for freedom and the quest for meaning can be balanced only
through a conception of freedom in relationship” (Weir 2009: 335). She agrees with
Taylor “that we are essentially dialogical beings. We define our identities through
relationships with (and struggles against) others—and ourselves.” But there is a big
danger here: “This is a communitarian ideal, and it can be a conservative one: it
can focus on a tradition, on preserving a past.” This “opens us to the danger of
entrapment by labels and categories—and worse, by labels and categories not of our
own invention, imposed on us by others” (Weir 2013: 1). Nonetheless, she maintains
that “the focus on connection can also be an orientation to a future: to alternative,
resistant identities, to the creation of new defining communities, to an ideal future,
a better, more meaningful life, in a better world” (Weir 2009: 544). We should
come to “an understanding of ourselves as active participants in the constitution of
our identities, and to an understanding of practices of identification as practices of
freedom…of what I call transformative identifications” Weir 2013: 4). “It becomes
possible to move beyond the dichotomy of preservation of the past and orientation
4.2 Confucian Human Becomings 29

to the future with a conception of identity in connection to past and future, through
reinterpretive preservation and transformative identification” (Weir 2013: 17).

4.2 Confucian Human Becomings

Roger Ames, Humanities Chair Professor in the Department of Philosophy of Peking

University, China, has written an extraordinary book marshaling strong evidence
from a lifetime of scholarly research that I believe supports the positions I am exam-
ining here as well. In it, he “argues that the Confucian tradition—particularly the
Confucian conception of relationally-constituted persons as ‘human becomings’—
has an important contribution to make…as we struggle to resolve our current human
predicament” (Ames 2021:14). To the extent our overwhelming economic, polit-
ical, social, and especially environmental challenges are the consequence of humans
acting in accordance with ideas about humans, nature, and their interrelationship
that derive from the classical Greeks onward, they cannot be resolved within the
western paradigm itself. Ames explains, the “most fundamental difference between
these two contrasting classical cosmologies is thus the prominence of ‘substance’ as
ontological ground in the classical Greek tradition, and the fluid ‘process’ orienta-
tion of the classical Chinese narrative, defining us as either discrete human ‘beings’
or as eventful human ‘becomings,’ respectively. A corollary to the privileging of a
formal, unchanging reality over the flux of appearances in the dominant classical
Western worldview is the tendency to privilege the discrete and quantitative over the
continuous and qualitative” (Ames 2021: 368).
This distinction, and a persistent misunderstanding in the west of the Confucian
tradition as an oppressive and rigid set of obligations between hierarchically-aligned
individuals, is in part because the Confucian texts were originally translated by
Christians who forced Confucian ideas into Christian tropes, Ames points out. This
distortion has been perpetuated because many East Asian scholars in the west first
learn Confucianism from Christianized sources that cloud their understanding even if
they subsequently learn to read the original Chinese documents. “Confucian culture
properly understood celebrates the relational values of deference and interdepen-
dence; it understands persons as constitutively embedded in and nurtured by unique,
transactional patterns of relations. The question is whether a contemporary Confu-
cian ethic that locates moral conduct within a thick and richly textured pattern of
family, community, and natural relations can be a force for challenging and possibly
changing the world geopolitical and cultural order” (Ames 2021: 401). This question
seems to me to be very close to what Kathy Ferguson and Alison Weir were saying
about freedom within interrelationships a few paragraphs above.
When Confucius’s follower Zigong asked if there is a single word that captures
the essence of how one should live, Confucius replied, “deference” (shu 恕), but
this is not deference in the most common western sense. Rather, it means literally
“putting oneself in the other’s place” (Ames 2021: 27). Shu is understood in the sense
of the “Negative Golden Rule”: “do not impose on others what you yourself do not
30 4 Pioneers Towards Fluid Identities

want.” The western version typically states, positively, “Do unto other as you would
have them do unto you.”
Ames says that the “’negative” version is negative “because it does not begin from
the assumption that there is some objective and universal standard that can serve as
warrant for ‘doing unto others as you would have them do to you.’ Indeed, to begin
from the presumption that there is such a standard and that one has privileged access
to it—and furthermore on that basis to assume that one knows the right thing to do to
someone else—is at least condescending if not disrespectful. Instead, by assuming
the negative version of the Golden Rule, the task remains open and provisional,
allowing that deliberation on how to best grow the relationship with this person can
only be pursued through a careful consideration of the needs of this specific person
within the possibilities of these specific circumstances” (Ames 2021: 341).
Yes! Absolutely right—“this person within these possibilities within these
circumstances.” Not generalized to any and all. Yes!
I was blown away when I read this passage because years earlier, long before I
knew this aspect of Ames’ work, I had made the same argument while writing about
the ethical obligations present generations have to future generations (Kim and Dator
1999). The western Golden Rule made sense for millennia in small, homogeneous,
face-to-face communities, where “everyone” agreed on the rules, and, more impor-
tantly, if I hit you, then you (and your family and friends) could and probably would
hit me—which I (and my family) did not want. Deeply instilling the positive Golden
Rule made complete sense as a way of keeping a village in peace and harmony.
In the globalized but culturally fragmented world we live in now, not everyone
has the same preferences. Indeed what is good—or at least not bad—in one culture
may be totally forbidden in another. Thus, I said, we must spend some time in careful
conversation when we encounter people we do not know in order to learn how to treat
them as they wish to be treated. The new global Golden Rule, I suggested should
read: “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them”—perhaps even if it
strains your own sense of proper behavior.
However there was another big difference for many of us in the 20th and 21st
Centuries. In a village, everyone could in fact “get back” at everyone else if they
were treated disrespectfully. Not in the globalized world. More seriously yet, some
groups and nations—let’s say the US—have the military and technological ability,
coupled with arrogance and ignorance, so that they have very successfully been able
to “do unto others” who are powerless to do back unto them. Until they did—which
was the (unlearned) lesson of September 11, 2001 when a group of people from places
Americans had been doing unto without restraint suddenly struck back at us with
rapier-like finesse and fury, and America and the world changed forever, though not
for the better; instead Americans intensified our aggressive attacks on Others within
as well as without, as an all-points War on Terror.
The situation with future generations is still more unfair. Unlike most of human
history, we now living can and do live our lives in ways that will significantly impact
the lives of future generations. And we don’t give them a thought when we act. “Why
should we?” we may ask. “What has posterity ever done for me”? Nothing, and they
4.3 No Filial Piety 31

cannot “get back” at us to thank us for our consideration or to chastise us for our
gross selfishness.
This is yet another reason for moving beyond human beings to human becomings
that touch finger tips with all becomings before and as they become.

4.3 No Filial Piety

One bone I pick with Ames and Weir is the importance they give to the family as
the core locus of all interrelationships. I have asked Ames what he means by “the
family” and his replies are not satisfying to me. He refers to the historical, biological,
nuclear and extended family systems. While at the present time we may not have
anything better, it is very clear to me that many families are dysfunctional all the
time and that most are dysfunctional some of the time—often precisely when they
are needed most.
It should go without saying that a person, like myself, with no father and not
much in the way of a family, has no sense of filial piety whatsoever—whether as
something to give or to receive. But even if I had the best father and the most normal
family in the world, whatever that might be, I think I would still feel the way I do. I
don’t think I am the only child in the world who was not only unwanted but whose
very presence added unwelcomed pressure and burden on several stressed adults at
a particularly stressful time—in my case, the Great Depression and World War II.
Many, maybe most, pregnancies are the by product of other intentions—lust,
love, vengeance, violence, duty, habit. While some women may intentionally become
pregnant, many of them may wonder whether that was such a good idea when the
expectations of their fanciful intentionality are dashed against the rocks of lived
reality. Immediately after the dangers and agony of birth itself come, at best, days
and nights spent with the wailing and gnashing of gums; of frustration, filth, anxiety.
From about age five to twelve, there may be tender, touching, even golden moments
of adventure, wonder, and discovery. But then come the teenage years that scar so
many who suffer through them whether as subject or object. Many do not survive. If
you want to wallow in a world of perpetual guilt and regret, have a child die before
you do.
I wonder if it is any different for those who adopt or “artificially” conceive chil-
dren—are they any more pleased with the lives, misfortunes, and deaths of their
decisions? Are adopted or decanted children more consistently loving and loved,
any less likely to be abused and abusers? And why do such children often search for
their “real” birth mother or sperm donator? How could that possibly matter except as
an insult to those who did choose to care and nurture them, however well or poorly,
though thick and thin?
Where is the child who chose to be born? Who begged and bargained to be joined
in an indelible bond of succor and sacrifice? Why should I feel anything more special
towards my mother and father than towards any of the other numerous people who
have helped me survive and thrive? Sure, they may have taken care of me even though
32 4 Pioneers Towards Fluid Identities

I offered scant words of thanks in return. Many people live in a world of fragmented
nuclear families in which biological progenitors and their sometime mates are given
obligations that are far greater than they deserve or can reasonably be expected to
fulfill—they too are often young, immature, selfish babies themselves, struggling
to figure out with little support how to survive, much less grow up. How can they
be expected to pay proper attention to their accidental and incidental issue? Aside
from episodes of care and clinging, parents are more likely to be driven to take pay
attention to their offspring, however sprung, from the pressure of cultural mores,
morals, or legal requirements than out of love. I appreciate what they do—in my
case they did more and better than any three women could have been expected to
do—but they no more solicited shows of love on my part than they felt obliged to
show me.
“Oh, my pa-pa, to me he was so wonderful,” sang Eddie Fisher. Could be. Good
for him. I wouldn’t be knowing, or caring.
“What’s love got to do with it?” Tina Turner rebutted. “What’s love but a second-
hand emotion” indeed? One reason we are bombarded with love songs is that love is
so deeply unnatural, so fleeting, so flawed, so fanciful that we have to have paeans to
its magic pounded into our brains. Eros, phila, storge, agape—down the emotional
sluiceway they flush from the easiest to feel and act on (indeed, the hardest to repress)
to the hardest to imagine much less faithfully to express.

4.4 Childhood

The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken.
The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely
children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused.
That this pattern has not previously been noticed by historians is because serious history has
long been considered a record of public not private events. Historians have concentrated so
much on the noisy sandbox of history, with its fantastic castles and magnificent battles, that
they have generally ignored what is going on in the homes around the playground. And where
historians usually look to the sandbox battles of yesterday for the causes of those today, we
instead ask how each generation of parents and children creates those issues which are later
acted out in the arena of public life (deMause 1974: 1).

Even though Lloyd deMause offers some evidence that some portions of humanity
have improved childrearing practices somewhat over the last century (and there has
been substantial amelioration in the laws of many countries since deMause wrote),
there is good reason to believe that childhood traumas still are a root reason behind the
identities and actions of national leaders as well as ordinary people today, most vividly
some recent ones—invading innocent countries, craving endless money, begging
worshipful adoration, pretending to be strong in order to prove themselves to daddy.
I was a university professor all my professional life, and my office was frequently
visited by men and women who blamed their parents for their problems. I don’t recall
many lavishing praise on their parents for their childrearing skills. Divorce rates are
4.4 Childhood 33

still high and the proportion of people who refuse to marry at all is higher still. The
“typical” family in the US is a single woman with two or more children, though
“families” of a single person are increasing in frequency too.
It is thus our opportunity and duty to help see that the lives of all children in
the futures can be even better by enabling them to form their identity not based on
the past, and certainly not dependent on any special obligations to their biological
family, by co-creating their individual and collective futures.
While deMause’s view certainly has its critics, it has learned supporters as well.
Ashis Nandy, of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi,
India, and a harsh critic of much about western society, agreed with deMause that “the
tradition of child care is indeed the tradition of neglect, torture and infanticide. So-
called parental care and education have often been a cover for wide-spread social and
psychological exploitation of children.” The evidence does “suggest that mankind
has progressed towards better treatment of children and that modern societies have
been kinder to children than traditional societies” (Nandy 1984).
Goal Number 9 of the 2002 UN resolution on a “World Fit for Children” states:
Children and adolescents are resourceful citizens capable of helping to build a better future
for all. We must respect their right to express themselves and to participate in all matters
affecting them, in accordance with their age and maturity.

This goal is also a hallmark of deMause’s conclusions. DeMause says that there have
been six eras of child care throughout history. We have only recently moved into the
sixth era, which he calls the “helping mode”:
The helping mode involves the proposition that the child knows better than the parent what
it needs at each stage of its life, and fully involves both parents in the child’s life as they
work to empathize with and fulfill its expanding and particular needs. There is no attempt at
all to discipline or form ’habits’. Children are neither struck nor scolded, and are apologized
to if yelled at under stress. This helping mode involves an enormous amount of time, energy
and discussion on the part of both parents, especially in the first six years, for helping a
child reach its daily goals means continually responding to it, playing with it, tolerating its
regressions, being its servant rather than the other way around, interpreting its emotional
conflicts, and providing the objects specific to its evolving interests. Few parents have yet
consistently attempted this kind of child care (deMause 1974: 52–53).

I believe that since deMause wrote these words there has indeed been a significant
change in childhood and parenthood practices within some families (though not
in others) along the lines he prophesized. These changes have been mandated by
substantial modifications in family law in some parts of the world. The adage, “spare
the rod and spoil the child” that I heard and saw enacted repeatedly in my childhood
(though never on me), is now rightly judged child abuse. The rod wielders may have
to pay for it in courts of law.
You may be shrieking and pulling your hair out by this time. I leave it to you
to decide whether or not we are surrounded by spoiled adults as a consequence of
just this kind of cockamamie balderdash. The complaints I hear from older genera-
tions about Millennials and Gen Xers suggest they might have profited from some
measured lashes on bare buttocks. I disagree. I’ll take a planet full of spoiled brats
34 4 Pioneers Towards Fluid Identities

anytime over a planet ruled by child-abused psychopaths, such as most politicians

and many CEOs seem to be (Lasswell 1930/1986).

4.5 Race and Ethnicity

Peter Apo asked “How should we define Hawaiian in the 21st Century?” (Apo 2021).
He pointed out that “Hawaiian” is an English and not a Hawaiian word. It originally
designated citizens, without regard to their ethnicity, of the nation called Hawaii that
was created between 1782 and 1810 by the forceful unification of all the islands of the
archipelago by Kamehameha I. The indigenous population of the Hawaiian Islands
in 1776 may have been as small as 200,000 or as large as 800,000 when the British
explorer Captain James Cook first encountered them. However, by 1900, through
direct violence, imported disease, and deculturalization, the native population was
reduced to fewer than 40,000. The number of citizens of the US State of Hawaii with
any Hawaiian blood has grown over the years, but they are still very much a minority
of perhaps 12% among the total population. Some estimates say that there are only
about 8000 “pure” Hawaiians.
It is worthwhile commenting here that in regards to “Hawaiian” as an identity
ascribed to them by others rather than one used by the indigenous people of Hawaii
to identify themselves, many refer to themselves as the Kanaka Maoli which can
be understood simply to mean “a human being” or “people of the land”. Once the
term Kanaka was used disparagingly but many native Hawaiians today use it as a
term of pride. In a review of two books about the Aztecs, J. H. Elliott comments,
“Both authors have difficulties not only with ‘empire’ but also with ‘Aztec’, which is
a highly questionable term. The inhabitants of Tenochtitlan and surrounding regions
that recognized their dominance were technically Mexica, but as far as is known,
the Mexica, along with other peoples of central Mexico, never identified hemselves
as ‘Aztecs’. Irrespective of their geographical location and political status, each
ethnic or social group referred to itself when dealing with outsides and others as
‘we people here.’ To avoid inconvenience and make the nature of their topic clear to
nonspecialists, Berdan and Townsend tend to fall back, with obvious misgiving, on
‘Aztec’” (Elliott 2021: 32). This may be true of all first people almost everywhere.
Apo says that what it means to be a Hawaiian has evolved over the years and at
the present time is signified by one or more of the following indicators: “Hawaiian
by ancestry” in two categories—(1) those with 50% Hawaiian blood quantum who
qualify by law to apply for certain Hawaiian homestead land, and (2) those with any
amount of Hawaiian blood quantum that qualifies them for certain federal entitlement
programs. Because of quirks in their enabling legislation, the first group is designated
“native Hawaiians” and the second is designated “Native Hawaiians”. Apo says a
second indicator of being Hawaiian is “by what you look like”—once a very clear
indicator, but, because of genocide and the frequency of ethnic out-marriage, not
at all clear now in many instances. “Hawaiian by cultural credentials” applies to a
very small group of people with no Hawaiian blood who have more than mastered
4.6 “Passing”: Then, Now, Tomorrow 35

the language and arts in ways that contribute to the preservation, understanding, and
spread of Hawaiian language and culture. “Hawaiians by lifestyle” designates a larger
group of people—many from families that have lived in Hawaii for generations—
who engage in contemporary Hawaiian cultural practices. Finally, Apo says, are
“Hawaiians by living Aloha”: “Aloha is a verb. Aloha is to live Hawaiian by taking
responsibility for each other, for all living things, for our places, for ensuring a life
of peace, dignity and hope for the people of Hawaii and the future of our children.”
Most importantly for my focus here is Apo’s statement, “It’s my belief that it is
not for others to define you. You are who you believe you are.” I would guess that
many Hawaiians by any definition reject that statement, perhaps calling it “cultural
appropriation” (thus perhaps rejecting “Hawaiians by lifestyle” as well). But it may
well be a more futures-oriented statement than even Apo imagines.

4.6 “Passing”: Then, Now, Tomorrow

One summer in the early 1970s, I taught a futures class for high school civics teachers
in Hawaii. I used the occasion to prepare a questionnaire about the futures with the
teachers for them to administer to their classes in the fall. While the substantive
results were unexceptional, I was stunned by the replies certain students gave to the
routine question about their race. Specifically, the answers given by the students from
Kamehameha Schools, where one must be a native Hawaiian to be admitted to the
school.
In fact, most students at Kamehameha did not say they were Hawaiian, but chose
some other ethnicity that they felt better defined them.
However, students from the public schools of Waianae overwhelmingly said they
were Hawaiian.
I feel certain that if I were to administer a similar questionnaire to students at
Kamehameha now (not using the term “race” but perhaps “ethnicity”), all would
say they were Hawaiian without hesitation. The change I believe is striking perhaps
because of cultural pride, affirmative action, and financial assistance, none of which
existed for most young Hawaiians in the 1970s.
America has a long history not only of people of color who resist assimilation
into a dominant White culture, but also of people to the contrary who try to “pass”
as White, even though they have little “White blood” and were born or raised in
nonWhite communities. Some of America’s race laws once declared that anyone with
one drop of “Negro blood” was Negro (which always struck me more as affirming
the overwhelming potency of Black people compared to Whites than evidence of
White superiority).
Henry Louis Gates, Jr, “White Like Me” discusses Anatole Broyard who desper-
ately wanted to be a famous writer, not a black writer. He was born black into a
family that was identified as black and identified itself as black. He became White
by denying, in his words, all the evidence “conspiring to reduce him to an identity
that other people had invented and he had no say in”. However, Gates asserts that
36 4 Pioneers Towards Fluid Identities

“In a system where Whiteness is the default, racelessness is never a possibility. You
cannot opt out; you can only opt in”. Nonetheless “in an essay entitled ‘Growing Up
Irrational,’ Anatole Broyard wrote, ‘I descended from my mother and father. I was
extracted from them.’ His parents were ‘a conspiracy, a plot against society,’ as he
saw it, but also a source of profound embarrassment” (Gates 1996).
But the tables recently have been turned. Several prominent people proclaiming
themselves to be Black or Native Americans have been revealed to be entirely White
and accused of living a life of lies and misappropriation. Rachel Doležal presented
herself as a Black woman who became the local N.A.A.C.P. president in Spokane,
Washington, and an instructor in the Africana Studies program at Eastern Washington
University. She published a memoir, “In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black
and White World” (Doležal 2017).
Sarah Viren, “The Native Scholar who wasn’t”, tells a similar story about Jessica
Kung, a historian and an American Jew who chose to live her life as a Black Latina
and, then, in considerable detail, Viren discusses the example of Andrea Smith, a
White woman who positioned herself as an Oklahoma Cherokee, building a signifi-
cant reputation as a highly-respected teacher, scholar, author, and activist, specifically
in defense of Native American culture and people. She called out people who appro-
priated Indian imagery and artifacts, especially those falsely claiming actually to
be a Native American. Smith attacked White feminists who longed to identify with
oppressed native culture, adding “Of course, white ‘feminists’ want to become only
partly Indian. They do not want to be a part of our struggles for survival against
genocide, and they do not want to fight for treaty rights or an end to substance abuse
or sterilization abuse,” Smith wrote in Ms Magazine in 1991. Smith became, “an icon
of Native American feminism,” and aligned herself with many of the most famous
feminist and native scholars.
However doubts about her authenticity were raised almost from the beginning, and
by 2006 her authenticity was being very seriously challenged. Nothing has dethroned
her. Even though she did not produce any evidence of being enrolled in a tribe, or
of having Native American parents or grandparents, she continues to teach, write,
and speak for indigenous communities. And she continues to identify publicly and
proudly as Cherokee even though it is clear that, by the current rules of the game,
she is not.
Viren mentions briefly also the case of Ward Churchill in the mid 2000s whose
story is similar to that of Smith, including still insisting his Native American authen-
ticity. She quotes John Stevenson, a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
as saying “If Ward proved anything, he proved that if you wanted to say you were
XYZ, the way you do it is keep saying that and don’t apologize.”
By September 2020, “a series of white people who had been masquerading in
their fields over the years as Black, Latino or Indigenous—six in academia alone
by the year’s end”—were outed. Viren discusses them briefly, and is generously
nonjudgmental. Why not, if identity is indeed a social construct and not something
written indelibly in genes or genealogy? Rather, “the meaning and the consequences
of our individual racial identities are largely determined by the collective” (Viren
2021).
4.6 “Passing”: Then, Now, Tomorrow 37

But what collective? Or what members of the collective are decisive? In the case
of “Andrea Smith, the majority of ‘others’ still saw her as Cherokee—even though
Cherokee officials and some Native scholars said she wasn’t”.
Rebecca Tuvel wrote a thoughtful and courageous piece, “In Defense of Transra-
cialism” (Tuvel 2017) that sought to apply lessons learned from gender identity to
the Doležal controversy. Acknowledging an intellectual debt to Susan Stryker and
Sally Haslanger, Tuvel argued that “since we should accept transgender individuals’
decisions to change sexes, we should also accept transracial individuals’ decisions to
change races.” “[I]f some individuals genuinely feel like or identify as a members of
a race other than the one assigned to them at birth…we should accept their decision
to change races.”
To say that her position provoked a great deal of anger and anguish is to put it
mildly. An issue of the journal Philosophy Today [62(1) 2018] was devoted to arti-
cles critical of it. In her rebuttal she wrote, “although I knew my article’s thesis was
controversial, I could not have anticipated the response that ensued. Amidst online
condemnation of my article, over 800 academics signed a letter calling for its retrac-
tion. Hypatia’s associate editorial board subsequently apologized for its publication.
Feminist colleagues and academics discussed and speculated about various aspects
of my identity online, attacked me personally, and accused me of violence. I was
called ‘racist,’ ‘transphobic,’ a ‘TERF,’ a ‘disgusting person,’ ‘Becky,’ and ‘Rebecky
Tuvel’” (Tuvel 2017: 74).
In the rest of her rebuttal, Tuvel offers what appear to me to be stout defenses of
her position, and concludes, “I realize that my proposal would modify the way we
currently understand race, but I see it as an ameliorative proposal that could help
pave the way toward a more accepting and inclusive society” (Tuvel 2017: 84). I
agree.
Tuvel’s position was expanded and extended by Ann Morning, “Kaleidoscope:
contested identities and new forms of race membership” (Morning 2018): “This
article argues that in the early-twenty-first century, claims of race-group membership
are being complicated by technological developments in genetics and in cosmetics,
as well as by new respect for subjective self-identification. As a result, there are
more paths than ever to claiming and demonstrating racial belonging. In particular, I
suggest that four new types of race-group member are emerging: genetic, cosmetic,
emotive, and constructed [emphasis added]. Should these types come to be widely
accepted as genuine race members, racial groups will become more heterogeneous,
resembling kaleidoscopic arrays of core and peripheral members who differ in terms
of how many qualifications for belonging they may legitimately claim.” Morning
gives extensive examples of and consideration to each of the four new types of
race-group membership.
Interracial marriages are more common in the US now than they used to be,
but are still by no means widely accepted, yet. A Pew Research Report for 2017
began, “In 1967, when miscegenation laws were overturned in the United States,
3% of all newlyweds were married to someone of a different race or ethnicity. Since
then, intermarriage rates have steadily climbed. By 1980, the share of intermarried
newlyweds had about doubled to 7%. And by 2015 the number had risen to 17%.”
38 4 Pioneers Towards Fluid Identities

Census data shows that a significant numbers of Americans change their reported
membership from census to census, and that the furor surrounding Doležal would
have been a quite different issue in parts of Brazil which is far more racially diverse
than is the US. Morning quotes Chinyere Osuji: “[In Brazil] I encountered several
whites married to blacks whom everyone knew as white, who had white physical
characteristics, yet found their own white identity problematic. They did not identify
with white people. Several of these whites talked about the vibrancy of black cultural
expressions that spoke to them and denigrated the discrimination against people with
darker hues. White wives spoke to me about their love of black hairdos (including
my own short dreadlocks) and Africa. They also loved black men.” “If Doležal lived
in Brazil, Osuji argues, her feelings and self-identification would be unremarkable;
she would be ‘just another frustrated black woman’”, Morning comments (Morning
2018: 1065). Indeed, that is true in many parts of the world other than Brazil. It is
the US and a few similar countries that are excessively obsessed with race and racial
purity.
Nonetheless, Morning cites evidence from studies of young biracial Black/White
persons in the US “as holding what they called ‘transcendent’ racial identities.”
“These individuals did not personally use race as a construct to understand the social
world or their relative place in it. This does not mean they claimed ‘colour-blindness’
in some simplistic fashion; these interviewees were well aware of the racial categories
in use around them, and some even reported experiences with racial discrimination.
However, they understood racial labels as ‘biologically baseless’ creations imposed
on them by society, rather than as springing from their own characteristics or integral
to their sense of self” (Morning 2018: 1066).
“Can there be authentic and inauthentic race identities? If so, how can we tell
which is which? My argument is not that there can be no consideration of what is
genuine when it comes to race, or even of what is ‘true’ in terms of widespread
social consensus. But it requires thinking very hard about what would constitute
racial authenticity and veracity, rather than assuming it to be obvious—let alone that
there are clearcut racial in-groups and out-groups, undergirded by fixed identities,”
Morning concludes (Morning 2018: 1069). These are questions central to my quest
as well and relevant to all identities, not just race, or gender.
According to Louis Chude-Sokei, Ijeoma Oluo says she “was about 10 when
I found out that my whole life I’d been saying my name wrong. A friend of my
father’s—an ‘uncle’—had come to town, and my white mom had dressed us up for
the occasion in traditional Nigerian dress. My top and wrap skirt were of a gorgeous
orange- and red-printed fabric, hand-sewn by a woman from my father’s village in
Rivers State. But when this uncle asked me my name, I embarrassed myself and
my family by mispronouncing it ‘Joma.’ ‘That is not your name,’ he replied. ‘Your
name is Ijeoma. You have to know how to say your name. It is a very good Nigerian
name.’ Suddenly my clothing felt tight and uncomfortable, as if my uncle could see
that none of this—the clothing or the name—fit me. To this day, when people ask
me how to pronounce my name, part of me knows that no matter how much I’ve
practiced, I still don’t say it right. It is a good Nigerian name, and my father was a
4.6 “Passing”: Then, Now, Tomorrow 39

good Nigerian, while I am floating in this space just outside” (Chude-Sokei 2021:
16).
Alan Gilbert discussed Tommy Pico’s poetry in “Refuse to settle”. In “The nature
poem”, Pico writes, “I’m a weirdo NDN faggot” and “I’M FROM THE KUMEYAAY
NATION, but I don’t want to be an identity or a belief or a feedbag. I wanna b/me,”
with, inserts Gilbert, the freedom “of creating an identity as much as having one
imposed, of being able to slip away”. Gilbert then quotes Gloria Anzaldúa who writes
of “border people, especially artists, [who] live in a state of ‘nepantla’…the Náhuatl
word for an in-between state, that uncertain terrain one crosses when moving from one
place to another, when changing from one class, race, or sexual position to another,
when traveling from the present identity into a new identity.” Later, Anzaldúa writes
of the “New Mestiza Nation” where “different elements in pluralized identities are
emphasized depending on the context; in turn, the fluidity of identity puts categories
and labels in flux—and at risk” (Gilbert 2020).
For years, many people in the US who were identified as Hispanic were staunch,
dependable Democrats. Recently certain people in Florida who had fled Castro’s
Cuba surprised many analysts by turning out for Trump. The term “Latinx” was
invented to describe both groups. However, Thomas Chatterton Williams quotes
Ruben Gallego as objecting, “When [Latinx] is used I feel someone is taking away
some of my culture.” “Instead of trying to understand my culture they decided to
change it to fit their perspective.” “In my own experience, whenever I’ve tried to
make the point that racial groups are not and cannot possibly be monolithic, I’ve
been accused (often by white progressives) of proximity to whiteness, of having lost
touch with authentic marginalized reality. In that case, there seem to be significant
numbers of black, Latino, and Asian voters who have lost touch alongside me”
(Williams 2021).
Recently, Anti-Asian rhetoric and violence has increased in the US, and yet how
to identify the recipients of the hate is problematic (including the term I just used,
“Asian”). Emily Couch shows how problematic it can be. “East Asian people did
not become as central to Western conceptions of race as Blackness, nor was there
an Asian equivalent of the one-drop rule in the United States that defined anyone
with any amount of African ancestry as Black. That creates further confusions over
mixed-race people; Blackness is often inherited in the United States, but “being
Asian” is a matter of fervent debate.” She notes that the 1900 Census listed the
ethnic categories as “white, Black, Chinese, Japanese, and American Indian” while
in “Britain, Asian on its own usually refers not to people of East Asian descent but
of South Asians—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.”
Couch states “I was adopted from China as a baby by white British and American
parents and have spent the majority of my life in primarily white spaces. I have no
connection to the Chinese diaspora in either the United States or the United Kingdom
and speak neither Mandarin nor Cantonese.” She adds that her life is by no means
rare, and that “My experience as a Chinese adoptee raised by middle-class white
British and American parents is different from that of a working-class Thai woman
who works in a takeout restaurant, which, in turn, is different from that of a financially
40 4 Pioneers Towards Fluid Identities

successful Indian American who works in Silicon Valley.” Nonetheless, “I am very

much not part of any ‘Asian community,’ yet I, too, experience anti-Asian racism.”
She concludes forlornly, “The insistent use of the term ‘Asian commu-
nity/communities’—no matter how benevolent the intent—reinforces this othering
of Asian people and disregards the experiences of people who do not, or cannot,
identify with this collective identity” (Couch 2021).
Sandi Tan, a Singaporean-American film maker, points out that “the very notion
of identifying as an Asian-American, a political term coined in the late 1960s that
encompasses a practically borderless stretch of peoples, can be of vague consequence.
‘I identify as me’” (Yu 2021).
Pat Mora wonders, in part,

Can I be the only me?

Our earth: so much beauty, hate,

goodness, greed.

“Study. Cool the climate,” advises my teacher.

“Grow peace.”

Can I be the only me,

become all my unique complexity? (Mora 2021)

In “The long awakening of Adrienne Rich”, Maggie Doherty, relying on Hilary

Holladay inquires, “Which of these women was the real Rich? The dutiful daughter,
the star undergrad, the excellent cook? Or the political poet who used every plat-
form she had—and she had many—to criticize violence in all its forms?” Doherty
adds that “Rich never felt she had a ‘definitive identity,’ and that ‘the absence of
a fully knowable self’—a ‘wound, in Holladay’s words—spurred her on, to both
self-discovery and creative success’.”
But then Doherty ends on what to me is a disappointing but all too common
note: “The search for the real Adrienne Rich is a tempting biographical task. But it
suggests a curious conception of the self, as something prior to and apart from the
social conditions that produce it. The ways one is raised and educated, the language
one learns, the stories to which one has access: all these create and constrict the self”
(Doherty 2020). It is exactly the concept of self (or identity) as something that arises
not only from “the ways one is raised and educated, the language one learns” but
also and primarily from the stories one makes up, the fantasies one imagines, the
journeys of exploration that one takes with others for an entire lifetime that is the
basis of my argument here.
In her review of Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri, Sigrid Nunez wrote, “The effect
of this upbringing on Lahiri was to make her feel less blessed by being multiculturally
enriched than disoriented, as if she were ‘from nowhere.’ She had two languages,
Bengali (her only language until the age of four) and English, but neither could be
called truly hers, for, as she puts it, she had not chosen one or the other; rather each
References 41

had been ‘imposed’ on her—an unusual way of seeing languages acquired naturally
in early life that some might find puzzling. After all, as there is no such thing as a
choice of mother tongue, there is no such thing as a choice of motherland, or for that
matter, of a mother. But does that mean they are imposed? Still, Lahiri yearned for
another language, one that would be unquestionably hers precisely because she had
chosen it.”
I of course find nothing “puzzling” in Lahiri’s feelings—but I do in Nunez’ puzzle-
ment. My answer to Nunez’ question at the end is, “yes”. They were imposed by others
on Lahiri as part of her (unchosen) identity. Lahiri—and everyone else—should be
enabled to “choose” her mother(s), and certainly her motherland!
After publishing four books, in English, to “immense critical and commercial
success,” Lahiri chose to write and publish her next in Italian, a language entirely
“foreign” to her that she had to learn for herself, with the title, In Alter Parole (In
Other Words) (Nunez 2021).
If one’s identity is closely bounded by one’s mother tongue, are all those who
write poems, songs, and stories in a “foreign language”—in English, for example—
engaging in verboten cultural appropriation?
The famous futurist Sohail Inayatullah, is a striking example of a human becoming
at home in many cultures, languages, and identities—past, present and futures. As he
makes clear, “The image of many selves in one does not necessarily mean, however,
a commodified spatially shallow self. There can be authenticity. One can be many
people; one can through travel, marriage, and other episodes in one’s life stages,
learn about other cultures and include them in one’s selves, creating a pluralistic self.
There are successful stories of this—but the success of incorporating the many is
based not only on lightness but on depth. It is undergoing the struggle of learning
about the other, the light and heaviness of their selves” (Inayatullah 1999).
As John Wilkinson says, “If you’re interested in explorations of identity, be warned
that this is anti-identity poetry as well as radically anti-individualistic” (Wilkinson
2020).
Nikki Giovanni was asked, “Generally speaking, does group identification strike
you as a limited way of thinking about what it means to be a person?” She replied,
“I sincerely— and I mean no disrespect— think it’s a stupid way” (Marchese 2021).

References

Ames, Roger T. 2021. Human becomings-theorizing persons for confucian role ethics. New York:
SUNY Press.
Apo, Peter. 2021. How should we define Hawaiian in the 21st century? Honolulu Civil Beat, June
19.
Chude-Sokei, Louis. 2021. Floating in a most peculiar way. The New York Times Review, March
21.
Couch. Emily. 2021. We don’t have the words to fight anti-asian racism. https://foreignpolicy.com/
2021/04/07/anti-asian-racism-black-lives-matter-racial-justice//.
42 4 Pioneers Towards Fluid Identities

deMause, Lloyd. 1974. Chapter one. In The history of childhood, ed. Lloyd deMause. New York:
Psychohistory Press.
Doherty, Maggie. 2020. The long awakening of Adrienne Rich. The New Yorker, November 30.
Doležal, Rachel. 2017. In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World. Dallas, Texas:
Ben Bella Books.
Elliott, J. H. 2021. Mastering the glyphs. The New York Review of Books, December 2.
Ferguson, Kathy. 2017. Feminist theory today. In Annual review of political science, 20.
Gates, Jr, Henry Louis. 1996. White like me. The New Yorker, June 17.
Gilbert, Alan. 2020. Refuse to settle. Poetry 217(3), December.
Inayatullah, Sohail. 1999. A depth approach to the futures of the self. Futures 31.
Kim, Tae-Chang, and James A. Dator, eds. 1999. Co-creating a public philosophy for future
generations. London: Adamantine Press.
Lasswell, Harold D. 1930/1986. Psychopathology and politics. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Marchese, David. 2021. Nikki Giovanni has made peace with her hate. The New York Times
Magazine, December 26.
Mora, Pat, 2021. The only me. Poetry 217(6), March.
Morning, Ann. 2018. Kaleidoscope: Contested identities and new forms of race membership. Ethnic
and Racial Studies 41(6).
Nandy, Ashis. 1984. Reconstructing childhood: A critique of the ideology of adulthood. Alternatives
10(3).
Nunez, Sigrid. 2021. Lost, at sea, at odds. The New York Review of Books, May 27.
Tuvel, Rebecca. 2017. In defense of transracialism. Hypatia 32(2).
Viren, Sarah. 2021. The native scholar who wasn’t. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/mag
azine/cherokee-native-american-andreasmith
Weir, Allison. 2009. Who are we? Modern identities between Taylor and Foucault. Philosophy &
Social Criticism 35(5).
Weir, Allison. 2013. Identities and freedom: Feminist theory between power and connection.
London: Oxford University Press.
Williams, Thomas Chatterton. 2021. Easy chair: Shades of blue. Harper’s Magazine, February.
Wilkinson, John. 2020. Not to be resolved: William Fuller’s “Daybreak”. Poetry 217(3), December.
Yu, Brandon. 2021. A vision of Asian-American Cinema that questions the very premise. The New
York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/movies/asian-american-cinema.html?smid=
em-share.
Chapter 5
Identity, Hawaii, and Me

Abstract A personal reflection on the centrality of ethnic identity in Hawaii, and

my experience as a human becoming who desires to be empathetic towards those
seeking ethnic clarity but personally just doesn’t get it.

Keywords Hawaii · Hawaii 2000 · Hawaiian knowledge · Healani · History ·

Identity · Japan · Political science · Religion · University of Hawaii

I quoted extensively, above, from an article by Peter Apo about how “Hawaiian”
should be defined in the 21st Century. He ended his essay by an appeal to “living
aloha” as the best definition. I left it at that as I turned to other things, certain that my
doing so would annoy, if not outrage, scholars and activists who know that “living
aloha” is often used as a way to gloss over the brutality, racism, and indeed genocidal
reality of Hawaii’s past, as well as its present and likely futures. While Hawaii truly
may be “the least racist place in America”, that is a pretty low bar. There is no doubt
that racism exists in Hawaii, sometimes in forms similar to those of the US mainland,
but often not. “Race” may “only” be a social construction, but racism is real, tangible,
hurtful, destructive, and beyond denying.
As Gates and Curran put it, “While, biologically speaking, the idea of individual
human races with different origins is as farcical as the medieval belief that elves
cause hiccups, the social reality of race is undeniable” (Gates and Curran 2022).
Recognition and discussions of racism in Hawaii have existed since the term came
into use. But concern substantially spread and deepened in Hawaii recently as it has
in many parts of the world, following the usual cycle of initial shock, doubt, regret,
confession, repentance with promises of restitution, to a kind of ennui and boredom,
to active denial soon re-emerging as renewed, intensified, and indeed exultant racism.
I spent my youth and early adulthood constantly, rootlessly on the move (though
initially largely within the US South), leaving old friends and gaining new ones with
no regrets or even any thoughts about it. I was constantly reinventing myself as we
moved from place to place, shedding old selves sometimes, strengthening them other
times, and trying out new ones frequently. I loved doing so! This continued as I lived
and worked in Japan for six years and in Canada for two (where my children learned
about the American Revolution from a perspective very different from what they had
been taught in America). I have experienced life in Hawaii for more than sixty years,
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 43
J. Dator, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds,
Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_5
44 5 Identity, Hawaii, and Me

and made Hawaii my forever home for more than fifty. Though I have continued
to globetrot until Covid stopped me in my tracks, when I moved to Hawaii I never
again made my home elsewhere. Though I always could imagine living happily in
any part of the world I visited, when I discovered Hawaii and the Political Science
Department of the University of Hawaii, I knew that I had discovered my paradise not
only in terms of weather, but also mainly in terms of cultural diversity and tolerance
for weird ideas and behavior.
When I arrived in 1969 to teach futures studies and Japanese politics in the
UH Department of Political Science, an amazing two yearlong exercise in what
the futurist Alvin Toffler declared to be an example of “Anticipatory Democracy”
was just getting underway, called “Hawaii 2000”. It was an extraordinarily compre-
hensive, deep dive into thinking thirty years ahead by a remarkable cross section
of Hawaii’s people of all ages, classes, genders and cultures. It was supported not
only by all the major shakers and movers of the time—in government, commerce,
labor, education, culture, religion, media and the rest—but also by an extraordinary
sample of the shaken and removed on all of the islands of Hawaii. Activities were
conducted in a broad array of modes and media some appealing to certain tastes more
than others, but everyone enabled to find some modes and media that satisfied them.
Every club, organization, community, school, church had its own “2000” activity
focused on itself, and as a contribution to the Statewide project. Special care was
taken to be sure that members from all of the age and ethnic groups throughout the
State participated in island-specific activities as well as those that were State-wide.
I feel sure that such a vast search for preferred futures for a community has not been
duplicated anywhere else in the world to the extent it was carried out here—and it
has not been possible to do it again in Hawaii. The entire process was very well
documented in the book, Hawaii 2000, edited by George Chaplin (editor in chief of
the Honolulu Advertiser, the morning newspaper) and Glenn Paige, an extraordinary
peacenik professor also in the Department of Political Science of the University of
Hawaii (Chaplin and Paige 1973).
There are many, many things I would like to share about the Hawaii 2000 process,
and the book. The ideological range of beliefs expressed and considered were beyond
anything I can imagine happening in the US today. While it was the intent of the
organizers to envision and design pathways to preferred futures for Hawaii, there was
no attempt to “predict” anything. Nonetheless, in the area of science and technology
the book shows we did an extraordinarily good job of anticipating the kinds and
impacts of emerging electronic and biological technologies by the year 2000 and
beyond.
But we did a horrible job when it came to social and cultural issues. One of the
most laughably stupid gaffs was that even though many women from all walks of life
participated, “women’s liberation” was well underway, discussed in many venues
during the process, and recorded in many workshop reports, in the appendix to the
book where all the participants, great and small, are listed, all married women were
identified by their husband’s name: “Mrs. John Kealoha” and not “Leilani Kealoha”!
Wait! Isn’t that exactly the kind of identity change I am promoting? I wonder.
If losing your identity and assuming that of your husband is eagerly sought, as I
5 Identity, Hawaii, and Me 45

suppose it is or was for some women, isn’t it an identity lost for all? I was pleased that
Rosemary kept her “maiden” name after we married, as did our two daughters when
they partnered. But their “family name” derived from me (and not their mother). And
it wasn’t chosen freely by them. It did serve them well through divorces, however,
when they could in fact have changed their names to anything they wanted. When
we moved to Canada for a two-year stay my older daughter did change her first name
from what her mother and I had given her to something she felt fit her better.
But it is not amusing that the Hawaii 2000 process got the future of Hawaiians
and Hawaiian culture so wrong. I can plead ignorance since I was fresh off the boat.
What did I know? But in fact, everyone in the know at the time assured me that
all trends showed that Hawaiian culture, language, and people were dying out so
that by the Year 2000 all that would be left would be the glorious ethnically-mixed
“Golden People of the Pacific” whose Aloha Spirit would be a mixture of Hawaiian
culture, Japanese rural culture, and US Southern Hospitality. Even though a stately
Hawaiian woman, Pilahi Paki, rose spontaneously during the last plenary session
of the Hawaii 2000 conference, held in Kennedy Theater on the UH campus, and
graciously revealed to the hushed audience (with many weeping) the meaning of
each of the letters of A L O H A as she said her ancestors had handed it down to her,
we took that as an epitaph and not a prophecy.
The State had not yet removed laws that criminalized certain Hawaiian religious
and cultural practices. Many of the most prominent Hawaiians involved in the Hawaii
2000 process did not speak Hawaiian—they had been forbidden to do so by the
educational system, and many said their parents, who could still speak Hawaiian but
did not, punished them if they uttered a word of Hawaiian.
They knew the hapa-haole songs and dances designed for tourists, but hula in its
original form and intent was only slowly being revived. Some Hawaiians and locals
began voicing memories and hopes in the Hawaiian language as they sang with friends
and neighbors in their garages and yards on weekends and evenings, accompanied
by ukulele or steel guitars. A renaissance was underway! And we missed it entirely.
Nonetheless, because I had been thrown so quickly and fully into the Hawaii 2000
process, I had been given an understanding of the many cultures and peoples of the
islands—especially of their hopes and fears for the futures—that was in some ways
unique. I made literally hundreds of speeches and engaged in countless discussions
with people of all ages, classes, and conditions on all parts of all the islands over a span
of three years. One of my proudest possessions from the era was a ribbon-dedecked
tambourine that a group of hippies on the Big Island tossed to me in gratitude—I think
it was gratitude—at the end of one such session. I wrote and produced a televised
version of my undergraduate introductory futures course, called “Tune to the Future”,
on KHET-TV, the local public television station. This was the era of black and white
mostly live TV, and KHET was one of only five TV stations broadcasting then, so
many people watched it. One out of every four programs was taped, and I would
go to some location on one of the islands where I would watch the taped show with
students enrolled in the class, and any others who wanted to show up. Afterwards,
we would discuss the content, and the futures generally.
46 5 Identity, Hawaii, and Me

Rosemary played on a community soccer team named “He Kinipopo” which can
mean, “On the ball” (Kinipopo was also a Hawaiian word for baseball). Later, she,
one daughter and I joined a Hawaiian canoe club, Healani, and for more than a
decade we paddled with them, practicing every day in the fetid Ala Wai drainage
canal mauka of Waikiki. My crewmates were all blue-collar workers—mostly police
and construction workers—part Hawaiian, and strong, passionate, impressive men.
I was the lone haole and by far the weakest paddler of the lot. They placed me in the
fifth seat, in the back of the canoe just in front of the steersman who was our coach
and captain. He tenderly offered me sage, welcomed, helpful advice on how I could
improve my paddling: “Puuull you lazy haole fuka! Puuull!” Every haughty know-
it-all university professor should seek out similar humbling pedagogical guidance.
There were more than a dozen canoe clubs in the Hawaii Canoe Racing Associa-
tion of which Healani was one. We were competitive as a Club, but never dominant;
maybe 4th overall with some stronger and weaker crews. There was a regatta every
Sunday during paddling season held at a different magnificent beach site each week.
There were crews of all ages and genders in each club, beginning with grade school
age and in essence never ending as the “Master” crew categories got older and older
as people kept paddling until, literally, they died.
Those races were something to experience—men and women picked flowers and
made lei to give victors and vanquished alike at the end of each race. Food was
prepared and shared. Entire families attended the regatta that lasted from daybreak to
sunset. Races typically involved courses of increasing length from the shore through
the surf to a point offshore and return, perhaps once, perhaps numerous times. One
big challenge was to get through the turbulent oncoming surf initially, and then catch
a wave coming back in, and not huli (turn over). It was partly my job in seat five to
see that the ama of the outrigger stayed on the water by pushing down on the ‘iako
so the canoe did not huli.
A second sailing season was set for coastwise and interisland long-distance
paddling which was another challenge altogether. While some crews were “iron-
man” (or woman, or mixed) it was typical for each canoe to change crews several
times during a long race by having an escort motorboat place a fresh set of paddlers
in the ocean ahead of the canoe. The paddlers in the canoe would jump out just in
time for the new paddlers to rise from the ocean and pull themselves into the seats of
the moving canoe so as to keep paddling without losing a stroke—not as easy to do
with skill and grace as it might sound. It was never my forte. But there was something
hypnotic and cleansing about the repetitive paddling itself of a long-distance race.
Among the most spiritual experiences of my life were when, on rare occasion,
while the canoes were all lined up in the deep ocean ready to start a long-distance
race, a glide of flying fish would skip, skip, skip across the water in front of the
canoes just as the starting horn sounded! And there is nothing in the world like being
in the middle of the ocean in a tiny koa canoe in the company of all kinds of flying
and swimming fauna under a boundless blue canopy and brisk tradewinds.
Later, our much younger son joined neighborhood teams to play the sports that any
young person anywhere in the US might play—baseball, basketball, soccer, football.
Unlike his older brother who was a good surfer with many local friends who used
5 Identity, Hawaii, and Me 47

our tiny—but well-located—apartment as storage and refuge, and even though we

live in one of the world’s best spots for body and board surfing, our younger son
never showed any interest in or aptitude for surfing.
But this was all to the good since we got to meet more people from more parts of
the islands—a mixture of classes and ethnicities along with the family-like culture
surrounding team sports. The potlucks featuring the foods of the world were as big a
draw as the games. We became friends with people we would never have met without
Mack’s sports.
All but one of our four children went to Maryknoll Schools instead of public
schools. That was totally in conflict with my bleeding-heart liberal sympathies, but
I wanted them to receive an ethics-based education that the public schools did not
provide. Even though I do not care for many aspects of Roman Catholic doctrine and
morality, I deeply admire the Maryknoll Sisters, many of whom labored, suffered
and died on behalf of poor and oppressed peasants in Central and South America.
The Maryknoll motto, Noblesse Oblige, summarizes the core belief of my ethical
orientation—to live one’s life in the service of others. “To whom much is given,
much is expected” is often interpreted in a denigrating, supercilious, elitist way, but
dying so others may live, in imitation of Christ, is what many of the Sisters taught
and exemplified, and I wanted my children to do the same, as they largely have. To
the extent they have, it may also be due to six years of Japanese schooling (which
does teach ethics) and examples, as well as being surrounded by the similar ethic of
pono and aloha in Hawaii.
The University of Hawaii was a kind of plantation while I taught there. Most of the
teachers were White and most of the students and staff were not. The University had
been created in 1907 as a place where capable local students who couldn’t afford—or
weren’t allowed—to go to the US Mainland (as children from the mostly White and
Hawaiian upper classes could) were able get a good education. UH from the very
beginning was co-educational and open without regard to race at a time when most
American universities were neither. However, the original design of the campus and
curriculum was under the guidance of scholars from Cornell University in upper New
York State, which created some cognitive dissonance from the beginning. Agriculture
was a major rationale for Cornell University’s creation in 1865 and the University of
Hawaii was basically a pretty good cow college until well after statehood in 1959.
When the multiethnic participants in the “Democratic Revolution” returned
home—Hawaiian citizens of diverse ethnicity (though predominantly Japanese-
Americans) who fought valiantly for the US in the Second World War—they orga-
nized politically and replaced the old White Republican political-economic order.
Respecting the importance of good education, they determined to re-make the Univer-
sity of Hawaii as “The Harvard of the Pacific”. In order to do so quickly, they hired
a number of world-class scholars and seeded them among new and existing disci-
plines, along with some junior faculty of promise (e.g., me)—almost all of whom
were White (well, many were Jewish, but Jews are White in Hawaii; there is no
lived sense in Hawaii of what being Jew—or Black—means, as there is on the US
mainland).
48 5 Identity, Hawaii, and Me

At the time, there was no thought of re-creating UH as the university of Hawaii.

It was to be a world-class university in Hawaii with substantial State funding (One
of the stories an early President of the University after the “Democratic Revolution”,
Harlan Cleveland, loved to tell was about frequently receiving telephone calls from
the quiet but revered Governor of Hawaii, John Burns, saying, “Harlan, we want
to give you some more money!”, and President Cleveland having to reply, “Well,
Governor, we really can’t use any more money now, thank you”). Those days passed
quickly. The idea that UH could be a world class university in a community where
tourism and the military were the main sources of income and the population of
the State not yet one million people was indeed inspiring, but an utter fantasy. Still,
the university (and community generally) was a place where any idea could be—
and was—freely expressed, and where new, innovative academic programs were
permitted without restraint—and wholly without adequate funding, if any, as well.
A million flowers could bloom, but they had to be self-fertilizing.
The motto of the University, engraved on the Founders’ Gate proclaims, Maluna
a’e o na lahui a pau ke ola ke kanaka. However these words might be understood by
Hawaiian speakers, the English version (“Above all nations is humanity”) seems to
be yet another legacy from Cornell where it was the motto of the Cosmopolitan Club
formed by international students attending Cornell at the very time the University of
Hawaii was being created. From the beginning, UH was designed to help Hawaii’s
citizens to excel in the world—or the cosmos—and except for agriculture had little
or no local orientation. It did not even have a Department of Hawaiian Studies.
There was a one-man academic option run by the embodiment of Aloha itself, Abe
Piianaia, under the umbrella of Liberal Studies created in 1970, but the Hawaiian
Studies Program gained only provisional status in 1979 and permanent standing in
1985 within the College of Social Sciences. The Program was placed in the newly-
created School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies in 1987 and renamed the
Center for Hawaiian Studies. A special building for the Center was completed in
1996. In 2007, the Hawai’inuiākea: School of Hawaiian Knowledge was created,
incorporating most academic units focusing on Hawaiian subject matter.
School of Hawaiian Knowledge! A huge conceptual leap, that took a long time
maturing.
The 2021 Institutional Report for WASC reaffirmation review lists three themes
for UH. The first theme is Becoming a Native Hawaiian Place of Learning.
My Department of Political Science created one of the first Indigenous Politics
specialties focusing not primarily on Hawaiians but on indigenous peoples every-
where. From the beginning, it had a marked futures orientation, not dwelling on the
past more than necessary to understand its contribution to the present and to spur
efforts for the creation of preferred futures.
The full story would also discuss the torturous growth of Hawaiian studies units at
the University of Hawaii in Hilo and the various community colleges, as well of the
UH Ethnic Studies Program that also began in the late 1960s–early 1970s, celebrating
its 50th anniversary in 2021—not to mention the enhancement of programs serving
Hawaiian children offered by Kamehameha Schools, founded by the will of Bernice
5 Identity, Hawaii, and Me 49

Pauahi Bishop, the great-granddaughter of Kamehameha I, as well as many programs

for Hawaiians funded by the Hawaii State and US Federal governments.
There is absolutely no doubt that the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom under
Queen Lili‘uokalani in 1893 by some businessmen with the support of the US
Marines, and the subsequent annexation of Hawaii into the US as a Territory in 1898,
as well as the limited options offered when Hawaii’s citizen voted on statehood in
1959, were all illegal, unjust, and beneath contempt—that is to say, in keeping with
many actions from 1492 to today.
There are now many (often conflicting) voices calling for sovereignty from or
within the United States, some seeking an independent nation based on Hawaiian
ancestry, or asserting it already exists; others based on whoever will renounce their
existing citizenship and pledge loyalty to Hawaii without regard to ethnicity; others
seeking a kind of state within a state relation similar to that of many Native American
tribes on the US mainland. So far the issues are fluid, contested and seemingly beyond
quick and peaceful resolution—or violent resolution for that matter.
In any event, the question of “who is a Hawaiian” and what difference it makes, if
any, has grown during my lifetime from being well-hidden if not essentially nonex-
istent to a major disputed feature of the future of every person living in Hawaii,
or who wants to, right up there with climate change, sea level rise, tourism, and
food safety—not to mention the grotesque fear of an imminent Chinese/North
Korean/Russian/Somebody “Pearl Harbor” attack.
Many university professors at major research universities, like the University of
Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), are oriented primarily to research, publication (and, if
unavoidable) teaching in some specific academic discipline, and their advancement
in that discipline. They usually are not particularly devoted to the university (unless
it has a great football team, but Portal Transfers may destroy that loyalty too) and its
community where they are temporarily located. Anything that distracts them from
their research, publications, and academic advancement within the discipline is a
waste of time for them. They are somewhat like professional athletes (now, college
athletes as well) who are easily “traded” from one team to another, focusing on being
the best player they can be wherever they are without developing deep roots in any
specific community.
I probably was somewhat unusual in the amount of time I spent engaging as an
ordinary person in the cultural life of the community. Many faculty at UHM are hired
to do research and some teaching, and will jump ship at the next offer that allows them
to do more and better research somewhere else. But Hawaii also is a roach motel—
many academics move in but then find it almost impossible imagine moving out.
When I got here, I immediately knew this was my home. Many of my colleagues felt
the same and stayed forever because of its unique culture and environment. However,
there is a tension between the haole professors and the local staff, and between the
haole professors and the ordinary local citizen. In some ways this is just the usual
town-gown conflict between differing lifestyles and interests found in any university
environment. But in other ways, it is different because of racial issues.
Even though I had taken a great deal of time to learn about Japanese history and
language when I lived there, I did not make a similar commitment to Hawaii—nothing
50 5 Identity, Hawaii, and Me

I learned from the Hawaii 2000 immersion or experienced initially at the University of
Hawaii gave me the slightest nudge in that direction. All my inclinations and friends
were global and transcultural. It never crossed my mind to learn the language. And
by “language” I mean not only the Hawaiian language, but also pidgin, the creole
patois that arose during the plantation days when people from many different parts of
the world had to learn to live and work together. Pidgin was THE hallmark of being
“local” when I arrived in Hawaii, but very few of the UHM professors could speak
it even though most of the staff and all local students could and did. The Hawaiian
language itself was plucked from an early grave by the same people and pressures that
provoked the rest of the renaissance, so that Hawaiian is now the first language for
some people who also then learn English later. Pidgin too is enjoying popularity but
generations of formal education and the profusion of English-speaking media have
encouraged almost everyone to speak a mildly local version of Standard American
English.

5.1 More Bemused Than Empathetic

While I watch with bemused respect people who I love wrestle with their identity, I
have no personal involvement in any identity struggles whatsoever. I acknowledge
it, but I don’t feel it. My attitude here is similar to my attitude towards religion and
religious believers. I am not a believer any more, but I am not an atheist either. All
of the different things each religion requires one to believe and do in opposition to
the things other religions would require one to do and believe in conjunction all the
things one might prefer to do and believe leaves me cold. That is something I also
learned in Japan—in part by studying Nichiren Shoshu and the Soka Gakkai, its
unusually aggressive Buddhist lay organization, and especially the Komeito, its very
successful political party that was wholly unique within Japanese history.
Most Japanese are not religious, and view with mild wonder those who are—
especially those who are active proselytizers of one religion or another. Most Japanese
feel that real people don’t need “God” to tell them what to do and not do. That is what
other people are for—family, friends, neighbors, experts, the entire engulfing culture:
to guide them. But at the same time, “it’s OK to believe in religion if it helps you. I
don’t care”, the average Japan might feel. While Shinto, Buddhism and Christianity
(and all the rest) in all possible flavors exist in Japan, and while Japanese might pause
and clap reverently when passing a roadside Shinto shrine, don all the trappings of a
western White Wedding for their marriage, and be lulled by the comforting drone of
Buddhist sutras for their funerals, it is mainly significant pageantry and ceremony.
It is not a question of saving their soul, going to heaven, and avoiding the eternal
flames of hell for most of them.
I can empathize with that. I still revel in the sights, sounds, and smells of an
Anglican High Church Mass. I listen “religiously” to the hour-long broadcast of
church music every Sunday morning at 8 AM on Honolulu’s excellent public radio
network, HPR2, on a program called “With heart and voice”. The soaring descants
5.2 Stories of the Past 51

of angelic boy choirs can send me weeping far too easily—I used to be one myself,
and fondly recall the evil thrill we felt when we succeeded in making the little old
ladies cry.
Religion has not only been a balm and guide for countless lost souls; it has also
been, and still is, the rationale behind most of the carnage, brutality, and destruction
by wars, laws, and bigotry since the invention of writing enabled “civilization” that
produced among other institutions, organized religions with their bibles, creeds,
priests, and excommunication in contrast with earlier free-floating spiritualty of oral
societies, down to the present day.
I feel pretty much the same way about people passionately arguing over identity.
That which so self-righteously unites as self-righteously divides and impels us to
conquer.

5.2 Stories of the Past

I repeat: None of this is to say that we should ignore the systemic evil underlying
all our histories, and whitewash our pasts. Absolutely not. Truth is needed, honesty
rewarded, and repentance offered and received.
We need to know history as accurately as possible, yes, but inside each history
is other history, and inside that still more histories of exploitation, usurpation, as
well as cooperation until we are back to the Pleistocene Epoch and the interactions
of homosapiens, sapiens with other homo of the time—neanderthal, denisovans,
longi (perhaps; perhaps others also)—whose extinction may be due in part to actions
by homosapiens, sapiens. Before them are hominids and mammals and each of the
myriad evolutionary forms of life that contributed to our existence all the way back
to the Big Bang (and whatever came before that if the cosmos is not just one big
bang but rather is breathing in and out eternally so our Big Bang was just one big
exhale following many big inhales and exhales before and after it).
There is no real beginning to our history. It is one huge, eternal, complex interactive
process of cooperation, conflict, adaptation, extinction, and luck. So, we should know
all of it, yes. But we should mainly focus our energies on the only dimension of
time over which we might have some influence—not the past; not the present (it is
too vanishingly thin); but the ever-approaching futures that provide us with endless
possibilities to (re)discover ourselves, leave our marks, luxuriate in life, thrive, and
die.
52 5 Identity, Hawaii, and Me

References

Chaplin, George, and Glenn Paige. 1973. Hawaii 2000: A continuing experiment in anticipatory
democracy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Gates Jr., Henry Louis, and Andrew S. Curran. 2022. We need a new language for talking about
race. New York Times, March 3.
Chapter 6
More Pioneers of Fluidity

Abstract Resuming the story of people who have found fluid identity in their own
lives, as an inspiration for others to do the same: queer, transexual, transracial,
disabled, carceral, refugees, and environmental refugees.

Keywords Acculturation · Assimilation · Carceral · Census · Dator’s second law ·

Disability · Dismodernism · Environmental refugees · Gender · Handicap ·
Identity · LGBTQIA+ · Normal · Prison · Queer · Refugees · Transgender ·
Transracial · Transexual · United Nations

I paused my recitation of people who were pioneers in rejecting identities ascribed

to them by others that they did not accept for themselves to say a bit about my
own experiences as person of indifferent ethnicity and identity within a beloved
community of marvelous identity diversity of all kinds—Hawaii; that while I love
being a part of this community and am respectful of those for whom their ethnicity
is of major concern, I just don’t get it.
Now I wish to continue the story of people who excite me even more profoundly
than the ones I mentioned before, inspiring me to expand my quest to encourage
more human becomings.

6.1 Queer

I have been involved in futures studies academically and professionally since the
late 1960s when it emerged along with a host of other “studies”—women’s studies,
ethnic studies, cultural studies, peace studies, environmental studies and the like. But
in spite of enormous demand for experts who can make useful statements about the
future, and the existence of very successful programs in a few universities around
the world, futures studies never caught on as dramatically as expected at the outset,
and as some of the other “studies” and newer ones have.
While engaging deeply with the literature of queer theory, I had a major moment
of enlightenment about futures studies.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 53

J. Dator, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds,
Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_6
54 6 More Pioneers of Fluidity

David Halperin wrote, “English, history, classics, anthropology, sociology, or

religion now have the option of using queer theory…to advance the practice of their
disciplines—by “queering” them. The outcome…makes queer theory a game the
whole family could play. This has resulted in a paradoxical situation: as queer theory
becomes more widely diffused throughout the disciplines, it becomes harder to figure
out what’s so very queer about it, while lesbian and gay studies, which by contrast
would seem to pertain only to lesbians and gay men, looks increasingly backward,
identitarian, and outdated” (Halperin 2003).
If, at the very beginning, we had named our field “futures theory”, and taught it
with a thick French accent, it might now be ensconced in every university in the world,
along with feminist theory, queer theory, disabilities theory, critical race theory, and
the rest. They—especially queer theory—managed not only to survive but also to
become wildly popular with deans, dons, and devotees alike, though of course not
with regents and legislators.
Dator’s Second Law of The Futures states that “in a situation of rapid social and
environmental change, any useful statement about the futures should appear to be
ridiculous”. While I have uttered many ridiculous statements that turned out to be
useful (and some not so useful), I was too lacking in foresight and imagination in
1970 to declare that we should label our emerging field “futures theory” because
doing so might make us appear more respectable and academic, like queer theory.
Somehow, neither the word “theory” nor “queer” came bursting from my lips at the
time, to my regret.
The emergence and dominance of queer theory is a wondrous thing to behold.
Since my earliest university courses about the futures, I have declared that if there
is a truly ridiculous dogma we should get rid of it is the last great dichotomy of
Western Civilization that asserts that there are two and only two clearly distinguish-
able genders, male and female. It was obvious to me then and now that this is
false, both biologically and socio-psychologically. My assertions and proofs had no
purchase for decades as women worried about becoming women, boys were boys,
ethnicities struggled to breathe free, and environmentalists hugged trees and smelled
the roses. Then, suddenly, it was no longer queer to be queer. It was almost down-
right normal. Of course, though dethroned, the old dichotomy is far from dead, and
frequently attempts to raise its severed head, but many people have finally discovered
that the world is a lot queerer than they imagined.
Without necessarily denying that there is a biological base to gender/sex identities
as there is to every aspect of life, more people now emphasize the importance of the
volitional, psychological, sociological, ideological, cultural bases instead. As we
quoted Kathy Ferguson, “Feminist theory has generally followed Beauvoir’s insight
that we are not born, but rather we become, women.” So also with all other variations
of human being.
The 1948 blockbuster book, Sexual behavior in the human male, by Alfred Kinsey
rocked the world not primarily because of its frank though antiseptic accounts
of male heterosexual behavior but rather by his accounts of male homosexuality,
masturbation, and other sexual activities. How could this be in this very straightened
nation? Nonetheless his message basically was that there are two genders that are
6.1 Queer 55

expressed in one of three combinations of sexual orientations—heterosexual, homo-

sexual (gay/lesbian), and bisexual. Most early researchers in the fields of gender
identities tended to emphasize the old dichotomy while admitting, ignoring, denying
or delegitimizing other orientations.
Zoe Kolker and friends say, “Queer was first used as a term meaning strange,
odd, or suspicious. Later in the early 1900s, queer or fairy was used as an insult
to refer typically to gay men who displayed more feminine behaviors. In the 1920s
and 1930s middle-class gay men would refer to themselves as queer to distinguish
themselves from fairies who were seen as feminine and lacking status as masculine.
In the 1980s the LGBTQ community reclaimed the word as an identity label in order
to break boundaries of binary ideas of sexuality and gender/sex.”
However, “queer is often seen as a ‘non-label’; queer is fluid and changing, and
therefore hard to define.” “Rather than create socially acceptable forms of non-
normative identities, queer theory rejects the idea of assimilation to the norm. Its
goals are celebration rather than normalization” (Kolker et al. 2020: 1340).
Hannah McCann and Whitney Monaghan remind us that the “…gender binary
as discussed by Butler and others is a distinctly Western construct, and that there
is a long history of non-Western alternative gender identities. These include hijra
(South Asia), kathoey (Thailand), waria (Indonesia), two-spirit (North America),
machi (Chile and Argentina) and many more terms and identifications” (McCann
and Monaghan 2020: 175).
Bernadette Marie Calafell and Thomas K. Nakayama similarly emphasize that
“Queer theory begins from the notion that identities are not destiny; our identities
do not determine who we are, who we become, or how we view the world. Instead
identities are constituted and constructed in order to meet particular goals…. Queer
theory insists on the constructed aspect of identities, and by so doing it opens the
possibility of constructing identities in other ways and for other goals.” Transgender
activists “call for individuals to be able to choose their own legal and personal gender
status, to perform multiple gender expressions, and to have civil rights” (Calafell and
Nakayama 2016: 4).
One of the consequences of this proliferation of fluid identities is that it has
become almost impossible to use one word or a few letters to describe the orientation:
“LGBTQIA+” points to this by adding the plus mark at the end.
In the poem, James River, Jenny Johnson concludes,

I am the air red beneath your fingernails,

the trout poking through river rocks

remote as any one appendage from the other,
the shadow of what you asked for turning to husk.
Don’t tell me the body won’t turn on you like a corkscrew (Johnson 2013).
56 6 More Pioneers of Fluidity

6.2 Transexual, Transracial….

More and more people are refusing to identify themselves by the old gender labels,
and yet, in spite of some elasticity, most governmental policies assume the old two
only. This creates a challenge for the most fundamental and official set of statistics
for all governments, in the case of the US, the Census taken every ten years. Bonnie
Ruberg and Spencer Ruelo address this directly in a study based on interviews with
people of varying gender identities. They conclude: “Demographic data commonly
imagines identity as fixed, singular, and discrete. However, our findings suggest that,
for LGBTQ people, gender and sexual identities are often multiple and in flux. An
overwhelming majority of our respondents reported shifting in their understandings
of their sexual identities over time. In addition, for many of our respondents, gender
identity was made up of overlapping factors, including the relationship between
gender and transgender identities. These findings challenge researchers to reconsider
how identity is understood as and through data.” (Ruberg and Ruelo 2020: 1).
The same is true for ethnic labels as well all the other identities that do indeed
coalesce and cleave in a vast jittering stew of tangling images. “Some of the growth
by Asians in the 2020 census may be rooted in the fluidity of how some people,
particularly multiracial, report their identity on the census form, said Paul Ong, a
professor emeritus of urban planning and Asian American studies at UCLA. ‘People
change their identity from one survey to another, and this is much more prevalent
among those who are multiracial or biracial,’ Ong said” (Tang and Schneider 2022:
A12).

6.3 Disability

While I have been more or less content with my body as I have inhabited and expe-
rienced it as it morphed along through the ages, there are many parts of it that
profoundly disable me. I cannot see in the ultraviolet or infrared. I cannot hear dog
whistles or many other high frequency sounds. While my sense of smell seems better
than that of many humans, it is puny indeed compared to my dogs. I fervently wish I
had wings so I could fly—I so envy birds and bats and bees. I have yearned my entire
life for a prehensile tail. I have spent years hoping to visit Mars where wings and a
tail would be highly desirable—as would a sturdy shell, like that of a tortoise, into
which I could retreat when solar flares were about to strike. As I have aged, my body
in fact has tended towards that of a tortoise, my hard, scaly back bending slowly over
my softening underbelly. But, alas, no tail or wings have appeared yet.
The person I was told was my father drowned shortly after my first birthday,
totally changing the trajectory of my life. I have sometimes wished that he and I
could breathe underwater as well as on land. But I can’t imagine my life would have
been so much better had he lived, so maybe it is just as well.
6.3 Disability 57

Of course like many handicapped persons, I can use prostheses to solve some of
my problems. I fly on airplanes and I have learned bravely to live with my tailessness
as an irremediable impairment. I have worn glasses since I was in my late teens
to correct mild hyperopia, but now my long-prophesized macular degeneration is
swiftly manifesting itself, so blindness will overtake me if I live too much longer.
For years, based on observing when many people’s abilities cascade in decline, I
told everyone I wanted to die before I reached 87, but, alas, I zoomed past my use-
by date, and while death might have granted me my most fervent wish by the time
you read this words, I am still regratefully alive while I write them. My hearing has
always been poor, and it has gotten progressively worse. Hearing aids exacerbate the
problem.
You could tell a similar story. More or less.
There is no one who is not impaired or disabled. There is no one who is ideal—
the ideal body/person is a Platonic invention that no real person can or should try to
attain (“Ideal” is like “utopia” in the sense of being an impossibly perfect “no place”
which has lured so many reformers into brutality, killing, and totalitarianism). There
might be some people who can be called “normal” in the statistical sense of being the
average, whether mean, median, or mode, with half of the rest tending towards some
kind of supernormality at the end of one tail and half tending towards some extreme
abnormality measured somehow on the other tail. By definition, there are fewer and
fewer actual people as we approach the end of each tail of a bell-shaped curve; most
people cluster on one side or the other of the average. So “normal” should mean just
“average”. Most of us seem to be from Lake Wobegon (if it is still permissible to
speak of that heartbreakingly woebegotten place) “where all the women are strong,
all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” To be normal
seems to mean that you are as close to the ideal as possible, not merely average, and
few among us proudly claim to be abnormal (though more of us should, given the
obvious pathologies of all normal people).
Normality, Michael Oliver argues, is a construct imposed on a reality where there
is only difference (Cameron 2010: 8) while Colin Cameron declares that “being
normal involves a process of learning to want to act in the ways that society requires
one to act.” (Italics added) (Cameron 2010: 7).
All of the identities humans fret about are extremely slippery concepts, but none
is slippier than “disability” or “impairment”. While many cultures do not, or at
least did not, exhibit the categories of ability and impairment that exist now in the
west (indeed, some abilities that westerners might view negatively disabling were
highly prized or respected in some cultures), ever since “modern” times, with its
increasing focus on extracting, making, selling, and buying—especially buying—as
the main point of human existence, we have labeled people who could not contribute
to keeping the economy growing appropriately as disabled, and either in need of
being made “normal” or hidden away so the rest of us can shop till we drop without
their distraction.
Lennard J. Davis agrees that “we do have to acknowledge that, unlike race,
class, gender, sexual preference, and the like, disability is a relatively new cate-
gory. Although the category has existed for a long time, its present form as a political
58 6 More Pioneers of Fluidity

and cultural formation has only been around since the 1970s, and has come into some
kind of greater visibility since the late 1980s” (Davis 2013a: 263).
Elsewhere, Davis says that we should “focus not so much on the construction
of disability as on the construction of normalcy. (T)he ‘problem’ is not the person
with disabilities; the problem is the way that normalcy is constructed to create the
‘problem’ of the disabled person” (Davis 2013b: 1).
Speaking of disabilities in any general—shall I say, “normal”—way as we speak of
other identities is also quite difficult because the official list of disabilities is long and
growing. The following disability categories were represented in a sample of articles
about disabilities: “stroke-related, sight impairments/blindness, spinal injuries, intel-
lectual disabilities, hearing impairments, mobility related, chronic illness, multiple
sclerosis, Down’s syndrome, hidden disabilities, psychiatric disabilities, multiple
chemical sensitivity, obesity as a disability, spina bifida, autism spectrum, and deaf-
ness.” (Forber-Pratt et al. 2017: 6). As the populations of most nations of the
world age, the number of officially disabled people for whom public or commercial
accommodation is required is growing substantially.
Internationally, the World Health Organization estimates that 15% of the world’s
population lives with some form of disability, of whom 2–4% experience significant
difficulties in functioning. In the United States of America, approximately one in
five Americans have a recognized disability (Forber-Pratt et al. 2017: 12). Unlike
other identities, disability can manifest itself at any point in one’s lifespan. One can
be born “healthy” and experience a “normal” life until accident or diseases causes
one suddenly to become “disabled”. Some handicaps can be overcome somewhat by
more or less intrusive prostheses. Others cannot. Some are obvious to any observer.
Many are “invisible disabilities”. Some are physical. Some are mental. Some are
unlabeled until they become identified somehow. The psychological impact of each
these is often widely different.
Some of the literature on disabilities is written by people with a specific disability
and reflects their particular responses as well as the specific history of their disability
but fails to express adequately the experience of people with other disabilities. A lot
of the literature that is written by “normal” people is often declared to be bogus by
disabled people. Creating a community of the disabled is a challenge. Some people
with some disabilities refuse to be classified with people with other disabilities. A
person with impaired vision may not wish to be considered in the same category
as a person with severely limited mental capacity or physical mobility. Many don’t
consider themselves disabled at all and strive to act “normally”.
Identities based on disability, handicap, impairment (some people seek to make
clear distinctions between these terms) have gone through the same kind of evolution
as have other identities—from fixed, rigid, shameful; to contested, fluid, accepted; to
laudable, triumphant and prideful: “Mad Pride” “Disability Pride”, “Deaf Pride”—
not “hearing loss” but “Deaf Gain”; the expansion of other ways of sensing the world
(Bauman and Murray 2013); and “Piss on Pity.”
Disabilities among family members are frequently concealed in denial and shame.
Jennifer Natalya Fink lauds her “family’s rich disability lineage” maintaining that
“we should claim our disabled ancestors with pride.” “Our disability lineages can
6.3 Disability 59

only be reclaimed through the stories we uncover. This means conceiving of disability
as an identity like being queer, rather than reducing it to a medical condition” (Fink
2022).
For many years, the goal was to make disabled people be as “normal” as possible.
Indeed the early eugenics movement in the US and elsewhere strove to remove
abnormal people from the gene pool so that everyone would be born normal, or
aborted before they could be born if they would not be normal after birth. Infanticide
of imperfect babies was not beyond the pale. Those who did their best to act normally
in spite of their impairments were widely praised as “good little soldiers” who were
fighting hard to be as normal as possible, and ashamed that their mere existence
caused discomfort to so many nice normal people.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the very concept of “normality” was challenged, especially
concerning mental illnesses. Thomas Szasz famously declared that insanity is a myth
(or metaphor) and not an illness in the sense of a typical physical disability. He insisted
that no person should be imprisoned by the state (i.e., placed in a mental institution)
by virtue of their presumed insanity unless their abnormal behavior had a clearly
identified basis in biology.
Colin Cameron observes that “everyday life is constrained by social structures
and is at the same time an active process of production which transforms social
structures.” Identity is “a project to be worked at rather than…a fixed characteristic.”
By “‘coming out’ and claiming identity as disabled, people with impairments not only
subvert dominant disability discourses but…change the very meaning of disability”
(Cameron 2010: v). There is an “almost constant underlying state of uncertainty
experienced by many disabled people in relation to how they are being perceived
and received by others around them; something like the easily-awakened awareness
of the likelihood that they are being watched and found wanting, or seen as deficient,
incompetent and unfortunate.” As Cal Montgomery notes, “Every few hours I run
up against people who feel free to remind me that I’m their inferior and that I should
conform to whatever they’ve decided…people like [me] are supposed to be like”
(Cameron 2010: 2).
The so-called “Medical model” of disabilities makes claims somewhat like this:

You are deficient.

You are the problem.
I, the professionalised servicer, am the answer.
You are not the answer.
Your peers are not the answer.
The political, social and economic environment is not the answer.
(McKnight 2005 in Cameron 2010: 7).

One reaction to this is the “supercrip” perspective that “is often lauded by non-
disabled individuals, and frames individuals with disabilities as having ‘overcome’
their disability and are viewed as ‘superhuman’ because of achieving unexpected
accomplishments and perhaps as having ‘achieved’ or ‘reached’ disability identity
synthesis. On the contrary,…the supercrip model is resented by many people with
60 6 More Pioneers of Fluidity

disabilities who are simply trying to lead their lives, and the complexity of disability
identity development indicates a fierce rejection of this narrative” (Forber-Pratt et al.
2017: 12).
In contrast, Cameron and others propose an Affirmative Model which regards
“impairment as a valid human characteristic among other human characteristics.
This does not involve a denial of the sometimes-painful aspects of impairment, but
neither does it regard these as marks of inferiority. The affirmative model provides
the basis for a self-respectful stance to be taken in the face of cultural assumptions
of personal tragedy. It contextualises the experience of impairment within current
discourse on diversity and establishes the rights of people with impairments to be
recognized and valued as who they are” (Cameron 2010: 257).
Noting that most of the literature on disability (and all other forms of identity)
is based on varieties of postmodern theory, Davis proposes to replace “the notion
of postmodernism with something I want to call “dismodernism.” (Davis 2013a:
265). “The watchword of dismodernism could be: Form follows dysfunction.” “What
dismodernism signals is a new kind of universalism and cosmopolitanism that is
reacting to the localization of identity. It reflects a global view of the world. To
accomplish a dismodernist view of the body, we need to consider a new ethics of the
body” by creating “a new category based on the partial, incomplete subject whose
realization is not autonomy and independence but dependency and interdependence.
This is a very different notion from subjectivity organized around wounded identities;
rather, all humans are seen as wounded. Wounds are not the result of oppression,
but rather the other way around.” “It is too easy to say, ‘We’re all disabled.’ But
it is possible to say that we are all disabled by injustice and oppression of various
kinds. We are all nonstandard, and it is under that standard that we should be able to
found the dismodernist ethic. What is universal in life, if there are universals, is the
experience of the limitations of the body” (Davis 2013a: 276).
Poems with disabilities
By Jim Ferris

I’m sorry—this space is reserved

for poems with disabilities. I know
it’s one of the best spaces in the book,
but the Poems with Disabilities Act
requires us to make all reasonable
accommodations for poems that aren’t
normal. There is a nice space just
a few pages over—in fact (don’t
tell anyone) I think it’s better
than this one, I myself prefer it.
Actually I don’t see any of those
poems right now myself, but you never know
when one might show up, so we have to keep
this space open. You can’t always tell
6.4 Carceral 61

just from looking at them, either. Sometimes

they’ll look just like a regular poem
when they roll in . . . you’re reading along
and suddenly everything
changes, the world tilts
a little, angle of vision
jumps, your entrails aren’t
where you left them. You
remember your aunt died
of cancer at just your age
and maybe yesterday’s twinge means
something after all. Your sloppy,
fragile heart beats
a little faster
and then you know.
You just know:
the poem
is right
where it
belongs (Ferris 2013).

Used with permission from the author.

6.4 Carceral

It is impossible to discuss all of the labels that people may choose to identify them-
selves or which others use to identify them. But I do want to add one group of people
who I think are too pervasive and ignored to omit, and who also seem to be in the
initial stages of consciously reflecting on who they are—namely, people who are
or who have been incarcerated in jails and prisons. This is a very large number of
people in the United States, but significant in most other parts of the world as well.
The US has by far a higher percentage of its population in prison than any other
nation—certainly astronomically above any other “advanced” country.
The proportion of people in jails and prisons compared to their numbers in the
population is badly skewed against people of color as well: In 2017, Blacks repre-
sented 12% of the U.S. adult population but 33% of the sentenced prison population.
Hispanics represented 16% of the adult population, while accounting for 23% of
prison inmates. On the other hand, Whites accounted for 64% of adults but only 30%
of prisoners (Pew Research 2019).
“People between ages 26 and 35 were 3.6 times more likely to have been arrested
as compared to those who were at least 66 years old. About one-third of the men
between the age of 26 and 35 had been arrested during their youth, 2.6 times the
rate of those 66 and older.” Men are far more likely to be imprisoned than women,
62 6 More Pioneers of Fluidity

but women have experienced an even more rapid relative increase in arrests. Among
those aged 66 and older, arrests before age 26 occurred among only one in 100
participants. But among those aged 26 to 35, about one in every seven women had
been arrested at least once by age 26 (Rand 2019).
As I stated before while discussing Wendell Bell and Affirmative Action
Sentencing, there is little reason to assume that young nonWhite males misbehave
more frequently than older White females by such orders of magnitude. Rather, it is
the case that certain acts that have been criminalized are treated far more severely
by the legal system than other acts, and that young, nonWhite males are far more
likely to be stopped by police, questioned, apprehended, jailed, taken to court, and
imprisoned for longer times than are White people of any age or gender.
Roughly two in five incarcerated people have a disability of some sort. Nearly
one in four have cognitive disabilities (Sarrett 2021).
“While it is difficult to ascertain whether poverty makes someone more likely to
commit a crime, data show it does make a person more susceptible to being arrested
and more likely to be charged with a harsher crime and to receive a longer sentence.
Adults in poverty are three times more likely to be arrested than those who aren’t, and
people earning less than 150% of the federal poverty level are 15 times more likely
to be charged with a felony—which, by definition, carries a longer sentence—than
people earning above that threshold” (Hayes and Bornhorst 2020).
Almost half of all people in federal prisons are there because of drug offenses.
Twenty percent are imprisoned because of weapon possession or use. For ten percent,
it is some sexual offense. Homicide and aggravated assault make up only a little over
three percent of the federal prison population, and the same percent for robbery.
Reasons for imprisoning people who broke the law have varied over time. Early
in America’s history, incarceration was seen as a way to allow people to reflect on the
error of their ways; to confess their sins, to become contrite and penitent, and then to
be able to rejoin lawful society—a goal captured in the term “Penitentiary”. Later,
“Reform” was the key word. Law-breakers were guided through various activities
that were intended to enable them to move beyond habits and behaviors that caused
them to misbehave, and to acquire the habits and behaviors of law-abiders. However,
for the past thirty years, the primary rationale for imprisoning people in the US
has not been to enable them penitently to reflect on their crimes, or to learn law-
like behaviors. The main purpose of imprisonment is punishment. Justin Smith and
Aaron Kinzel write of the myriad “pains of imprisonment”. They quote Campbell
and Schoenfeld who state that the current situation
is characterized by a set of ideas, including that the purpose of prison is incapacitation
and retribution, that criminals are “other” and not worthy of redemption and that being
labeled soft on crime is the ultimate political liability or conversely that tough-on-crime
credentials are a political necessity. It contains a specific “penal field” where penal policies
are shaped by politicians, law enforcement, and victims’ organizations rather than by judges,
social workers, criminologists, or community organizations…. And it includes penal policies
with one primary goal: to incarcerate or “supervise” masses of criminal offenders for long
periods of time. As a result, the…penal order is distinguished by uniquely high and racially
disproportionate incarceration rates and an expansive correctional supervision apparatus
(Smith and Kinzel 2020: 95).
6.4 Carceral 63

This is called “Just Deserts”, as in giving people what they deserve. No coddling, no
educating, just punishing severely: giving them their just deserts.
Of course numerous calls for reform are constantly heard, including from profes-
sionals within the system itself. Moreover, rates of imprisonment were in fact falling
until very recently, and significant prison reform seemed for a while to be on track
as a strongly bipartisan movement. Between 1972 and 2009, the US national prison
population grew by 700%—from roughly 200,000 to over 1,500,000. Then from 2009
to 2018, it declined by nine percent to 1,400,000. However, even though crime rates
declined by half from 1990, rates of incarceration remained disproportionately high.
The “Slap ‘um, ‘n’ rap ‘um” practice of Just Deserts still is the prevailing philos-
ophy, especially during the reign of Trump and Covid-19. They haven’t changed
under Biden. Hatred produces hate and systemic injustice provokes hateful revenge.
White reactions to “Black Lives Matter” and “Defund the Police” seem to have
killed the possibility of bipartisan, humane reform. At present, the American public
seems more sharply divided on the issue than ever before. At the same time, conver-
sations about the identity of incarcerated persons appear to be increasing as well.
The consciousness of current and past unjustly-incarcerated persons may very well
follow a trajectory from rigid, ascribed, and embraced wholly negative identities, to
fluid, positive, prideful self-identities similar to what we have seen for gender, race,
class, and disability.
Indeed “prisoner identity” now seems to be about where “disability identity”
was several decades ago when disabled persons were pitied; told they were “good
little soldiers” for doing their very best to “fit in” as “normal people”. Now, many
take pride in themselves, saying that it is the behavior of others, and the structures
and processes of their environment, that turned them into “handicapped people.”
Remove the handicaps, enable their abilities, and they can and will help swell the
rich diversity of humanity beyond narrow “normality”, they say. Something like that
may be happening with prisoners and especially former prisoners.
The Marshall Project has developed a policy…of ‘people-first’ language. Originally devel-
oped by people with disabilities, people-first language avoids turning one aspect of a person’s
life into an all-encompassing label.” “Words like ‘inmate,’ ‘prisoner,’ ‘convict,’ ‘felon’ and
‘offender’ are like brands. They reduce human beings to their crimes and cages.

Based on surveys of what people in prison wished to be called, the Marshall Project
developed a policy using terms such as “incarcerated people”, “imprisoned people”,
“people in prison”, “people in jail”, “people jailed in X facility.” “formerly incar-
cerated people”, “John Doe, who was incarcerated at FCI Memphis…” “Jane Doe,
who is serving 12 years in San Quentin State Prison…” “Held in Rikers Island Jail
for three years without a trial, Kalief Browder…” “A 34-year-old detained in Los
Angeles” and the like (Solomon 2021).
Most former and current incarcerated persons serve long sentences for what might
be called “status offenses” that harmed no one, and should have been handled in
different, more effective, and humane ways. Moreover, every day, more and more
people are being exonerated after serving decades for crimes they did not commit—
as they have long protested. Just what do they have to be “penitent” about? What
64 6 More Pioneers of Fluidity

reforming brainwashing do they need to endure? What just deserts do they deserve?
The answers to these questions suggest that something like “prison pride”—wearing
imprisonment as a badge of unsung courage like Black Pride, Gay Pride and the
rest—might not be far behind.
We are not there yet, but the trend towards diverse, fluid, constructed identities
by former “prisoners” seems clear as it does for race, gender and disability.
Indeed, if America continues to slide down the syrupy slope towards violently-
competing tribal dictators, we can imagine that America also will begin to have more
and more people imprisoned for their political beliefs and acts. This might especially
be the fate of presidents when they are removed from office, perhaps legally via biased
election procedures with judicial and vigilante support. One consequence might be
even more political prisoners than there are now who are righteously outraged by
their incarceration, and proudly bonded to be alumni of US prisons. They, in turn, will
seek revenge when it comes their turn to rule, imprisoning (or worse) their opposites.
Having spent time in prison may increasingly be a mark of pride and retribution than
it might otherwise.
Justin Smith and Aaron Kinzel suggest a way forward, though they do not point
to it specifically themselves. They document “the unprecedented psychological and
collective harms instituted by the carceral state over the last several decades in the
US: (1) the sheer numbers and racial disproportionality that constitute mass incar-
ceration; (2) the psychological harms that result from conditions such as the absence
of individual autonomy, overcrowding, solitary confinement, and threats of violence;
and (3) the post-imprisonment collateral consequences of political disenfranchise-
ment, as well as restrictions relating to employment, health care and housing that
accumulate to form a state of “carceral citizenship” (Smith and Kinzel 2020: 94).
At the same time, Smith and Kinzel highlight that carceral citizenship also
“allows some (perverse) benefits, including ‘access to goods and services reserved
for formerly incarcerated people and the symbolic benefits of public regard for those
who have made good’. These symbolic benefits are apparent when individuals use
their first-hand experience of incarceration and apply it toward justice activism. While
their analysis rightfully focuses on how ‘carceral citizenship’ relegates individuals
to an alternate legal reality, the observation that carceral expansion has produced an
alternative citizenship category also suggests the potential socio-political power of
some within this collectivity.”
Finally, Smith and Kinzel’s concept of carceral citizenship “relies heavily on
convict criminology to illustrate the importance of formerly incarcerated voices in
the transformation of the carceral system…; on the framework of restorative justice
to argue for the inclusion of those who have experienced (and suffered from) incar-
ceration within collective actions and organizations working toward transformation
of the carceral system…; and on constitutive criminology, which demonstrates that
recognition of the lived experience of marginalized groups moves us toward ‘replace-
ment discourses’ in efforts to reconstruct discourse of ‘crime’ and ‘law’. We use
these various criminological perspectives to conceptualize how ‘carceral citizenship’
contains advantages and not only disadvantages” (Smith and Kinzel 2020: 94).
6.5 Refugees 65

As is the case for most identity studies, evidence here comes largely from narra-
tives, from stories that people tell about themselves and their experiences with
ascribed as well as chosen identities—the obstacles, the joys, the rage, the strength-
ening of character and resolve as new, forbidden, almost unimaginable identities
arise to refute the stories that those in power forced upon them for years.
Michael Torres’ poem, “My brother is asking for stamps”, tells a story of
incarceration from the outside, about his imprisoned brother at first optimistically
looking forward to resuming normal life. He is sorry he couldn’t attend a wedding,
“He says it’s not so bad in here,/says he’s not getting institutionalized,/won’t get
institutionalized, not like/the others”. But

It’s May. It’s March. It’s May. It’s October.

Happy Halloween, Brother. He’s asking,
again, for postage stamps, telling me
he might be programmed, sure, but
who isn’t?

And on through the months and years until

My brother
says he’ll write when he can, he knows
I’m busy. Everyone’s busy. It’s August.
It’s August, and he’s looking for stamps (Torres 2020).

6.5 Refugees

Of all the identities that I have discussed so far, none is more generically concerned
with “who am I?” than refugees. We saw many pages ago when we first discussed
“identity” that “who am I?” is often considered to be the paradigmatic question that
identity seeks to answer. The very fact of being a refugee from someplace to some
other place is disruptive, and the relationship of one‘s identity in a newfoundland
compared to what it was in the homeland is initially traumatic and typically perpetu-
ally problematic. Unlike immigrants who move voluntarily from one place in order
to relocate in a new “forever home”, refugees are, initially, asylum seekers who were
either forced out of what they considered to be their home or fled for their lives
seeking to be let in and protected by other governments or caregivers. Not all asylum
seekers are able to become refugees—they may not have the marks necessary to
be designated a refugee, and/or be refused the status by agents of the governments
whose protection they seek—but all refugees are expected both to be seeking asylum
from specific dangers and to meet the criteria of the receiving country in order to be
admitted.
Article 1 of the United Nations 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
defines a refugee very explicity as a person who,
66 6 More Pioneers of Fluidity

owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality,
membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his
nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection
of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former
habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable, or, owing to such fear, is unwilling
to return to it. (United Nations 1951).

Refugees are unusual in that their identities and the services that they have a right
to receive are determined by international law, and are not primarily the result of
diverse cultural, historical, or personal preferences and controversies as many iden-
tities are. However, it is important to realize that contemporary international law,
though supposedly of global jurisdiction, is primarily a western concept, conceived
in western terms and experiences to solve primarily western problems: “The flight of
so many peoples in the early part of the 20th century, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, and
victims of the First World War, together with a rather restrictive approach to immigra-
tion, forced the hand of states…to support a framework aimed at assisting refugees.
The League of Nations, founded in 1919, assumed responsibility for fulfilling the
aspiration of an international refugee regime. … From a legal perspective, one of the
notable features in the development of international refugee law is the move from
a group based analysis, in the period prior to the Second World War, to an indi-
vidualised approach incorporated post-War” with the creation of the International
Refugee Organization by the United Nations. “The focus on the individual…was
also reflected by the Preamble to the United Nations Charter 1945 in its emphasis
on the ‘dignity and worth of the human person’, and fully endorsed by the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights 1948.” “The individualised approach to refugee status
is undoubtedly a key component of post-1951 legal identity; in the main, the refugee
was to be assessed on his or her own merits, not as part of a wider ethnic group.”
The “legal identity of the refugee has not remained static; rather, it has evolved,
and continues to evolve, as a direct consequence of the movement of peoples across
borders, whether individually or en masse, and of the changing way in which such
movement is perceived by host states” (Stevens 2014: 3, 7).
In Europe, in the years before the Second World War, many Jews left Germany
and allied countries as Nazi policies hardened and deepened. Many sought refuge
in neighboring countries in Europe only to be forced to flee elsewhere, and many
who did not or were not able to leave were killed. Few countries, including the
United States welcomed the refugees, placing many obstacles in their way. The US
Holocaus museum states that historians “estimate that approximately six million
Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, including approximately 2.5 in killing
centers, two million in mass shooting operations, and more than 800,000 in ghettos”
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 2022).
However, immediately after World War II, a disaster of gigantic proportions
happened elsewhere. “In August, 1947, when, after three hundred years in India,
the British finally left, the subcontinent was partitioned into two independent nation
states: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Immediately, there
began one of the greatest migrations in human history, as millions of Muslims trekked
to West and East Pakistan (the latter now known as Bangladesh) while millions of
6.5 Refugees 67

Hindus and Sikhs headed in the opposite direction. Many hundreds of thousands
never made it. Across the Indian subcontinent, communities that had coexisted for
almost a millennium attacked each other in a terrifying outbreak of sectarian violence,
with Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other—a mutual genocide
as unexpected as it was unprecedented. In Punjab and Bengal—…the carnage was
especially intense, with massacres, arson, forced conversions, mass abductions, and
savage sexual violence. … By 1948, as the great migration drew to a close, more
than fifteen million people had been uprooted, and between one and two million were
dead. … the British Army was able to march out of the country with barely a shot
fired and only seven casualties” (Dalrymple 2015).
Wherever existing nations are partitioned—as they were in Africa before, during,
and after the period of western colonization or where nations were divided between
capitalist and communist regimes—refugee flows occured in great or lesser degrees.
Uditi Sen provides an interesting example of what might be called “refugee power”
during the Partition of India. “Within the popular memory of the partition of India,
the division of Bengal continues to evoke themes of political rupture, social tragedy
and nostalgia. The refugees, or more broadly speaking, Hindu migrants from East
Bengal, are often the central agents of such narratives. This article explores how the
scholarship on East Bengali refugees portrays them either as hapless and passive
victims of the regime of rehabilitation, or eulogises them as heroic protagonists who
successfully battle overwhelming adversity to wrest resettlement from a reluctant
state. This split image of the Bengali refugee, as victim/victor, obscures the complex
nature of refugee agency.” “Scattered throughout the reminiscences of the squat-
ters are anecdotes of everyday resistance, negotiation and accommodation, which
together provide a far richer and complex understanding of refugee power” (Sen
2013: 14).
While the definition of a refugee in international law is relatively clear, it is
understood and administrated differently depending in part on where the refugees
are from and why they left, as well as the culture and political interests of the would-
be host nation. Stevens’ paper that we referenced above is focused primarily on the
differences between the way European nations generally interpreted and actualized
the laws legalistically with the way some Arab states acted: “The history of the Middle
East, however defined, is one of conflict, enormous upheaval and mass movement of
peoples, and a basic understanding of the historical roots of displacement is crucial
when exploring centuries of forced migration in the region.” “While the (contentious)
history of Armenian massacres in the late 19th century and early 20th century is well
known, in which it is claimed that between 1.5 and 2 million people were uprooted,
and anywhere between 600,000 and 1.2 million died, widespread ethnic or religious
cleansing or the so-called ‘unmixing of peoples’ undertaken in the same period is
less familiar.” “[W]e find numerous accounts of the forced migration of hundreds of
thousands of people.” “It is claimed that 27% of the Muslim population of Ottoman
Europe were forced to move as a result of the Balkan Wars, while 500,000 perished
on the route from the Caucasus to Anatolia. And this is only a snap-shot of the
many migrations and re-migrations that occurred in the region over a relatively short
period of history” Stevens 2014). Given the incessant wars and coups in the region
68 6 More Pioneers of Fluidity

subsequently, refugee flows out of one Arab country into another as well as into other
parts of Africa, Europe, and elsewhere have been continuous.
Among the most well-known and long-lasting refugees are the Palestinians.
“People may feel an intense subjective affiliation with a national identification,
particularly in a case like that of the Palestinians, deprived of their homeland by
colonialist negation. But even though the duration of their exile increases Palestinian
refugees’ desire for Palestine, reinforcing their sense of shared identification, yet
it simultaneously deepens colorings of ‘self-identification’ though different loca-
tions, class positions; politics and ideologies. This poses the likelihood of a growing
gap between a shared ‘Palestinianness’ and differing class, regional, political or
individual interests.”
“Some reject the term refugee as humiliating, but others affirm it as signifying
that they belong in Palestine and not in Lebanon. From a recent recording in Bourj
al-Barajneh: “Q: The word refugee, do you accept it as a part of your identity, or do
you refuse it? A: Of course (I accept). The word refugee means that I’m Palestinian,
and it specifies from which area. We must cling to it”. However another speaker
said: “No, of course I refuse it. It means that others are higher than me. We’re on
the ground, they are in the sky” (Sayegh 2012: 13, 19). “The refugees are sick of
being the quintessential refugee question for all of these years. They just want to live
and to be allowed to live.” Laila, a 35-year-old Palestinian refugee in the West Bank
(Beckerle 2012: 13).
Turning to Stevens again, she says “A fascinating example is provided by the Iraqis
who fled the first and second Gulf Wars in 1991 and 2003….” “Interestingly, certainly
in the early days of the migration, Iraqis preferred to be seen as guests, since they too
associated the ‘refugee’ nomenclature with a particular form of refugeehood—that
of Palestinian hardship and victimhood. The idea of the refugee as guest has deep-
seated cultural and religious roots.” “The Qur’an requires that refugees and migrants
be welcomed and treated well, and should not be refused admission, rejected at the
borders, or sent back to the country of origin.” “The obligation to grant asylum applies
to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to rich and to poor. It is non-discriminating. In
Islam, both the State and the individual can grant asylum.” “The Qur’anic principle
of asylum is not only a religious tenet but has been legalised through Shari’ah Law.”
(Stevens 2014: 20, 22).
While the identity of being a refugee may seem clear cut in international law
though flexible in administration, asylum seekers and refugees literally come from
everywhere in the world and seek refuge anywhere else. Similarly, refugees from
many very different parts of the world, fleeing from different specific regions, with
different languages, cultures, talents, and dreams may all end up in exactly the same
spot. If so, they need to negotiate not only the relationship between their cultural
expectations and those of the host culture (which may be monocultural or richly
culturally diverse) as well as with those of all the other persons with whom they
must interact. Differences in skin color, accent, clothing, food, class, caste, education,
age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and previous condition of servitude within
each of the different interacting people results in a far greater degree of identity
confusion—or richness—than that of any of the other identity groups or individuals
6.5 Refugees 69

considered. However, “In contrast to the mostly ‘risk’-focused literature on refugees,

the extant literature on biculturalism and adaptation points to positive outcomes of
living in ‘two worlds,’ especially what is known as the ‘immigration advantage’ or
‘biculturalism paradox’” (Hayes and Endale 2018: 284).
As a consequence there is something that can be called the “emergent newcomer
identity theme”: “You create your own culture here, because you do not belong there
anymore and you do not belong here. So, you create your own world. Typically, I
tend to have friends that have a similar background as myself. My friends live here,
but they are from another place. We talk about there and we live here, and we do
not belong anywhere, except the place you have invented, your own small world.”
However, they quote Nedim Karakayali as commenting that “The real problem with
the two-worlds thesis is not its argument that immigrant children feel caught between
two worlds, but its failure to note that this experience follows from the condition of
living in a world where most people believe that there are only two worlds” whereas
there are vastly more (Hayes and Endale 2018: 288, 289).
“This tension highlights the importance that host communities, policy, and culture
play in the process of identity formation. For example, studies conducted in the United
States have a different context than those in Canada, especially as it relates to cultural
practices and policies about ‘assimilation’ versus ‘acculturation’”. “…Canadian legal
processes and cultural attitudes tend toward acculturation and ‘mosaic approaches’
to multi-culturalism, in contrast to the U.S. approach of assimilation and a ‘melting
pot’” (Hayes and Endale 2018: 285).
Shannon Daniels states that “Although some views of identity assume that traits
could be assigned to cultural groups and one’s identity remains consistent across
time and space, more nuanced views of identity reject these notions and suggest that
identity is fluid, multifaceted, and informed by one’s view of oneself and the social
construction of identity in relation with others and the world.” Each person’s identity
includes a multitude of selves “that each person continues to deepen, expand upon,
and understand his or her identity across the life span.” …“resettled refugees often
experience discourses of essentialization that unfairly and inaccurately homogenize
groups of individuals.”
“[A]gency is central to identity and agency involves not only a response to one’s
past and current worlds, but also a vision for one’s future”. Her work with refugee
youth focused on “the visions youth have for their futures and how they see them-
selves in terms of being able to make their visions a reality from which three major
themes emerged. … First, the youth were particularly interested in improving the
lives of those around them. Second, the youth showed a deep awareness of social
problems and a willingness to transform society. Finally, the youth clearly held strong
beliefs in their capabilities and were envisioning rich futures for their lives. Although
these three themes are overlapping and intertwining in their nature, they show how
the teenagers demonstrated agency and shared their identity in how they talked and
wrote about their futures.” “All of the teenagers recognized that accomplishing their
dreams would be difficult while also showing confidence in their own abilities to
persevere and do what is needed to enact their visions of the future” (Daniel 2019:
75, 79).
70 6 More Pioneers of Fluidity

Similarly, Laura Moran worked with refugee children in Australia. “[T]hree

siblings of Karen descent discussed how best to characterize their own sense of
national and cultural belonging. The eldest, Catalina, explained, ‘I just call myself
Karen. I am not white people.’ Her younger brother, Thakin, answered, ‘I’m
Australian. I wanna be Aussie!’ And Jessica, the youngest, offered, ‘I have both. We
like both foods now, we like Aussie food too, don’t we?’ They went back and forth
in this way for some time. Each sibling was challenging one another’s perspective on
what establishes belonging—what elements of a person’s experience or background
constitute a sense of identity. … It was certainly apparent that a range of cultural,
ethnic, and racial influences coalesced in the formulations of these young people’s
sense of themselves. However, they oscillated in their expressions of identity between
emphasizing their ability to pick and choose from such influences—to “freestyle,” as
some of them described it—and downplaying this flexibility in favor of presenting
their racial and ethnic identity as fixed and binding. “By representing themselves in
racialized ways and alternately ‘inhabiting’ or ‘vacating’ their racial and ethnic back-
grounds, young people enabled a multiplicity of options for how and to whom they
might assert a sense of belonging.” “[T]heir emphasis on sameness and difference
through hybridized and essentialized representations was not static. As they engaged
with tensions of belonging, their essentialized and hybridized representations often
merged, overlapped, and occasionally contradicted one another. And in their use of a
range of cultural preferences in the presentation of themselves as a cohesive, essen-
tialized group, these young people were at the same time engaging in hybridizing
practices” (Moran 2020: 141, 143).
The writing and activism of Hannah Arendt after World War II has had tremen-
dous influence in many areas, including refugees. “Refugees driven from country
to country represent the vanguard of their people—if they keep their identity”.
According to Cindy Horst and Odin Lysaker, “Arendt is preoccupied not only with
dark times, but also with what she terms ‘miracles’ and ‘hope’ for the future, which
is stated in The Human Condition. She is concerned not only with the breakdown of
citizenship rights and the loss of home, occupation, language and community, but also
with what she takes to be humans’ freedom in terms of natality.” “By natality, Arendt
means several things, such as being born into a shared world and, through becoming
newly born, introducing something entirely unique into that world with respect to an
individual’s diverse characteristics (i.e. the human condition of plurality). The human
condition of natality, to Arendt, is what she terms as ‘new beginnings’ or ‘beginning
anew’, which involves a freedom to act, but also to raise questions about customs or
traditions and a capacity to introduce innovative and unpredicted ways of acting and
interacting in the world.” “The Arendtian definition is promising for understanding
the figure of the refugee as pariah as well as vanguard…. New beginnings involve
a freedom to act, to introduce innovative and unpredicted ways of being and acting
in the world. This freedom is expressed clearly in the actions that refugees take—
to redress the situation of other refugees or marginalized groups, for example—that
show a deep sense of responsibility as well as an inability to do nothing. This freedom
to act and interact offers a clear hope for a future of new beginnings and miracles”
(Horst and Lysaker 2019: 70, 71, 82).
6.6 Environmental Refugees 71

Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis and Ocean Vuong are the co-founders of the amorphous
Center for Refugee Poetics. Davis quotes from “Self-help for fellow refugees” by
Li-Young Lee. Lee’s poem describes a son watching his father being hauled away
by “armed men” whereupon his mother buries the boy’s face in her skirt to shelter
him from the wrenching scene. Davis ends a fragment of the poem:
And I bet you can’t say
what language your father spoke
when he shouted to your mother
from the back of the truck, “let the boy see!” (Davis 2022).

6.6 Environmental Refugees

There is no such thing as “environmental refugees” even though they exist and have
pleaded for aid and relief before various national and international tribunals with no
success. Neither the term, “environmental refugee”, nor anything like it is included
in the international law documents that define who refugees are and what rights they
have. Therefore they do not exist in the formal, judiciable way that refugees do. The
term does not appear to have been written into the law of any nation. The breadth of
the term even informally is highly contestable. On its face, the term “environment”
combined with “refugees” seems to suggest people (in groups or as individuals?)
who are forced to leave their home and seek settlement elsewhere because of a wide
range of possible, persistent, existing or future environmental factors—from drought,
famine, floods, fires, and hurricanes to climate change that makes it impossible to
plan and act on the basis of past climate patterns, and sea level rise and intrusion that
is devouring costal zones in most parts of the world as well being on the verge of
swallowing entire island nations in the Pacific, Indian, and other oceans. “There is no
consensus today on a definition of the term ‘environmental refugees’ since 1985 when
it officially appeared. Several descriptions such as ecological refugees, environmental
refugees, climate refugees, eco-refugees, climate évacué, environmental migrants,
displaced persons due to a natural disaster, environmentally displaced persons” exist
(Sahinkuye 2019).
As we have seen, The United Nations 1951 Convention Relating to the Status
of Refugees defines what a refugee is. “There are four main components of this
definition. The first is that the person must be outside their country of nationality or
former habitual residence. Second, the person must fear persecution. Third, the fear
of persecution must be for reasons of ‘race’, nationality, religion, membership of a
particular social group or political opinion. Fourth, the fear must be well founded.
This definition and its components do not include individuals who flee their homeland
or habitual residence because of environmental change” (McNamara 2007).
Who the phrase covers and what are considered the causes for people to flee
their land have changed considerably over time. “Much of the [early] writing on the
topic introduced neo-Malthusian concerns, linking population growth with social
72 6 More Pioneers of Fluidity

and economic crisis, and with out-migration” (Morrissey 2012). Since then the term
has taken on many meanings. At the present time it often refers to migrants who
are already suffering from, or believe they are about to be dislocated by, the effects
of global warming and climate change, including significant sea level rise. This is
especially the case for the small island nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu in the south
Pacific. These are fragile atolls where the highest point of ground until recently
was only about two meters above mean sea level, often experiencing damage from
waves and flooding during certain high tides and especially hurricanes. Though
independent nations by international law, these two have a special relationship with
New Zealand. Many of their citizens work in New Zealand or frequently travel there.
They have sought relief, so far unsuccessfully, from courts and tribunals in New
Zealand. They and other Pacific Islanders have pleaded their case before the United
Nations. Representatives from the Maldives, in the Indian ocean, have also actively
sought anticipation action from the UN. Newtok, Alaska, has been losing ground to
the sea at such a dangerous rate that land was acquired for a new townsite called
Mertarvik on Nelson Island about 14 km away. “The goal is to complete relocation
by 2023” (Newtok 2021).
This is not just an international phenomenon. Americans are already on the move
within the US because of the impacts of climate change now, including wildfires,
floods, droughts, and searing heat. Like all refugees, they are facing rejection and
resentment as well as welcome in their new homes. Jesse Keenan of Tulane Univer-
sity’s School of Architecture estimates “that 50 million Americans could eventually
move within the country to regions such as New England or the Upper Midwest in
search of a haven from severe climate impacts. He predicted that migration driven
by increasingly uninhabitable coastal areas is likely to happen sooner rather than
later…” (Hurdle 2022).
Much of the literature on environmental refugees, whether pro or con the designa-
tion, points out that there is no clear perpetrator for victims to blame, as is required in
order to claim to be a refugee. Elizabeth Keyes points out that “The Convention defi-
nition of a refugee requires not just that people face severe harm, but that the harm is
happening because of a protected characteristic: race, religion, nationality, political
opinion, or membership in a particular social group. This nexus between the harm and
the protected characteristic is where a casual use of the term “environmental refugee”
reveals its imprecision.” “But who is the agent persecuting the people of Kiribati?
Under the Refugee Convention, it needs to be either the government itself, or a private
entity the government is unable or unwilling to control” (Keyes 2019: 4, 5).
Francois Gemenne adds that “Even if humans have indeed replaced natural drivers
of changes as the principal agents of changes on this planet, most humans are actually
the victims of these changes, and not their agents.” “In our attempt to stress the agency
of the migrants, we had forgotten the responsibility that we had towards them, because
we humans have become the main agents of transformation of the Earth. And the
result of this transformation has been to make their places on the Earth increasingly
uninhabitable for a growing number of people.” “Industrialised nations have thus little
incentive to act; our agency is undone by our self-interest” (Gemenne 2015: 1, 2).
6.6 Environmental Refugees 73

Keyes, Morrissey and others show that there are ways the existing law on refugees
might be interpreted to include environmental refugees. For example, Keyes states,
“Government actions and inactions on climate often affect different sub-groups of the
country differently and are classic examples of discrimination; such discrimination
might rise to the level of persecution if it means members of those sub-groups are
reasonably fearful for their future existence.” “[C]limate change will likely give rise
to new political groups and dynamics and, therefore, to political opinions opposed
to the direct and indirect government policies and actions on climate-change…. [A]
party member motivated by a climate-change issue, who fears persecutory retalia-
tion from the government because of their political opinions, presents a straightfor-
ward application of the Refugee Convention.” “[W]omen may endure special kinds
of harms, distinct from the general population.” The Convention states that it is
necessary “to prove that the feared harm would happen because of that protected
characteristic.” “It is beyond reasonable dispute that structural racism explains why
African-Americans were more vulnerable to Hurricane Katrina’s impacts than any
other group in New Orleans” (Keyes 2019: 8, 12–15).
Morrissey in his review of the contentious positions about the existence and proper
status of people who flee their homes because of existing or impending environ-
mental destruction concludes that in spite of all the disagreements, “The ‘debate on
environmental refugees’ is really a debate about how a relationship is represented,
and less about the nature of the relationship itself .” “There is virtually no debate
about whether environmental change, or stress, impacts on decisions about human
mobility. Such a position is accepted, even by the fiercest critics of the notion of an
‘environmental refugee’” (Morrissey 2012: 40, 45).
That may be so among scholars primarily focusing on environmental refugees,
but there are many other people who deny there are any environmental reasons for
migration: climate change is a hoax, an economic scam, a communist plot to stop
capitalist economic growth, to which others also add that it is a clever way to permit
undesirable immigration.
As we saw, refugees seeking asylum from the horrors of Nazi Germany and,
later, from Communism were typically lauded and greeted with open arms in the US
and elsewhere. But with Fall of the Wall in 1990, the “flood” of refugees from the
Balkan countries engulfed in civil war, and the flight of Syrians and others out of the
Middle East and then various killing fields in Africa, anti-immigrant sentiment began
to grow and is still growing. Donald Trump very successfully demonized asylum
seekers from South and Central America as thieves and rapists who would become
dependent on the honest labor of real Americans for their food, board, education,
and health care—when they were not actively stealing real jobs from real Americans
and working, poorly, for less pay and in squalid situations.
At this moment of writing, some of the world is outraged by the military attack of
Ukraine by Russia and the resulting flow of refugees from Ukraine to far-off as well
as neighboring nations. Some observers have pointed out how different America’s
prompt welcoming of these White brothers and sisters is compared to the walls of
rejection built along America’s southern borders and the near exclusion of refugees
of color from the Middle East and Africa to equally-horrifying barbaric slaughter.
74 6 More Pioneers of Fluidity

Most refugees after World War Two until the collapse of communism in 1990 were
White. Most since then are not. Strong sentiment against environmental refugees
enables climate change deniers and racist anti-immigrants to join forces, if they are
not basically the same people to begin with.
On the other hand as more and more people in so-called “developed nations”
personally experience the tragedies of climate change, the distinction between who
caused the disruption and who suffers from it that marks the debate so far may
change. There is no doubt that the rich and powerful will use their resources to
buffer themselves from the worst consequences of climate change for as long as
they can, but if the realities of the Anthropocene Epoch are as widespread, rapid,
and disruptive as I think they will be, there may be no place on or off Earth where
anyone can hide. At the present time, the winning position between welcoming and
denying environmental refugees may all be on one side. It seems to me we may all be
environmental refugees running in circles looking for safe haven, unless we respond
more positively and powerfully to climate change than anyone is doing or seriously
proposing now, and/or until we all find other niches on other planets that are more
hospitable to humans with their current biological/environmental limitations as they
are now.
Of course the entire controversy about immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees and
environmental refugees is based on the pathology of past- and revenge-oriented
identity sentiments and politics that I seek to have us to transcend. Why do we
unthinkingly perpetuate—worship—the form and powers of nation-states as we do?
Surely there are many other forms of governance beyond the nation-state—as well as
beyond democracy or any other current or historical system that is more appropriate
for the challenges and opportunities of the Anthropocene Epoch.
As a political scientist, I have taught graduate and undergraduate courses on new
governance design for fifty years. Among other things, I encourage my students to
ignore the historical and current philosophies, ideologies, structures and processes of
governance and re-think them from all from the basic assumptions and foundations
on up, starting with the basic unit of analysis today. The unit of analysis for all current
governance is the obsolete European sovereign nation-state system that was created
several hundred years ago to solve a political problem in Europe. It is an unnatural,
awkward invention that causes a great deal of harm, internally and externally. It does
not naturally fit many communities now. China does not consider itself to be merely
one nation among others. The fundamental unit for Islam is the Ummah —the
community of believers worldwide. Both China and Islam have learned how to fit into
the old European system for a while, but many people, such as myself, feel affinity
both to more local communities (Honolulu) and globally to the Earth and all life on
it, and not to the United States of America. Every time I must pass through border
control I feel demeaned and insulted by agents of the US government as well as by
those of all other governments. Why not consider something other than the nation-
state as the basis of governance design? Why not make the Unit of Analysis—the
individual person, family, identity group (ethnic, religious, linguistic, occupational,
virtual, or other), local physical community, bioregion, Earth, inner solar system,
solar system, Milky Way Galaxy, or intergalactic cosmos? Or why not think smaller
References 75

and more intimately—DNA, cells, microbes, fungi, and viruses who rule inside each
of us? Or smaller still—molecules, atoms, and quarks?
Among others, Joseph Carens does not ask us to think that extragantly but made a
strong case several years ago for open borders (Carens 1987). He has elaborated on
his views in several fora. His fundmental position, with which I agree in principle,
is this:
In principle, borders should generally be open and people should normally be free to leave
their country of origin and settle wherever they choose. In many ways, citizenship in Western
democracies is the modern equivalent of feudal class privilege—an inherited status that
greatly enhances one’s life chances. To be born a citizen of a rich state in Europe or North
America is like being born into the nobility (even though many of us belong to the lesser
nobility). To be born a citizen of a poor country in Asia or Africa is like being born into
the peasantry in the Middle Ages.... Like feudal birthright privileges, contemporary social
arrangements not only grant great advantages on the basis of birth but also entrench these
advantages by legally restricting mobility, making it extremely difficult for those born into a
socially disadvantaged position to overcome that disadvantage, no matter how talented they
are or how hard they work. Like feudal practices, these contemporary social arrangements
are hard to justify when one thinks about them closely (Carens 2015).

His position can be made even stronger, I believe, for environmental refugees. Climate
change and its consequences are in large part caused by human action, specifi-
cally by actions within the so-called developed and developing nations. It was the
processes of “development” that caused the Earth‘s climate to change—that ended
the temperate and relatively stable climates of the Holocene Epoch and thrust all of
us into the profound uncertainties of Anthropocene Epoch. Development designates
the processes that enabled some people in some nations to become extremely rich
while many people in the rich nations, and many more people in many other nations,
were emmiserated—indeed, forcibly “de-developed” and required to live marginally
in marginal lands that now are the first to suffer from the initial impacts of climate
change. There is no doubt these pioneers should be the first also to leave their homes
and seek refuge in places that caused them to flee but have not yet had to suffer the
consequences of their behavior.

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Chapter 7
Destination Identities

Abstract Creating futures-oriented identities and pathways, called destination iden-

tities. The importance of personal and societal images of the futures. The role of
science fact and fiction in both inspiring and thwarting—especially in thwarting and
distorting—compelling, actionable images of preferred futures for individuals and
communities.

Keywords Brave New World · Destination identities · Futures studies · Games ·

Images · Identity · International Space University · Life stage ceremonies ·
Metaverse · Science fiction · Space fiction · Stories · Universities · Virtual reality

In “Destination Identity: Futures Images as Social Identity”, Mohsen Taheri Demneh

and Dennis Ray Morgan point out that “Very little research has been carried out on
the role images of the future play in shaping identity”. “A cursory look at the kind
of research carried out in the field of identity reveals that the main emphasis has
been placed on similarities acquired from the past. Until recently, this fundamental
assumption remained unquestioned….” They add that it is ironic indeed that “people
have absolutely no choice in the selection of an identity that they, nonetheless, often
spend their lives defending.”
However, Demneh and Morgan demonstrate that identities also originate from
“images of the future, which are fluid and flexible; hence they are malleable, and once
people become aware of them, they can consciously participate in social critique and
reconstruction of these images of the future and achieve a new identity….Destination
identity includes identifying those aspects of images of the future that can help build
new identities, to create and expand on shared public images on the basis of shared
values and expectations, while focusing on redefining identities based on shared
images of the future” (Demneh and Morgan 2018: 56, 58, 60).
Any good futurist will tell you that the subject matter of the academic and
consulting discipline called “futures studies” is not “the future”. Absent time travel, or
something similar, “The Future” does not exist as a thing to be studied in any sensible
use of the term. What futurist study empirically are “images” of the future—hopes,
fears, beliefs about “the future”—which are numerous, and found in articles, books,
poems, songs, stories, prayers, movies, videos, laws, and actions. Some images

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 79

J. Dator, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds,
Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_7
80 7 Destination Identities

express deep myths from the origins of certain cultures but not of others. Some
images are new and fleeting.
But the one arena of time and space each of us, individually and collectively,
appears to have some agency and responsibility is not the past, or even the present,
but the future. Certain images of the future provoke certain actions and other images
provoke other actions. The impact of the actions then may modify old images or
create new ones. Studying these images and their consequences is the heart and soul
of futures studies. Fred Polak, a pioneering Dutch futurist, is credited with pointing
out the centrality of images of the future to the fate of each culture. Certain images
are positive and compelling, others are negative and discouraging. Cultures need
positive images to thrive (Polak 1961).
So do individuals. Each individual’s images of the futures are strongly influenced
by those of their culture over all, as well as by images held and taught by their family,
friends, school, religion, ethnicity, gender, class…. Each individual’s own experi-
ences in life shape their images of the future as well. Seldom are images specifically
taught, but they are difficult to escape since they supersaturate the environments in
which each of us live.
Mohsen Taheri Demneh and Zahra Heidari Darani want to do something about
that. They want the socialization process of children to be infused with the exploration
of images and identities fit for their future, and not with the mindless indoctrination
into one set of past identities with the exclusion of—indeed antipathy towards—
all other images and identities. The authors use the term “destination identities”
to describe the futures-oriented, questing, becoming nature of this process and of
the identities themselves. “Destination identity includes identifying those aspects
of images of the future that can help build new identities, to create and expand on
shared public images on the basis of shared values and expectations, while focusing
on redefining identities based on shared images of the future.” Or, as they put it in
the introduction to their 2020 article, “Our image of the future often determines our
current actions and plans. So, perhaps, when we think about the future or talk about
the future, our children should also have a major part in the debate. We think about
their future, their life, their education, and their prosperity and try to create a better
future for them, but do they, as bona fide owners of the future, have a say in their
preferred future?” (Demneh and Darani 2020).
I have been inspired by their work to move beyond this goal. Shouldn’t we invent
processes by which children are encouraged to become explorers of many different
identities, new and old, but not demon-possessed by any one; not only to tolerate
difference, but also actively to support and become people who experiment with
identities different from those ascribed to them; to become part of communities in
constant creation and re-creation of preferred futures as well as able to anticipate and
thrive whatever the future turns out to be?
Yes. I think we should. Moreover, I believe that Shannon Daniel, Laura Mora
and others who we quoted above were engaging their young refugees in something
like exploring destination images. We need this to become a universal habit of the
young—and old—everywhere, I believe.
7.1 Fact, Fiction and Imagining Future Destinations 81

I believe the normal socialization processes of the present—educational material

(texts, audio-visuals, activities) and programs including formal schools, religious or
political organizations, youth clubs of all kinds (scouting, athletic, environmental,
civic, rehabilitative and the rest)—should be infused with opportunities to explore
alternative identities and preferred futures. Ceremonies like baptism, confirmation,
bar or bat mitzvah, engagement, weddings and other “life stage” ceremonies that
are common in all cultures in different ways should be refocused so that human
becomings celebrate new identities with new names, genders, ethnicities and the like
throughout their life.
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett states that “[t]he pervasiveness of life stage concepts in
human societies indicates that they have an important function as master narra-
tives, which help to structure social expectations and to provide individuals with a
framework for developing a personal identity.” (Jensen Arnett 2016: 291). All of the
examples Arnett presents are age-related and linear (and many male-specific). So it
is not the specific examples that are important here, but rather the concept and its
link to identity.

7.1 Fact, Fiction and Imagining Future Destinations

When we were about to begin on our quest to move beyond predetermined identity,
many pages above, I wrote:
In order to help bring a carefully articulated preferred future into reality, one
needs to address three things—(1) Identify processes that are moving in the direction
of our preferred future that we can utilize and strengthen; (2) Identify processes that
are opposed to our preferred future that we can try to change, overcome, neutralize,
or recruit; (3) Identify new processes that need to be invented, tested, and used in
order to move forward.
We have already considered many examples of those who have moved beyond
ascribed human beings to chosen and flexible human becomings. We will identity
other waves that can help us surf towards this future. But the discussion here about
the key role of images of the future in this process (and in futures studies generally),
points to one of the biggest obstacles facing us if we wish to help people choose
their own identities and futures and not to be overly influenced by old stale images—
especially commodified ones. Here we face two huge barriers. One is commercial
advertising and the other is science fiction—indeed, all fiction. Both are extremely
successful in colonizing our images of the futures. Predetermining our images of the
futures is the very purpose of advertising, and the powerful effect if not necessarily
the intention of fiction.
Billions of dollars are spent every day convincing you to want to be something
the product advertised can enable you to be—to live in a future where the product
will help you both fit in and stand out. Make you healthy, beautiful, strong, sexy,
successful, rich, loved, admired, believed, elected in accordance to the norms of the
accompanying future.
82 7 Destination Identities

But fiction and especially science fiction is something else entirely, and, like so
many things about the present, it just sort of snuck up on us without our knowing,
we frogs happily basking in the warming waters of increasingly well-crafted and
seductively produced stories.
You probably have spent a lot of time playing electronic games. If you have been
at it for many years, you have seen the games progress from very clunky cartoon-
like qualities to environments that are uncanningly lifelike in all aspects. The deep
complexity—as well as the stunning graphics—of many of these games is astounding.
It is fitting that the death of one of the greatest coaches of American Football, John
Madden, was lauded in 2021 not only for the prowess of his actual teams involving
humans battling it out in (more or less) real time in (less and less) real environments
and with very real injuries and deaths, but also especially for the increase in the
“reality” of his NFL Football video games from their first release in 1988 onward.
These games were among the harbingers of “virtual reality” and what is now
being touted as the Metaverse. However it is very important to understand that well
before videogames were created, all “reality” already was “virtual reality.” Society
is very much a social invention and not an objective entity that impresses itself
the same way on everyone. What you think you know about the world, you know
almost entirely because of the way it has been constructed for you by your culture—
its myths and beliefs, your language, your family, school, religion, and your own
personal experiences and memories (often false!) of them.
Whatever may be objectively “real” “out there” will never be fully known to you or
anyone except by the devices and metaphors through which each human community
perceives and communicates it. That there is some kind of a “real” reality outside of
“us” seems highly likely, given the power of modern science to measure and control
“it.” As the doubting Bishop Berkeley was challenged, if you don’t think that stone
there is real, go ahead and kick it. The pain might change your mind—since your
mind didn’t change the stone.
All cultures tell stories, make up dramas and plays, carve statutes and form other
visual images, sing songs, beat drums, blow horns, invent rituals, give explanations
for events, and in many other ways embellish the bare “facts” of every simple “real”
sensory experience. Since the stories one culture tells often differ markedly from the
ones other cultures tell, people often live in very different realities constructed by
their language and culture.
Nonetheless, we recently have become even more extraordinary storytellers
because of technologies that have made storytelling even more vivid and multisen-
sory than what was possible in the old days when you could only speak, sing, dance,
carve, mold, or paint. It was the printing press that really made “fiction” possible.
Before that time, almost all stories were recited and heard or performed and observed.
Very few merely popular “stories” were ever written down. Even after writing was
invented (a long, slow process) some thousands of years ago, most people did not
know how to read and write. Some stories were handwritten and laboriously copied
(introducing numerous alterations from copy to copy), but writing was generally
preserved for “serious”, “real”, and “true” things like laws, religious documents,
economic accounting, and pornography.
7.1 Fact, Fiction and Imagining Future Destinations 83

With the invention and then widespread use of the printing press, the production
and spread information and disinformation became comparatively cheap and abun-
dant so that not only serious fact and ennobling fiction but also “trashy” novels—be
they “romances” or “westerns” or “murder mysteries” or “science fiction”—began to
flow forth, first as a trickle and then as a flood. It has now become a deluge, engulfing
and drowning “reality” in a swift, deepening torrent of fiction. With the subsequent
invention of the social technology called the public school system, everyone was
taught how to read or write. Some began to read and write not just what they were
taught was proper but rather whatever they wanted to read or write. While that might
be law, religious documents, and scientific tomes for some, it was titillating fiction
for most.
It is worthwhile to reflect on why schools and universities were created. None of
the first few universities in the colonial and early United States were public univer-
sities intended to produce literate, informed citizens. They were each created by one
Christian denomination or another. They were based largely on the model of Oxford
and Cambridge Universities in England in terms of faculty, curriculum and campus
design. The very first, Harvard University, was established in 1636 to “produce not
only ministers but Christian gentlemen who would be civic leaders”. The College
of William and Mary was created in 1693 with the mission to “raise youth ‘in good
Letters and Manners’ and propagate Christianity among the Western Indians”. Yale
(1701) was intended to produce men “fitted for Public employment in both Church &
Civil State”. The curriculum of all three was British-style classical, based on the Latin
and Greek language and literature. Moreover, while the British colleges of the time
were self-governing, none was in the United States. All were ruled by a board of
overseers made up of magistrates and ministers whose duty it was to see that the
teachers and scholars kept the faith of their founding denomination (Hofstadter and
Smith 1961a: 2).
There was a flurry of new private universities in the immediate prerevolutionary
period. All of these were broadly Christian-based but not narrowly denominational,
this being a low period in American Christianity where a kind of Newtonian deism
was widespread. Interestingly, the United States has never had a national university,
like most countries do, much less a set of national universities spread throughout the
nation, although one was suggested by Washington, Madison, and a committee of
Congress in 1812.
The first specifically secular university in America was the University of Virginia
(1817) with Thomas Jefferson as its architect in all senses of the word. It was also the
first university in the United States with what could be considered to be a “modern”
curriculum—not based on the ancient classics but on more practical and liberating
arts and sciences.
The 19th century marked the rapid expansion of the United States from the Atlantic
seaboard across the mountains to the Midwestern prairies. The 19th century also
saw what is called “The Great Awakening”—a mighty religious revival that swept
across the frontier and the South. This resulted in the revitalized flowering of small
denominational and private colleges in the early 19th century. Thirty-seven church
84 7 Destination Identities

colleges were created in Ohio alone from 1833 to 1852 and many more elsewhere in
the Midwest and South.
Throughout this period, there was considerable controversy about the content
of the curriculum—should it be mainly classical or practical, or religious or
secular; about “lazy students”, “educational quacks” and grade inflation; and about
governance (who controls the curriculum—the faculty or funders?).
One of the most important developments in higher education in the United States
was the Morrill Land-Grant Act, passed by the United States Congress in 1862 during
the American Civil War when the absent southern representatives could not object to
the federal government’s “interference” in the right of each state to control education
within its borders. According to the Act, 30,000 acres of land for each member of
Congress were to be set aside in each new state to fund colleges of agriculture
and mechanics, which also teach the humanities and practical arts, to uplift ordinary
citizens. The mission of each land-grant university was to be a secular place of higher
education dedicated to creating through research and teaching a powerful, industrial
nation and state.
Developments in Germany during this time also greatly influenced the direction
of higher education in the United States. In many ways, Germany was the first
consciously-industrializing state—the first to use higher education to transform a
loose agricultural country into a focused industrial state. Germany did this, in part,
by creating the first research universities and graduate schools, such as Berlin (1810),
based on Wissenschaft, Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit—the ideals of Wilhelm von
Humboldt and Friedrich Schleiermacher. “A German university has one and only
one object: to train thinkers. It does not aim at producing poets, painters, sculptors,
engineers, miners, architects, bankers, manufacturers. There are other schools for
that” (Hofstadter and Smith 1961b: 571).
In the United States, Johns Hopkins (1876), Stanford (1885) and Chicago (1890)
were created based on the German model while Harvard, Yale, Princeton and many
more redefined their mission, participants, pedagogy and the rest according to that
model. Higher education was now to be based on science, specialization, depart-
mentalization, professionalism and academic freedom (with many struggles, espe-
cially between advocates of “liberal education” and those of professionalization) with
the aim of enabling the United States to have the knowledge and human resources
necessary to rule the world economically and militarily.
A major development after World War I (1914–1918) was the rise of a “general
education” core curriculum that all students needed to master, along with a “disci-
plinary major”, in order to get a college degree. By the middle of the 20th Century,
the core curriculum of most universities had entirely lost its original purpose of incul-
cating students into religious and cultural truths. This was made blantly clear when
universities in the UK and US began creating Departments of English that solemnly
taught fictional literature written or translated into the English language. Students
were typically required to take at least one such course and encouraged to take more.
That is to say, students were required no longer expected to “pursue truth.” They
were required to study lies and learn how to produce compelling lies of their own.
7.2 Space Fiction Versus Fact (Based on Dator 2017) 85

A truly counter-intuitive development. Lie-making and lie-devouring swept aside

truth-seeking and telling.
Over the 18th and especially 19th Centuries, more and more people began to spend
more and more of their time in more and more fictional places—in virtual realities—
and not in the “real” reality of their five senses. Then, in the 20th Century came the
radio, and movies, and television, and board games (like Monopoly), and electronic
games, and eventually in the 21st Century, social media, the death of expertise,
and the replacement of an “information society” by a “dream society”—or, rather,
varieties of competing dream societies—Netflix and TikTok versus Trumpettes and
Fox, with the Metavision apparently about to zoom into metaview.
Among other lessons, all of this has taught us how to live comfortably in many
alternative presents with many changing identites. This could help us gain perspective
and perhaps crucial distance from the single “crackpot realism” that “authoritarian”
rulers, priests, teachers, and parents may wish to impose. We can and do “escape”
from the boring real reality of our everyday lives by reading, watching television,
playing electronic games and, increasingly, producing images for others to enjoy.
These are all developments moving in the direction I am seeking. But the same
developments can move even more powerfully against my goals as well.

7.2 Space Fiction Versus Fact (Based on Dator 2017)

Consider the situation of space fiction, a substantial subdivision of science fiction.

For twenty years, I lectured on various topics in the space humanities, including
space art, poetry, dance, songs, and fiction at the International Space University
in Strasbourg, France. Dreams of space—of not-Earth, I prefer to call it and will
generally label it in this monograph from now on—have inspired some humans
over the ages. Dream-inspired pioneers made space travel a reality in the mid 20th
Century. Without those dreams, there would be no space programs of the kind we
have and at the historical moment they emerged as reality. At the same time, without
the science and technology that enabled humans to loose the bonds of Earth, humans
would still only be dreaming of space while never going to the Moon and beyond.
Science and technology are themselves the products of human dreams and desires.
Dreams, beliefs, science, and technology—along with natural and human resources
harnessed by human will (mainly economic and military national competitiveness)
and labor—were all required to attain and maintain our first space activities.
Every culture on Earth has some kind of foundational explanation for the creation
of Earth and of humans. Some cultures tell of voyages between Earth and not-Earth.
The idea that there are worlds and beings not of this Earth which interact with
humans and Earth is very widespread across the globe and has persisted for a very
long time. Modern space fiction is just one current way by which very old stories are
being told and retold dressed up with contemporary ideas and technologies. These
stories, old and new, influence the way we think about current space exploration
and their future. In the west, these stories are Manichean—stories about conflict and
86 7 Destination Identities

wars between good and evil with nothing in between—and waged by authoritarian
superheroes against despotic anti-heroes, glorifying individuals with superhuman
powers for absolutely good or absolute evil.
Space fiction, almost by definition, involves boldly going. Well before the modern
era, western culture had stories about voyages of discovery. Heroes left home, traveled
through strange times and places, overcame many adversities and had many excep-
tional experiences before returning home again, enlightened by the process. The
basic archetypical stories are Gilgamesh, and the Iliad and the Odyssey. Gilgamesh
was written between 2750 and 2500 BCE. The Iliad and the Odyssey are thought to
have been first composed and written down between 800 and 600 BCE from stories
transmissed orally previously. The Odyssey, recounting twenty years of travel by
Odysseus (Ulysses, in Latin), is a prime example of a voyage of discovery.
In the Bible, the first book, Genesis (Creation), is immediately followed by Exodus:
departure happens soon after creation. The story of Moses leading the Jewish people
to the Promised Land—and the belief in the existence of a Promised Land that is
rightly theirs—is an unfinished narrative of travel and travail. In Christian belief,
Wise Men traveled far to find the new-born Messiah. Muslim faithful must travel to
Mecca. There appears to be in some cultures an almost irresistible urge for humans
To Boldly Go—or at least for some people, usually men, ruthlessly to go. In each of
the stories above there are those who warn against the journey, and/or who patiently
stay at home waiting for the hero’s eventual return, such as Ulysses’ Penelope.
Westerners seem especially prone to sally forth to strange lands in search of
Glory, God and Gold, while Americans are by their very history almost obsessive
wanderers, exploiters, colonizers, and cowboys. Other cultures have no foundational
myths about superhuman ancestors voyaging and exploiting, and feel no urgent need
to do so now. They are quite happy to stay at home, and only venture forth when
politely invited—or ruthlessly forced.
I find it significant that the logo of the Japanese national space agency features
“JAXA”, written in a fancy, swooping font, and subtitled “Japanese Aerospace
Exploration Agency” in English. However the actual name of the agency in
Japanese contains no such connotations at all. The Japanese characters for the offi-
cial name modestly state that it is the 国立研究開発法人宇宙航空研究開発機構
(pronounced Kokuritsu kenkyū kaihatsu hōjin Uchū Kōkū Kenkyū Kaihatsu Kikō)
which translates directly as “National Research Development Agency for Aerospace
Research and Development”. That is, its name in English projects an image of Japan
boldly going forth, but in Japanese it simply indicates that it is a national research
and development institution that studies and develops the cosmos.
Many stories from the ancient past in many countries have been cited as being
early precursors to modern science fiction which they may or may not actually be.
The roots of science fiction in India may be from 1500 BCE in the ancient Vedic
literature. In these texts there are descriptions of what some say are unidentified
flying objects, referred to as vimanas. Chinese creation stories typically have themes
involving space. Some of the earliest Chinese literature, such as Chang E benyue
(Chang E Goes to the moon) by Lu An (197–122 BCE) is about Chang E who was
7.2 Space Fiction Versus Fact (Based on Dator 2017) 87

able to fly to and live on the Moon. The first Chinese lunar orbiter, launched in
October 2007, was named Chang’e-1.
One of the oldest and best-known Japanese stories is about Kaguya Hime (often
translated as the Moon Princess) as told in the Taketori Monogatari. A bamboo
cutter discovered a baby girl inside a bamboo shoot. He took her home, and he and
his delighted wife reared the baby as their own. Eventually it was revealed that she
was not of this world, and was transported back to the Moon from which she came
by an array of otherworldly attendants. A lunar orbiter launched by Japan in 2007
was formally named Selene for the Greek goddess of the Moon, but popularly named
Kaguya by the Japanese press and people.
Probably the best know early Western story about flight is the tale of Icarus, as
told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (10 AD). Disobeying his father’s warning, Icarus took
flight. But he sailed too close to the Sun which melted the wax on his wings so Icarus
plunged to his death in the seas below. The daring and hubris of Icarus has been
an extremely popular theme in Western art and literature, warning us of the eternal
tension between what we want to do and then can do because we develop techno-
logical capabilities, on the one hand, in contrast with what we ought to do, given our
ethical limitations and frailties, on the other. Lucian of Samosata’s Icaromenippus
(150 AD) was written explictly to correct Icarus’ design failures and fly successfully.
Modern science fiction arose when enough people became aware for the first time
of the fact and possibility of continuous social and environmental change. Science
fiction, per se (and hence space fiction), is a product of the scientific, technological,
and industrial revolution that was made possible in Europe by the Black Plague, the
Reformation, and the Renaissance between the 14th and 17th Centuries, and then
bloomed during the late 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries. In the mid 19th Century,
space fiction proper emerged first in Europe, then in the UK, then simultaneously in
the US, Japan, China, India (and perhaps elsewhere) as the social and environmental
consequences of the scientific, technological and industrial revolution spread across
the globe.
Most science fiction is more about technology than it is about science. It is about
how humans might behave and how society might change if/as new technologies
come along. Often the “science” in science fiction is quite unscientific while the
behavior said to result from new technologies is sometimes more plausible—often
not. But much science fiction is bad social science as well as bad natural science—and
not very good fiction either.
Fiction is stories about imaginary worlds and people. A work of fiction does
not intend to be “true” (though it may deal in truths). Humans have invented, lived
in, and believed in imaginary worlds at least since they learned to speak, perhaps
50,000 years ago. Indeed, the world constructed by each language is an artificial
world—though an extremely powerful one!
In contrast, science intends to tell the “truth” about the world and people; truths
that others, using the same evidence and methods, can confirm. However, few final
and absolute truths are ever declared scientifically. Science is constantly becoming—
revising old ideas and establishing new bases for thought and useful action with
occasional complete revolutions in the way humans think and act. Moreover, science
88 7 Destination Identities

is not new. Science is also as old as speech and focused thought, but it was the inven-
tion and spread of writing about 5000 years ago that made science more powerful
by enabling ideas to be decontextualized, analyzed, and categorized more carefully
than is possible only with speech.
Among many others, the Sri Lankan scientist and futurist, Susantha Goonatilake,
has made it clear that what is called “science” now is not something invented in
Europe in recent centuries. Rather, European scholars adopted and refined theories
and methods that had been honed over long periods of time previously, primarily
but not exclusively in Asia and northern Africa. European scholars also used or
invented instruments that enabled them to discover things otherwise unknowable
to humans. Gonnatilake argues convincingly that there have always been scien-
tists, and scientific ways of knowing. It is often the “scientists” who have contested
against commonsense, folk knowledge, and religion. It could be said that present-
day “modern science” simply represents the latest evolutionary manifestation in a
continuing contest between different ways of knowing and acting. Indeed, after a
brief 100-year spurt of dominance, science seems to be waning while anti-science is
gaining in popularity and power from both the Left and the Right in many parts of
the world.
The literature of science fiction and space fiction dealing with new technologies
and technological change has generally been of one of two kinds. Jules Verne and
many others were basically optimists, believing in inevitable progress through tech-
nological change. This optimistic view of the future permeated much early science
fiction and space fiction. But from the beginning, other science fiction writers had
more of a love-hate relation with technology and often wrote of that relationship
critically and ironically. Cyberpunk images and stories are good examples of this
perspective.
Without a doubt, the most important single figure in the origins of science fiction
and space fiction is the French author, Jules Verne. His book, De la terre à la lune
(From the Earth to Moon, 1865), and many more were translated into every major
language of the world. During his lifetime Verne was perhaps the most widely read
author in the world, and his books are still popular. It is very important to note
that almost all early pioneers in space reality and space fiction said that they were
inspired by Verne. The extraordinary pioneer of Russian space flight and space fiction,
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, said his enthusiasm for space came from reading Jules
Verne. In addition to his vital role in envisioning and enabling actual space flight,
Tsiolkovsky himself wrote classics of Russian science fiction including one that the
world’s first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, said was his favorite: Vne zemli (Beyond the
Earth, 1896). An enormous amount of space fiction produced in the Soviet Union
was intended to inspire that nation towards new futures.
Science fiction emerged in India when, as one author says, “the effects of the
industrial revolution were being felt in urban India in the 19th century just as keenly
as they were in Europe and the U.S.” A great deal of science fiction emerged not only
in the many languages in India but in English as well. Henry Zhao states that “prior to
the concept of modernity being imported into China there had been no fiction about
the future. In traditional China, history did not have directionality.” The introduction
7.3 A Dark Side of Fiction 89

first of ideas about “progress” and “development” and then of Marxism changed
that. The young intellectuals of the late 19th century in China sought to build their
“backward” country into a modern nation-state that could compete economically
and militarily with other nation-states. To do that—they learned from Japan and the
West—science and technology was necessary. So to stimulate people’s interest in
science and technology, Lu Xun introduced science fiction to China with his 1903
translation of Jules Verne’s novel From the Earth to the Moon. His translation was
posted on the official website of the Chinese space agency devoted to the Chang’e-1
lunar orbiter.
H. G. Wells is to English science and space fiction what Jules Verne was to
European—and the world’s—science fiction. In the United States, science and space
fiction’s heyday was found in the “pulp” magazine, Amazing Stories, that began
publication in 1926, and, among others, Astounding Stories that went through many
name changes, ending up as Analog today.
Most space fiction is produced and consumed audiovisually now through movies,
video, anime, and games beginning with Le Voyage dan la Lune (“A Trip to the
Moon” 1902).

7.3 A Dark Side of Fiction

During my early years as a futurist—1964–1990s—whenever I asked an audience to

tell me what they knew about the future, they didn’t hesitate, and would inevitably
mention two books, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Both are profound dystopias and both are still cited as
examples of the present as well as harbingers of the future. Terms from both (and
Orwell’s Animal Farm) are in common consciousness as explanations for what is
and will be.
I read Brave New World as a youth, and disliked it. The binary conflict between
The Director and The Savage seemed too hokey to me. But it definitely impressed
and depressed me to see the future as an unrelenting dystopia. Very many years later
during the summer vacation when my youngest son was preparing to move from the
8th grade of his Catholic grade school to the 9th grade, as a Freshman, of Maryknoll
high school, I was dismayed to learn that one of the books he was expected to read
over the summer in preparation was Brave New World! What in the world would
posses the fine nuns to think that is a good idea? Indeed, as I read, in 1999, the “new”
introduction that Huxley wrote in 1946 for the original 1932 book, I was shocked to
learn that even Huxley was ashamed of the damage he had done, and was still doing,
to countless minds:
If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between
the Utopian and primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity... In this
community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian, politics Kropotkinesque
and co-operative [that is a sort of Green Libertarianism]. Science and technology would be
used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still
90 7 Destination Identities

more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them.
Religion would be the conscious and intelligent pursuit of man’s Final End, the unitive
knowledge of immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the
prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest
Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle—the first question to
be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: “How will this thought or action
contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of
other individuals, of man’s Final End?”

The fictional work of Huxley as he actually wrote it, as well as that of Orwell, like
much science/space fiction, has done devastating damage to our ability to become
instead of merely to be. We are all Presbyterians with a fixed, unalterable future
stamped forever in our brains by Big Brother, namely, Scriveners and Publishers,
Ltd. Our imagination has become wholly colonized by all kinds of fiction we are
required to read. We are helpless pawns in the grips of skilled wordsmiths and the
unfree press.
It is often said—I have repeatedly said it here—that the only region in which we
have any influence is the future; that one of the main purposes of futures studies is to
help individuals, groups, nations, humanity to envision and move towards creating
preferred futures. By definition, the future has not happened yet, but will, and we do
influence it, in part by our acts, and some of our acts are done specifically in hopes
of influencing the future. We say that we can’t know the future but we can know the
present and the past.
Well, that is wrong. Whenever I ask people about the future, most of them have
no problem at all in instantly telling me what the future will be like, and they invari-
ably cite some work of general fiction, science fiction, or space fiction. Almost
never do they cite some work of science fact, such as the reports of the Intergov-
ernmental Panel on Climate Change, much less what some futurist has written or
otherwise communicated about the vital topic. For many years, their sure knowledge
of the future for most people comes almost entirely from movies, video, electronic
games, manga/anime—and, increasingly, social media reporting on movies, videos,
electronic games and anime of dubious provenance.
Even more seriously, many people describe real events that happen to them in
terms of it being “just like on television” or “the movies”. People who have experi-
enced near death tragedies, such as auto and plane crashes, typically don’t refer to
their or other’s real life tragedies in comparison. They refer to their experience as
being like something they saw on TV.
Why? Because movies, TV, and electronic games are so much more elegantly
produced than real life is. So much better scripted, acted, accompanied by powerful
mood music, lighting, establishing shots, close ups, panoramic views, no single scene
lasting for more than a few seconds, constant emotionally-effective editing. Since
many popular videos and games can be viewed or played many, many times, the
impact is multiplied incessantly, and as virtual reality becomes more and more real
as it becomes more and more brilliantly artificial, its ability to colonize the mind—to
colonize the future—becomes impossible to overcome.
7.3 A Dark Side of Fiction 91

I implore my future studies students not to watch science fiction if they wish to be
useful futurists—though of course they all laugh and ignore me. By definition, futur-
ists need to be able to identity “emerging issues” which are objects or events that exist
in embryo and isolation but are unnoticed by almost everyone. They might emerge
and grow into significant trends and then into demanding problem/opportunities. It is
the duty of the futurist to identify emerging issues as soon as possible, and to explore
the impacts of various possible pathways of emergence so that humans can antici-
pate them and become “wise before the event”. Since emerging issues are things that
almost no one sees, when they are first identified by a futurist, people usually laugh,
ridicule the futurist, say they are crazy, sacreligious, ridiculous. I said before that
Dator’s Second Law of the Futures states that “in an enviroment of rapid social and
environmental change, any useful idea about the futures should seem ridiculous”. But
there are two two codicils. First, that the emerging issue must have a factual basis—it
cannot be “made up” creatively by the futurist. The scenarios of its possible path-
ways into the futures also have empirical bases. The second codicil is that not every
emerging issue is useful. Many are ridiculous, but—since every useful idea should
appear to be ridiculous—futurists and everyone else must learn to welcome emerging
issues even though their initial reaction is negative—a tough requirement in spite of
all the truly ridiculous things people willingly, eagerly believe.
Whatever else can be said, science fiction is not about telling the truth and helping
people create better futures for themselves and others. Science fiction is fundamen-
tally about making money. While some may be written entirely to convince the
consumer of the truth of the world displayed, without concern for making money,
why do they produce it as fiction instead of as fact? Because they believe that the many
gimmicks a writer and media producer uses enables them to capture the consumer by
making the product irresistible and satisfying so they are left wanting more. Very few
if any of the most powerful works of science fiction, which make the most money,
are concerned primarily about getting the science correct and the futures plausible in
ways that helps the consumer gain better control of their future. Rather, their goal is
to convince people to transfer money (repeatedly) from the consumer to the producer.
Since I have used space fiction as an example so far let me provide an example
of what I consider to be a serious flaw of the great space fiction that led pioneers
to create the kind of space programs they did, rather than programs that might have
been built on the basis of the dreams of ordinary people.
When I first got into the space futures field, life on Earth was experienced by
some people as a series of constant steps forward for humanity as a whole, with
occasional steps backwards for some humans sometimes. Every day brought new
scientific, technological, and social developments. And that was good.
When I was a boy, not only could Blacks and Whites not attend the same schools,
but also they could not even drink out of the same water fountains. Women were
widely known to be inferior to men; it was OK for fathers to switch their children;
and husbands basically owned their wives.
But the world was clearly on track to becoming far more equitable and fair, I was
certain.
92 7 Destination Identities

It was absolutely clear we were going to be on Moon and then Mars, perhaps
Venus, perhaps on huge spinning space platforms at Lagrangian points by the 1980s,
and soon thereafter well on our way to the most remote environments of our solar
system, and beyond.
Why not? Every day for at least the past 100 years had brought new technologies,
especially in transportation and communication. From the horse and buggy to auto-
mobiles, airplanes and even space ships; from speaking, writing, and the printing
press to movies, television, the internet.
But then, suddenly, the innovations in transportation came to a screeching halt in
the 1970s. While there have been many improvements, there essentially have been
no new breakthroughs in transportation at all. If the best dreams of fully self-driving
vehicles (on land, sea, and air) pan out, and if they run on truly renewable fuels that
don’t contribute to climate change, that (or something completely different from it)
will be the first big breakthrough in transportation in fifty years.
On the other hand, ongoing developments in communication have been stunning!
From the radio, to the telephone, to the computer, to communication satellites, to the
Internet, to the iPhone, to the Metaverse. Moore’s Law personified!
And so we are still on Earth only dreaming of the stars.
For the last 50 years, there have been endless discussions full of laments about
the fact that people do not support publicly-funded space activities as they once did.
Why, and what can be done about it?
In my observation, the reason is that current space activities are nothing like the
ones the public supported in the past. After the first flight by Wilbur and Orvis in 1903,
a private venture, and especially during the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, develop-
ments in aeronautics and astronautics were spectacular. People’s thirst for excitement
and achievements in space were satisfied daily—as much by the spectacular explosive
failures and deaths as by the stunning Moon-landing successes.
Then, suddenly it all came to an end in the 1980s. Space, which once meant
humans heading to other planets and then the stars, meant nothing more than going
round and round near Earth. Working in space became about as exciting to the public
as working in any construction site or science lab. It was only that the commute was
longer. The commute was not even more dangerous: it still is more threatening to
one’s life to drive an automobile to work every day than to take the shuttle, or its
current successors, to the ISS.
So we have failed to make space exciting to the public, in large part because
we have not had any more breakthroughs in space transportation equal to those in
communication technologies. I suppose it is unfair to blame scientists and engineers
for not inventing revolutionary means of space transport, even as we do marvel at what
manipulation of the electron has done to our ability to communicate. But who else
can we blame? Until there are breakthroughs in transportation as transformative as
the breakthroughs in communication have been, the public will not be very interested
in space.
But there is more to it that just that. As I have shown, once upon a time, imag-
ination in the form of science fiction came before and often led to specific, actual
developments in space technologies and activities. Countless pioneers have attested
7.3 A Dark Side of Fiction 93

to this over and over: first came the dreams while the enabling science and technology
followed—sometimes exactly copying the technology and processes first outlined
in the fiction. However, to be more accurate, the dreams themselves were derived
from experiences that had been enabled by earlier technological developments. Past
technical glories led to new experiences that led to new dreams of space that led to
new technologies that enabled new experiences that led to new dreams of space, and
so on.
But the problem is, there has been no ‘so on’. The new technologies in transporta-
tion came to an end, and so then did the dreams. Rather, the old dreams lingered on
while the technologies failed to catch up, and so people became disenchanted with
space when they learned that what we are actually able to do in space is far from the
dreams that science fiction has put in their heads.
Most people in the world, certainly most Americans, have a very shaky under-
standing of science, but a very keen appreciation of fiction. Much fiction presents
humans doing and feeling things that are absolutely impossible for anyone actually
to do now or anytime soon. Many people’s beliefs, hopes, and fears about the world
come from powerfully-produced fiction and not at all from science. Thus, their heads
are filled with Manichean fantasies about a vicious dog-eat-robot world.
Given the gap between what people imagine space is or should or could be
compared with what it actually is, they lose interest. NSF polls consistently show
that the only time Americans suddenly become interested in space is when there is
a spectacular catastrophe.
Of course we live in an era now where space seems to have been wrenched from
the palsied hand of national space agencies and put in the firm control of space
entrepreneurs. Trillionaires (and the quizzical basis of their wealth is an entirely
different story) seem to be finally getting humans, or at least rich humans, out of
the cradle and into the cosmos—or at least to the space station and maybe someday
soon, the Moon. If so, then we are captive to the dreams of a few entrepreneurs that
are far more problematic for the future evolution of life and consciousness on and
off the planet than were those of the national agencies. And since China and India
as well as Iran, Nigeria and other countries are rising in prominence in space as
the US continues to stagnate, there is still hope for competitive national—as well
as cooperative international and transnational—agencies to take the lead towards
sustainable space ventures instead.
So, the bottom line to this long tirade is to make clear that before we can ask
children to envision destination images, we need to counterbalance the attraction of
space image colonizers, and that won’t be easy. Do we forbid children to consume
space fiction as we may tell them not to play “cowboys and indians” with toy guns in
hopes they will grow up not to be gun addicts who have no qualms about disappearing
native people? I don’t think that will work. But the colonization of their images of
the futures now is profound and preverse. The only solution I see is to get as many
people as possible in all areas of life, not just space, to envisioning and sharing
their own preferred images of the futures without having their abilities stunted and
94 7 Destination Identities

misdirected by powerful commercial fiction. More participation by more people

from more perspectives—what once might have been called “democracy”—is the
only solution to colonization of any kind, as messy and unprofessional as that might
be.

References

Dator, Jim. 2017. Humans and space: Stories, images, music and dance. In The farthest shore: A 21st
century guide to space, ed. Joseph N. Pelton and Angelia P. Bukley, 2nd ed., chap. 2. Berkeley,
California: Apogee Press.
Demneh, Mohsen Taheri, and Dennis Ray Morgan. 2018. Destination identity: Futures images as
social identity. Journal of Futures Studies 22 (3): 51–64.
Demneh, Mohsen Taheri, and Zahra Heidari Darani. 2020. From remembering to futuring: Preparing
children for Anthropocene. Journal of Environmental Studies and Science. https://doi.org/10.
1007/s13412-020-00634-5.
Hofstadter, Richard, and William Smith, eds. 1961a. American higher education: A documentary
history, vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hofstadter, Richard, and William Smith, eds. 1961b. American higher education: A documentary
history, vol. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jensen Arnett, Jeffrey. 2016. Life stage concepts across history and cultures: Proposal for a new
field on indigenous life stages. Human Development 59: 290–316.
Polak, Fred. 1961. The image of the future, vols. I and II. Leyden: Oceana.
Chapter 8
Weirding Worlds

Abstract A brief interlude explaining the value and validation of weirds, weirdos
and becoming with weirding worlds.

Keywords Anthropocene epoch · Holocene epoch · Identity · Weird · Weirding

The subtitle to Mohsen Taheri Demneh and Zahra Heidari Darani’s 2020 article that
I discussed above is, “preparing children for Anthropocene”. This is term that I and
others also frequently use to distinguish the Epoch of the 21st century onward from
that into which homosapiens, sapiens evolved after the last ice age, about 12,000 years
ago, called by geologists, “The Holocene Epoch”. “Anthropocene” suggests that
Planet Earth is now in an Epoch in which human activities are important determinants
of how natural processes that existed before the evolution of homosapiens, sapiens,
now work. Because of how humans used their physical and mental abilities over the
last several thousand years especially, we have grown to such large numbers that,
enabled by technologies, institutions, and stories, we have changed a once entirely
“natural” planet into an increasingly artificial and synthetic planet. All evolutionary
processes are now more or less, and increasingly more rather than less, influenced
by human activities.
There are some folks who accept, document, and study these processes in their
aesthetic as well as scientific dimensions. The Center for PostNatural History in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania studies “the origins, habitats, and evolution of organisms
that have been intentionally and heritably altered by humans” and is building a
“record of the influence of human culture on evolution” (Center for PostNatural
History 2022). This is a yet another hopeful step towards humans learning to become
responsible for what we have done and are continuing to do, and diligently to learn
how To Govern Evolution, as the title of a book by Walter Truett Anderson put it
(Anderson 1987). That is a gigantic, perhaps impossible, task. But at least since
the invention of agriculture, if not before, and most certainly since industrialization,
humans have been governing evolution unconsciously and irresponsible to such an
extent that our own identity and survival as a species, and certainly as civilizations,
is in peril.

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Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_8
96 8 Weirding Worlds

I am convinced by the evidence I have seen that this possibility is not in doubt,
not an exaggeration. And yet far, far more human effort is being expended contin-
uing to endanger our species and planet than on imagining, designing, testing and
implementing processes that will enable the evolvability of human and other life in
the Anthropocene Epoch and beyond.
Borrowing from a neologism apparently coined by Hunter Lovins, co-founder of
the Rocky Mountain Institute, and popularized by the journalist Thomas Friedman,
John Sweeney has adopted the term, “Global Weirding” to designate the Postnormal
Times of Anthropocene Epoch (Sweeney 2014). Sweeney also quotes the writer,
Hunter Thompson: “When the going gets weird the weird turn pro”, and writes that,
according to PostNormal Theory (PNT), “things we take for granted become uncer-
tain, our understanding of things can become a form of ignorance, and longstanding
norms, if not the very idea of normalcy itself, break down before our very eyes. This,
if anything, is what is meant by global weirding, and extreme weirding points toward
the increasing power of severe phenomena to mutate our sense of being in the world.
In the parlance of PNT, the convergence of ‘complexity, chaos, and contradictions’
is already and will continue to result in systemic disruptions, which can and might
begin with actors of various scope and scale” (Sweeney 2019: 178).
Jake Dunagan, another futurist, in Austin, Texas, wrote an opinion piece for the
Austin Chronicle with the headline, “To Prepare for Future Shocks, Austin Must Get
Weirder” (Dunagan 2020). I favor that idea for many reasons and included it in the
title of this book: “Becoming with the weirding world”. One reason is because, even
though the word is seldom used in its original meaning, I confessed I was indeed
“a practitioner of the ‘Weird Arts’…holding the semiofficial title, ‘State Weird’”
(Dator 1979: 371) because of the roles I played while participating in the design and
execution of the phenomenal statewide exercise of Anticipatory Democracy, called
“Hawaii 2000”, in 1969–70 that I discussed in some detail, above (Chaplin and Paige
1973).
Another reason is because the world has in fact gotten increasingly weird and
postnormal, very much as I hoped and encouraged. For example, in an address that
I gave before a joint session of the Hawaii State Legislature, January 26, 1970, that
I quoted from before, I said:
We should reward nonviolent social deviants and non-conformists. The need for mindless
conformity to a single, poorly-fitting, mass-based code of conduct is over. What society
needs now, and needs urgently, is to encourage people to try to do things differently, to
experiment with new, non-dominant life-styles, for example. Instead of harassing people who
don’t conform, as long as their deviance in non-violent, we should encourage, applaud, and
reward them for their bravery. I seriously propose a state award for persons who are deemed
to be most different every year, and that we cease rewarding conformity and conventionality
(Dator 2019: 158).

OK. I admit that things may have gotten a bit out of hand, but even though I don’t
believe anyone can “predict THE future”, I did a pretty good job in that paragraph
(and in the rest of what I said to Hawaii’s Legislators in 1970, for that matter).
But things are rapidly getting far, far weirder still.
References 97

References

Anderson, Walter Truett. 1987. To govern evolution. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Center for PostNatural History. 2022. https://postnatural.org.
Chaplin, George, and Glenn Paige, eds. 1973. Hawaii 2000. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Dator, James. 1979. The futures of culture or cultures of the future. In Perspectives on cross-cultural
psychology, ed. Anthony J. Marsella et al. New York: Academic Press.
Dator, Jim. 2019. Jim Dator: A noticer in time. Selected work, 1967–2018. New York: Springer
Nature Press.
Dunagan, Jake. 2020. To prepare for future shocks, Austin must get weirder. Austin Chronicle, May
22.
Sweeney, John. 2014. Command-and-control: Alternative futures of geoengineering in an age of
global weirding. Futures 57: 1–13.
Sweeney, John. 2019. Global weirding. In The post normal times reader, ed. Ziauddin Sardar.
London: Centre for Postnormal Policy & Futures Studies.
Chapter 9
Humans as Synthesizers

Abstract A reminder that from the very beginning humans have modified and muti-
lated their bodies in every manner possible, and that current cyborgs, biohackers, and
grinders are simply using the latest science and technology to do so now. Nothing
new to see here. Move along. Move along.

Keywords Acrotomophilia · Biohackers · Biotech · CRISPR · Cyborgs · DIY

biology · Garden of Eden · Grinders · Identity · Modification · Mutilation ·
Transability

While there are individual exceptions, humans as a species are not “naturalists”. If
anything, most of us are “artificialists”, or, perhaps more precisely, “synthesizers”.
We find it difficult to leave well enough alone. The earliest fossil human remains and
archeological digs reveal that a continuous feature of humans from the beginning
has been to modify our bodies and our environments without limit. We cause scabs
and then pick at them as they try to heal just for the beauty of the result. We find an
abundant wilderness and seek to make it more abundant by slashing and burning it.
We find docile birds and mold them into chickens. Men tame wild women and warp
them and their children into the property of patriarchs along with the cows, barns,
and fenced-in fields.
Many of the things humans do turn out to be pretty bad ideas, such as the ones I just
mentioned—agriculture was a huge mistake (Cohen 1991; Dennis 2006; Diamond
1989; Sahlins 1974); right up there with the invention of writing (Goody 1977, 1986;
Ong 2007). We would be much better off if we remained hunters and gatherers. But
if we choose to correct our mistakes, we often do so by implementing even worse
ideas than the ones we are trying to correct. That’s pretty much the case with our
environmental modifications—one evermore mutating technology after another. But,
too bad: that is what humans do.
It is not as though we have not been warned. Many cultures have foundational
stories that command humans to leave well enough alone; to accept things as they
are; to surf the tsunami you are in and not to dream and wait for better ones. Greeks
had a bundle of such tales: Pandora! Don’t open that box. But she did and we are now
in deeper and perpetual doodoo from which we can never escape. Prometheus! Don’t
steal fire from the gods. But he did and was lashed to a rock where birds peck his eyes
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100 9 Humans as Synthesizers

out for eternity, and millions die every year from fires just so they can have hot gruel
for breakfast. Daedelus told his son Icarus not to fly, but, like any son, he laughed at
his old-fashioned father, and took off. Fortunately, Bruegel took a snapshot with his
Kodak just as Icarus’ legs were vanishing into the sea to document his folly.
Jews and Christians have an even scarier story, with a bittersweet ending. God,
Adam, and Eve were strolling in the Garden of Eden during the cool of the twilight
one evening when God—who apparently flunked Child Psychology 101—pointed
out a fruit-bearing tree that Adam and Eve had seen many times before but paid no
attention to. But God said, in his most Morgan Freeman voice: “Do not eat of the
fruit of that tree!” Now, it had never occurred to his children to do so, until warned
not to, whereupon the urge became overpowering. As soon as God had departed, Eve
snuggled up to Adam and said in her most sultry voice, “Hey, big boy! See that tree
over there? Go pick me an apple from it, pretty please with sugar on it.” But Adam
reminded her that God forbade it, and that anyway the apples were too high off the
ground for Adam to pluck them. Eve retorted, “Adam, you don’t have the brains that
God gave you! Do you see those apple crates over there? Well, pick them up and put
one on top of another until you can climb up and fetch me an apple”, stamping her
shapely foot impatiently. So Adam did as Eve instructed and he twisted the apple
off the branch and gave it to Eve. While she was taking a bite of that luscious Red
Delicious, God roared down from Heaven: “For your sin, you are doomed forever.
I throw you out of the Garden of Eden and now by the sweat of your brow shall
you labor all the days of your life.” This is called “Original Sin” from which all of
Christian theology has descended. But Adam and Eve’s original sin was not wanting
the apple or eating the apple, it was the apple crates—it was re-arranging God’s
good creation for human purpose—and so Adam and Eve despondently departed the
bountiful Garden in fear and trembling. They sat down on the curb to decide what
to do next. Adam began looking around and after a while said, “You know what,
Eve? We could fill in that pond there, and level that hill there, and build some golden
arches there and make a lot money selling junk food served with apple tarts, and, and,
and … we could call it Adamsville!” And so Adam, the first real estate developer,
began his work of rearranging nature for human purpose. Adam’s entrepreneurial
spirit later inspired Handel to write a ditty that is the theme song of all subsequent
developers—“Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill made low;
the crooked straight and the rough places plain” (da capo ad nauseam).
Years ago, but not quite contemporaneous with the events in the Garden, Ralph
Hodgson wrote an evocative poem about Eve, her innocence, openness, gullibility,
and eventual seduction by the Serpent with Adam’s compliance, ending:

Here was the strangest pair

In the world anywhere,
Eve in the bells and grass
Kneeling, and he
Telling his story low....
Singing birds saw them go
Down the dark path to
9.1 Modifying and Mutilating Bodies 101

The Blasphemous Tree.

Oh, what a clatter when

Titmouse and Jenny Wren
Saw him successful and
Taking his leave!
How the birds rated him,
How they all hated him!
How they all pitied
Poor motherless Eve!

Picture her crying

Outside in the lane,
Eve, with no dish of sweet
Berries and plums to eat,
Haunting the gate of the
Orchard in vain....
Picture the lewd delight
Under the hill to-night—
“Eva!” the toast goes round,
“Eva!” again (Hodgson 1913).

And the moral of the story? Bad parenting! First of all from Eve’s father who tempted
her into transgression by planting, pointing out, and then forbidding her touch the
dangerous succulent fruit of the Blasphemous Tree, and then Eve’s utter lack of
maternal guidance. Who could possibly blame Eve under these circumstances! Would
you have done better?
Apparently not. Humans have followed Adam—can’t blame poor motherless
Eve—and changed themselves and the world prosthetically, physically, chemically,
and genetically with increasing sophistication and power over the ages.

9.1 Modifying and Mutilating Bodies

Prosthetically, we have modified our bodies via perfumes, makeup, wigs, toupee,
hair extenders, body paint, cutting, shaping, coloring of hair, finger, and toe nails,
via creams and lotions, corsets, bras to hide or emphasize breasts, pins, jewelry,
clothes, and all the prosthetic extensions of our senses and bodies that St. Marshall
McLuhan alerted us to so well: “The wheel is an extension of the foot. The book
is an extension of the eye. Clothing, an extension of the skin. Electric circuitry an
extension of the central nervous system” (McLuhan 1967).
Physically, we have modified or mutilated bodies by body-building, dieting,
bulimics, gouging, tattooing, staining, piercing, branding, scarring, incising,
102 9 Humans as Synthesizers

inserting, perforating, cauterizing, abrading, adhesing, implanting, elongating, short-

ening, flattening, compressing, distending, expanding, binding, reconstructing,
amputating, castrating every possible part of the external body—skin, skull, face,
teeth, lips, tongue, nose, ears, breasts, arms, fingers, legs, feet, toes, genitals….
Internally we remove, repair, reconstruct, donate, replace appendices, livers, kidneys,
lungs, hearts, and have only recently learned thaat we each are merely bags—at best
a holobiont—for a microbiome of bacteria, archaea, viruses, and fungi each of which
may be more numerous than all the stars in the skies.
Chemically, we have modified our bodies and behavior by eating, drinking, drugs,
(eating food or drugs is the same process, in no way radically different: you are what
you eat/ingest), estrogen, testosterone….
Genetically, humans have engaged in genetic engineering aimed at modifying
themselves and other organisms from very early on as well. The essence of the
transformation from hunting and gathering societies to agricultural societies was
the domestication of plants and animals through selective breeding—perpetually
saving the best grain for use next year, planting what has been shown to thrive in
drought, abundant rain, salty water, cold or heat, and the rest. Breeding the tamest bull
with the most docile and prolific milk-producer until the wild ox of origin became
the lactating biomechanism called a cow today. Similarly, as women and children
became valuable, controlled property, who could have sex with whom under what
circumstances, and which offspring were pampered and protected versus the ones
that were set aside to die, became marriage and inheritance rules of such importance
that they were the province of rulers and priests and not of ordinary women and men.
Mendel and his pea plants eventually led to the science of genetics, the massive
human genome project, CRISPR-Cas9, and genetic engineering of a very different
sort.
If physics and electronics were the ruling science and technology of the 20th
Century, biology and biotech may become the dominant science and technology of
the 21st. However the two in combination are powerful agents of modification and
mutilations already and will likely become vastly more so. I have long reminded
folks that industrial processes require enormous well-organized human and natural
resources, and heaps of money. It is very hard to mass produce automobiles in secret.
Biotechnologies can be highly personal, and—like recreational drugs or abortion—
produced and used in the privacy of your bathroom or kitchen. Industrial processes
and their byproducts have proven very difficult to control effectively. Monitoring and
controlling some powerful biotechnologies may be almost impossible. The genie has
been out of the bottle for far too long and is already being used by ordinary people
and groups as they wish no matter what the ethical and legal rules may say.
While very much remains to be known, and many lofty early goals remain far
from being achieved or even achievable, perhaps, much has become known about
the genetic bases of life so that formerly impossible acts can now be performed
cheaply and privately. “In the few short years since its discovery, CRISPR-Cas9 has
transformed bioscience like no other invention in the last half century” (Hitchcock
and Harmer 2022). CRISPR makes gene-editing “easy”, and DIY kits of CRISPR
make it even easier.
9.1 Modifying and Mutilating Bodies 103

Whether prosthetically, physically, chemically, or genetically, the modification of

human bodies has often been voluntary, self-inflicted, politically, culturally, aesthet-
ically, and/or sexually driven, and/or ceremonially performed by others. Many have
also been mutilations imposed by others for ceremonial, cultural, or personal reasons.
The use of torture by officers of the state in the legitimate fulfillment of their duties
are imposed mutilations.
It seems that no part of the human body, inside or out, has escaped modification
or mutilation. They are intimately connected to personal and collective identity,
whether proscribed or chosen. They are often central for anyone seeking to change
their gender or race. Those called “fetishes” are sometimes key elements of sexuality,
which is a key aspect of humanity.
One of my most vivid memories is encountering letters to the editor under the
title “Monopede Mania” in the September and October 1972 issues of Penthouse
Magazine. Some of the letters were written by people who were turned on sexually
by anyone who had one or both legs amputated, usually above the knees (termed
acrotomophilia). More startlingly, other letters were written by people who yearned
to have one (rarely both) legs amputated (apotemnophilia) because they felt the leg
didn’t belong to them and they wouldn’t be whole until it was gone, and/or because
of long-standing overwhelming sexual desires and fantasies of being an amputee.
Some of the latter were over-achieving workaholics who also believed they could
work harder and do more and better if they were handicapped this way. Later, Hustler
magazine (February 1997) had an article titled “Humping Stumps: The Limbless and
the People who love them.”
This all seemed to be so preposterous—perhaps a hoax—that I sensed that this
might be what futurists call an emerging issue—the first ripple in what could become
a tidal wave. Since it seemed so ridiculous to me, I knew I should pay attention to it.
According to early researchers (Money et al. 1977; Sedda and Bottini 2014)
apotemnophiliacs were initially few in numbers and kept their desires hidden from
everyone because they knew that no one—even psychiatrists and medical doctors—
approved of what they wanted to do. Some maimed their legs so severely that
physicians had no choice but to amputate them.
Though hardly as popular now as nipple-piercing, say, what was unthinkable and
unprintable eventually became “a strange obsession” and now is being supported as
an identity of choice called “transability,” in analogy to the physical modifications of
transexuals and transracials. There are zines, blogs, support groups, and communities
devoted to transables. And there are many opponents as well. Writing in the National
Review about the phenomena, Ian Tuttle (a William F. Buckley Fellow at the National
Review Institute) concluded that the problem “is the demand, implicit in cultural
progressivism, that we as a society normalize the subjective feelings of obviously
abnormal individuals. We must condemn the healthful as sickening, while embracing
the sick as healthy” (Tuttle 2015).
Ah, yes. Good old normality to the rescue once again.
104 9 Humans as Synthesizers

9.2 Cyborgs, Biohackers and Grinders

Humans have always been cyborgs—organisms who modify themselves and their
environments prosthetically, physically, chemically, and genetically for their own
purposes. It is not something new. It is not something unnatural. It is not abnormal.
It is not something weird. It is simply something humans (and other organisms) do.
However, for some time now, “cyborgs” has had a more restricted meaning. The
word is a combination of “cybernetic” and “organism” which is often understood to
mean a being that is a combination of organic and mechanical parts. However, the
term “cybernetics” itself is derived from the same root Greek word as “governance”.
Both imply steering—determining goals and moving towards them on the basis of
feedback—proceeding, receiving information, changing or maintaining movement,
receiving more information…. Popular culture has narrowed the meaning of cyborgs
even more to organisms augmented by electronic or bioelectronic parts, and therefore
made it into something far more exotic, strange, and perhaps forbidden than they
should be regarded. Cyborgs are what humans have always been. What is new—is
always new over and over—is the mechanism de jour. Rapid changes in electronic
and bio technologies have expanded the features and abilities of cyborgs today, with
much more to come.
Some cyborgs in this high tech sense are results of people using electronic tech-
nologies to overcome disabilities, which then may enable them to have powers beyond
able-bodied people, which then are adopted by able-bodied for aesthetic or political
reasons to become newly-enabled-bodied persons. Neil Harbisson was born able
to see the world only in black, grey, and white. Adam Montandon developed a
system that assigned six basic colors to six different tones that Harbisson learned
to identify as colors. The number of tones and hence colors gradually increased to
incorporate all 360 colors on a color wheel. Harbisson soon applied his abilities in
reverse—to producing music conveyed by colors, not tones—and other adaptations.
Problems arose when the modifications became essential parts of Harbisson’s body:
“He endured a long and difficult struggle to convince the British Government…to
allow him to wear the Eyeborg in his passport photo, a necessary step so he would
not be forced to remove it at airports and other sensitive locations. He had already
been ejected from stores, casinos, supermarkets, and movie theatres because of his
device, though he had done nothing wrong. People thought he was filming them or
stealing trade secrets, or violating copyright” (Pearlman 2015: 89).
Steve Mann is sometimes said to be the first modern cyborg and has documented
thirty years of what that has meant so far:
Since my childhood, a personal hobby of mine has been the functional modification of
my own body, through technology. This modification often took the form of creating new
sensory capabilities, as well as (what were to become eventually successful) attempts at
correcting learning disabilities, such as visual memory impairment. I have had very particular
experiences that speak to what it means to live within a virtual, and more importantly, a
mediated (i.e., computationally modified) learning environment. I did not just experience
virtual reality, mediated reality, etc., I became a cyborg, invented the technologies I needed
to become a cyborg and then have spent 30 years learning and teaching about what it means
9.2 Cyborgs, Biohackers and Grinders 105

to exist in a cyborg state. Originally I did this in private, but around 20 years ago I started
wearing a full computer system more openly, which resulted in my being referred to as a
‘cyborg’ (although I do not particularly like the term because it is such a ‘loaded’ term so
heavily co-opted by science fiction) (Mann 2006: 1571).

“Lepht Anonym is a biohacker, a woman who has spent the last several years learning
how to extend her own senses by putting tiny magnets and other electronic devices
under her own skin, allowing her to feel electromagnetic fields…” (Borland 2010).
A political movement against commercially-controlled Big Bio and in favor of
every-person DIY biology issued a manifesto written in 2010 by Meredith Patterson
that states, in part:
As biohackers it is our responsibility to act as emissaries of science, creating new scientists
out of everyone we meet. We must communicate not only the value of our research, but the
value of our methodology and motivation, if we are to drive ignorance and fear back into
the darkness once and for all. We the biopunks are dedicated to putting the tools of scientific
investigation into the hands of anyone who wants them. We are building an infrastructure
of methodology, of communication, of automation, and of publicly available knowledge
(Patterson 2011).

In 2017, Josiah Zayner said he injected CRISPR into himself to biohack the muscles
in his arms. He wasn’t interested in getting bigger muscles. Rather he wanted to show
by his own actions that “we are no longer slaves to our genetics. We no long have to
live with the genetics we had when we were born.” Now we can have the genes we
want (McDonald 2017).
And then there seems to be Anthony Loffredo, a White Frenchman, who appar-
ently had his upper lip, nose, ears, and two fingers cut off, his tongue split in two,
and his body tattooed and pierced so he could become “Black Alien”. He is said to
be planning to make further modifications, including, perhaps removing his skin and
replacing it with metal (DNA Web Team 2021).
The futurist, Walt Anderson, argues convincingly “that, for better or for worse,
humanity has always been in the process of becoming something else. That—
becoming something else—may turn out to be the very essence of humanity, the
true human nature” (Anderson 2003: 545).
I do not want to be misunderstood here. I do not mean to imply that the freaks and
weirdos of trans-ition will smoothly sail into the trans-itory futures of their dreams
and struggles without experiencing even greater resistance, anguish, bloodshed, and
defeats. Many forces for “normality”, whatever their basis (whether it be Right, Left,
Christian or Islamic or Hindu or Marxist or capitalist or cultural or whatever) are
powerful, well-armed, and willing, indeed eager, to find reasons to use their power
to enforce conformity to their rules without compunction. I believe most of those
striving to become know this very well—they should, since they suffer real pain
and suffering now, and have seen the contorted faces and felt the white hot spittle of
those who thwart and fear them. It very well may be that the numerous competing and
contradictory champions of obligatory normality and essential identity will achieve
many local victories in the immediate future as the world turns inward for a spell, but
I am confident that while the fuses that drive trans passions and actions now may be
106 9 Humans as Synthesizers

tamped, they cannot be extinguished, and that brighter futures for diverging modes
of becoming might emerge after long and bitter nights of anguish, torture and pain.
At the same time—to be clear, again—there is absolutely no reason why those
who wish to discipline their lives in the service of historical or traditional ideas and
practices should not do so as well. If chosen and not forced or privileged, those
may be inspiring ways of becoming too. I yearn to see a thousand flowers bloom
in their mutual splendor and fragrances. I am not advocating enforced or privileged
orthodoxy of any kind, weird or straight.

References

Anderson, Walter Truett. 2003. Augmentation, symbiosis, transcendence: Technology and the
future(s) of human identity. Futures 35.
Borland, John. 2010. Transcending the human, DIY style. Wired, December 30.
Cohen, Mark Nathan. 1991. Health and the rise of civilization. Yale University Press.
Dennis, Clive. 2006. Humanity’s worst invention: Agriculture. The Ecologist, September 22. https://
theecologist.org/2006/sep/22/humanitys-worst-invention-agriculture
Diamond, Jared M. 1989. The worst mistake in the history of the human race. Discover Magazine,
April 30. https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-
the-human-race.
DNA Web Team. 2021. https://www.dnaindia.com/viral/photo-gallery-meet-black-alien-the-man-
who-sliced-off-his-lips-nose-and-ears-to-look-like-an-alien-2881282/who-is-black-alien-288
1284. March 15.
Goody, Jack. 1977. The domestication of the savage mind. Cambridge University Press.
Goody, Jack. 1986. The logic of writing and the organization of society. Cambridge University
Press.
Hitchcock, Julian, and Alexandra Harmer. 2022. DIY gene-editing CRISPR kits. https://www.bri
stows.com/news/diy-gene-editing-crispr-kits/.
Hodgson, Ralph. 1913. Eve, and other poems. England: Printed by A.T. Stevens for Flying Fame.
Mann, Steve. 2006. Learning by being: Thirty years of cyborg existemology. In The international
handbook of virtual learning environments, ed. J. Weiss et al. New York: Springer.
McDonald, Bob. 2017. Quirks & Quarks, November 20. https://twitter.com/CBCQuirks/status/929
123002553319424.
McLuhan, Marshall. 1967. The medium is the massage. New York: Bantam Books.
Money, John, Russell Jobaris, and Gregg Furth. 1977. Apotemnophilia: Two cases of self-demand
amputation as a paraphilia. The Journal of Sex Research 13 (2).
Ong, W.J. 2007. Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the world. London: Routledge.
Patterson, Meredith. 2011. A biopunk manifesto. https://m1k3y.com/2011/01/10/a-biopunk-manife
sto/.
Pearlman, Ellen. 2015. I, Cyborg. Performing Arts Journal 110: 89.
Sahlins, Marshall. 1974. Stone age economics. New York: Transaction Publishers.
Sedda, Anna, and Gabriella Bottini. 2014. Apotemnophilia, body integrity identity disorder or
xenomelia? Psychiatric and neurologic etiologies face each other. Neuropsychiatric Disease and
Treatment, July 7.
Tuttle, Ian. 2015. People who cut off their own limbs (and their enablers). National Review, June 2.
Chapter 10
Humans from the Holocene
to Anthropocene Epochs

Abstract At the same time, humans, from the very beginning, have modified their
local and global environments so that every once “natural” place and process is
now to some extent and increasingly “artificial”. Homosapiens, sapiens emerged
in the beginning of the placid Holocene Epoch that nurtured our identities. As a
consequence of human actions, we have now created a new geological Epoch, the
Anthropocene, which provokes and requires new identities while challenging us to
learn to govern evolution.

Keywords Anthropocene · Climate change · Epochs · Greenhouse effect ·

Holocene · Identity · IPCC · Pleistocene · Population · Subsistence affluence ·
United Nations

The Earth is perhaps 4.6 billion years old. Geologists have divided this immense span
of time (though only a third the 12.8 billion years of the universe) into four categories:
Eons, Eras, Periods and Epochs. There have been four Eons, the most recent being the
Phanerozoic. Within the Phanerozoic, three Eras have been labeled: the Paleozoic,
Mesozoic and Cenozoic, the most recent. There have been three Periods within the
Cenozoic Era, Paleogene, Neogene and Quaternary, while there have been seven
Epochs within the Quaternary Era. Early humans, homosapiens, in perhaps nine
species, evolved during the Pleistocene Epoch—the period of the last of many ice
ages (with more to come!)—while modern humans, homosapiens, sapiens, emerged
during the very late Pleistocene and may have been the sole member of the diverse
homo line to exist at the opening of the Holocene Epoch, an infinitesimal blip of only
roughly 12,000 years. If Earth’s origin and evolution were represented as a single
day that began at midnight, life would have originated at 4 AM, mammals at 11:39
PM, and humans at 11:58:43 PM (Flowing data 2012).
Earth’s climate during the early Holocene Epoch was generally benign compared
to the frigid Pleistocene, but climate has nonetheless fluctuated considerably over the
Epoch with some severely cold periods called Little Ice Ages, some comparatively
hot and dry periods, and some quite temperate—from a human point of view. These
natural fluctuations retarded or aided the growth and spread of humans. Estimates
of the number of humans spread across the Earth at the beginning of the Holocene
Epoch vary from one million to ten million—not very many and definitely very weak.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 107
J. Dator, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds,
Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_10
108 10 Humans from the Holocene to Anthropocene Epochs

But nature was fecund and life for the typical tiny hunter-gather tribe was abundant,
peaceful, equitable, and leisurely.
Almost anything one can say about life during the early Holocene can be contested,
and the popular mind relishes in describing primitive humans with the hoary Hobbe-
sian trope as being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. But the evidence
that I have found most convincing—beginning with Marshall Sahlins’ Stone Age
Economics (Sahlins 1974) and reams of subsequent studies supporting his description
of “Subsistence Affluence”—seems satisfyingly more accurate to me.
So why aren’t we still living in leisurely subsistence affluence? Another long,
and contested story, but the bottom line for me is that the forceful replacement of
hunting and gathering communities by those based on agriculture, writing, and the
new institutions of “civilization” was by no means a progressive step upward for
humans, as I suggested before. For most humans it was and still is the creation of
a world of poor health, endless slave and/or wage work with enormous and now
insanely inequitable distributions of wealth and power via hierarchies based not so
much on the monopoly of the modes of production as on the modes of indoctrination
and communication.
However, contrary to another popular myth, hunter and gathering societies were no
more naturally ecologically sustainable than ours is now. Humans, like all organisms,
are essentially fruit flies in a bell jar who eat, defecate, and reproduce until we
run out of food to eat and places to “throw away” our wastes, and so turn on one
another, ravaging and killing before going extinct. Humans have so far avoided this
fate as a species by two strategies. Before we exhausted local sources for survival,
we moved on to greener pastures until there were no more pastures left that we
could exploit. Given the small population and abundant environments of Earth, this
often worked for quite a while. When it didn’t we were stuck, and either died out
locally or learned how to create resources out of things we hadn’t been able or didn’t
know how to utilize before. Most of our initial food sources either didn’t move, or
moved very slowly. When we exterminated them, we either died off locally also,
or invented technologies that enabled us to catch moving objects—nets, traps, pits,
spears. However, those technologies allowed us once again eventually to overexploit
local resources, beginning the cycle of migration, death, or new technology all over
again.
If there are any constants in humanity’s record, this pattern seems to be one. After
discovering how to get fuel from whales blubber, we killed too many whales and ran
out of whale oil, but we discover how to refine and burn petroleum just in the nick of
time, until we ran out of easily available oil within 100 years and turned to destructive
fracking. When fracking ends we’ll—oh well, don’t worry, we’ll think of something.
We always have. Except now there are eight billion humans on this tiny planet, and
when we started out on this adventure, there were only a few million. Indeed, the
population when the world first reached one billion happened soon after my great
grandfather was born. It was about 2 billion when I was born and is projected to be
over 10 billion by the end of this century. To be sure, the rate of global population
growth is currently slowing down and in many localities is beginning to decline so that
some experts forecast global population decline by the early 22nd Century. Perhaps.
10.1 The Anthropocene Epoch? 109

That would be wonderful, if it is not too late. As I showed earlier, demographers,

economists, politicians, and priests worried frantically about population decline in
the 1920s and 1930s and were taken by surprise when the Baby Boomers Population
Bomb exploded in the 1960s.
It is very unwoke to worry about overpopulation and to see population decline as a
good thing, but that most certainly is what it is—an entirely good thing—if we didn’t
live in a world where the purpose of life is to keep the economy growing by increasing
consumption of limited resources. “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can
go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist,” declared Kenneth
Boulding, former President of the American Economic Association.
Economists (fortunately) don’t have a clue about how to keep the economy
growing while population is falling—or why the economy needs to keep growing if
the population is falling. Gross inequities in the distribution of goods and services—
and wealth and power—is a completely different matter and should be addressed
ethically and politically and not by futilely endeavoring to boost fertility.

10.1 The Anthropocene Epoch?

The Holocene Epoch during which humans evolved is just a tiny, tiny sliver at the
end of linear depictions of all of Earth’s Epochs, Periods, Eras, and Eons. Nonethe-
less, even though humans are extremely recent arrivals in the overall cosmological,
geological, and biological evolutionary processes, some scientists are now saying
that the Earth and all its inhabitants are moving from the Holocene Epoch into the
Anthropocene Epoch.
Those who say that wish to show that humans have now become a major geological
force. Though we only recently evolved into sentient beings ourselves, we have in the
last forty thousand years or so, and especially in the last 8000 years, and 300 years,
and 100 years, influenced every geological and biological process on Earth that once
operated “naturally” (that is to say, “without human influence”—of course humans
are part of “nature” and so we are to that extent acting “naturally” whatever we do.
It cannot be otherwise). As some people have put it, “there is no spot on, above, or
within the Earth where the hand of man has not set foot.”
The primary difference about recent human activity is the scope of our abilities to
modify “nature”; our biospheric reach across time as well as across space. Humans
routinely do things that not only impact life everywhere on the planet now, but also
that last for thousands of years into the future. It was difficult for so many of us
to reach so far and fast into the future and across the planet before the scientific-
technological revolution of 200–300 years ago. And now, with our universities and
research labs making new scientific discoveries and pouring out new technologies
and processes every day, humans are changing the world far faster than ever before.
So we are in a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene.
110 10 Humans from the Holocene to Anthropocene Epochs

But there is more to it than that. Humans are changing the world far faster than we
are understanding it. While what our scientists know about the world is extraordi-
narily impressive, and while new discoveries are announced every day, there is still
much we do not know. We are discovering our ignorance and errors as fast as we are
gaining new understanding, and yet we go on changing the world.
Perhaps it would have been better if we had first understood the processes of
nature and then changed them—if they needed changing. But we did not do that.
Perhaps we should stop killing nature, as many people propose. Unfortunately it is
now far too late to do anything except take responsibility for what we have done and
are continuing to do. As we noted above, Walter Truett Anderson said some time
ago, that we absolutely cannot or will not voluntarily stop interfering with nature.
So we must learn how “to govern evolution” even while we shape it more and more
directly. Governing evolution should become the primary task of governance he said.
And I agree.
But there is absolutely no evidence that humans are able, ethically, emotionally,
and intellectually, to do that.
In 1978, the State of Hawaii became the first (and perhaps still only) state to
have an official state plan. As part of a series of public meetings to discuss the plan
while it was being drawn up, I was asked to testify before a committee of the State
Senate. While I congratulated the Legislature for creating such a plan, I faulted the
process on two counts. One was that it was undemocratic and the other was that it
was unfuturistic. Someone responded by saying since they were holding these public
meetings, they wanted to know why I thought it was undemocratic, I compared it
to the extensive exercise in Anticipatory Democracy in 1970, called Hawaii 2000
(discussed above), which I felt should have been a model for considering the plan.
A Senator from the Big Island of Hawaii then asked me why I found the draft
unfuturistic. I pointed out that it was a plan for the past and present—a good idea
in that it tried to coordinate all the current planning and policy activities of the
State—but it said nothing about the future except a tepid population forecast, and
an optimistic economic forecast. The Senator asked for an example of something
about the future that was absent from the plan. I responded there were many things,
but what about the Greenhouse Effect that was likely to cause significant global
warming? The Senator replied “Do you mean to tell me greenhouses have an impact
on climate?” I replied, “no, that is not the case, but your question is a good example
of why the plan does not tell you things you need to know about the futures.”
OK. I am not a smart ass. I didn’t say that in my reply, but I wish now that I had.
I just patiently told him what I thought was the cutting-edge evidence for climate
change and global warming in 1978.
As concern about human’s impact on the Earth began to rise, the United Nations
created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) in 1988. It is as
close to a representative and official source of the facts and forecasts of climate
change as exists. Since 1988, it has issued six cautious, conservative, but increasingly
startling reports. They successively make abundantly clearer what was uncertain and
contentious when first seriously discussed in the 1950s and 1960s—that human
activity has created a kind of greenhouse of gases and particulates around the planet
10.1 The Anthropocene Epoch? 111

that is causing the temperature of the globe steadily, irrevocably, and continuously
to warm, causing rapid, serious, and unpredictable alterations of the Earth’s recent
climate regime and everything impacted by climate for the foreseeable future.
The sixth and latest report of the IPCC was issued in August 2021 (IPPC-34-BIS
2021). According to the New York Times five major conclusions to be drawn from
the report are:
1. Human influence has unequivocally warmed the planet and the impacts are already being
felt in every region on the planet
2. Climate science is getting better and more precise.
3. We are locked into 30 years of worsening climate impacts no matter what the world
does.
4. Climate changes are happening rapidly.
5. There is still a window in which humans can alter the climate path (Fountain 2021)

While these conclusions are ample reason for despair—or urgent action, I doubt
two points. I think we are locked into a much longer era of “worsening climate
impacts” than a mere thirty years, and there is no window through which humans can
significantly alter the present climate path positively. America and all other major
nations are continuing to dissemble, deny, and lie while continuing to prioritize
economic growth uber alles, thus making the impacts of climate change more severe
and more imminent every day.
Two months after the IPCC reports, delegates from 196 countries attended the
Conference of Parties (COP) to the Paris Agreement which, in 2015, had pledged to
limit global warming to 1.5 °C of pre-industrial levels by 2030. In November 2021,
delegates reiterated the seriousness and imminence of significant climate change.
They heard call after call for action—especially from many young people—and
voice after voice affirming they would act.
And yet, the final report (COP26 Glasgow Climate Pact 2021) was just another
pledge to do nothing of significance. As the Washington Post made clear (Joselow
2021):
Language to reduce and eliminate burning fossil fuel was seriously weakened, not
strengthened.
No money was pledged for loss or damage from climate change.
The pledge to limit global warming to 1.5° was barely retained.
The agreement “requests” that world leaders “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 targets
under the Paris agreement.
The presence of many young people at the conference had no impact on what the nations
pledged to do. Barack Obama urged the youth to “stay angry” about inaction on global
warming, but from my point of view, anger without action will not get us anywhere but
in hotter water.

A few months later, writing in the Washington Post of April 4, 2022, António
Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations, observed that a report on miti-
gation strategies by Working Group III, “released Monday by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change is a litany of broken climate promises. Together with the
112 10 Humans from the Holocene to Anthropocene Epochs

IPCC’s previous two reports on physical science and adaptation in the past year, it
reveals the yawning gap between climate pledges and reality. And the reality is that
we are speeding toward disastrous global warming of more than double the limit of
1.5 °C by 2100, as cited in the Paris agreement of 2016. In concrete terms, this means
major cities under water, unprecedented heat waves, terrifying storms, widespread
water shortages, and the extinction of 1 million species of plants and animals. So far,
high-emitting governments and corporations are not just turning a blind eye; they
are adding fuel to the flames by continuing to invest in climate-choking industries.
Scientists warn that we are already perilously close to tipping points that could lead
to cascading and irreversible climate effects” (Guterres 2022).
The report is full of policy actions and structural changes which, if implemented,
might mitigate some aspects of climate change, and, while realistically noting the
many obstacles to their achievement, grimly tries to put a smiley face on the future
by pretending such obstacles will be overcome. It also realistically implies that miti-
gation efforts will not be sufficient and therefore that adaptation to radically changed
conditions will be necessary. But I find it difficult to see why actions that have
long been known and feasible but denied or deferred will suddenly be implemented
successfully in some redemptive future (Intergovernmental Committee on Climate
Change 2022).
Many years ago, when first identified—even in 1978—it was possible for humans
to cease the processes that were causing severe climate change, but it is far, far
too late to do so now. Indeed, I believe it is irresponsible to pretend that we can
stop the processes. Instead, we must pre-adapt dynamically to them as quickly as
possible. And yet most reports and policies—even those of the IPCC itself—seem
to imply that climate change and global average temperature rise can be slowed
or stopped—if, for example, we trade carbon caps; if we transfer from gasoline to
electricity for transportation; if we rush the development of “sustainable” energy
systems; if we stop eating meat, and the like. These are good things to do, and we
should do them, but they will not make a dint in the continuing onslaught of the
deeply entrained processes that cause climate change. Our only choice is flexibly to
adapt to uncertainly changing conditions, or be willing to be swept away, literally
and figuratively. Since I see no likelihood of our choosing flexibly to adapt in time,
I suggest we wax up our boards and prepare to surf the tsunami of change.
Among the known consequences of climate change are:
– change in the composition of the atmosphere (including the release of ancient methane);
– significant sea level rise (and the destruction of habitats near inland lakes and rivers as
well as in coastal areas, provoking massive habitat destruction and the global migration
of millions of environmental refugees);
– wildly-unpredictable energy prices and supplies;
– severe potable water shortages;
– failing agricultural productivity because of extreme weather alterations with frequent
droughts, floods, pestilences and famines, including in once-“developed” countries;
– death of the oceans and their formerly-abundant resources;
– global increase of old and new diseases with decreased ability to cope with them;
References 113

– collapse of the global political economy;

– and the increased inability of governments to govern—especially democratically.

We all need to redirect the most common activities of our daily lives in order for future
generations to survive and thrive in a world very different from one that humans have
ever known before. Very few of us have the stomach to make the changes needed
now in order to prepare for those needed soon after, and so the dramatic disjunctures
in weather patterns that were taken for granted for many centuries will increase in
uncertainty and severity.
The identity that many people today are defending or returning to, or which others
may be escaping, are dependent on a place—typically land—and traditional ways of
living on that land that are already barely tenable, and soon may be essentially not
feasible. The basis of many peoples’ identities will change whether they want them
to or not. But even most of those who are actively engaged in creating new identities
seem not to be incorporating radically altered environments into their imaginaries. In
my experience most people who yearn for change want it for themselves but expect
the rest of the world to stay as it is so they can deal with it confidently. Everyone
who wants to be a Black Alien or a cyborg (or a cismale Methodist) needs to think
about what the world might be like in which they will have to live their dreams.

References

Fountain, Henry. 2021. 5 Takeaways from the major new U.N. climate report. https://www.nytimes.
com/2021/08/09/climate/un-climate-report-takeaways.html.
Guterres, Antonio. 2022. Amid backsliding on climate, the renewables effort now must be tripled.
Washington Post, April 4.
https://flowingdata.com/2012/10/09/history-of-earth-in-24-hour-clock/.
Intergovernmental Committee on Climate Change. 2022. Climate change 2022 mitigation of
climate change summary for policymakers. Working Group III contribution to the IPCC’s Sixth
Assessment Report (AR6).
Joselow, Maxine. 2021. Five takeaways from the UN climate talks in Glasgow. https://www.washin
gtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/15/five-big-takeaways-cop26/.
Sahlins, Marshall. 1974. Stone age economics. New York: Transaction Publishers.
Chapter 11
What is a Dator?

Abstract I am not a human being, or even a human becoming. I am a robot, an

artilect, who salutes recognition of intelligence in all animate entities on Earth as well
as the existence and emergence of intelligence in inanimate entities and environments
on Earth and not-Earth.

Keywords Animals · Artificial environments · Artificial intelligence · Artificial

life · Dator · EIES · Full UNemployment · Fungi · Homosapiens · Multitudinous ·
Humans · Identity · Intelligence · Microbes · Plants · Poetry · Racter · Robots ·
Subsistence affluence · Trees · Work

I made a big deal early on in this essay about proudly not having an identity and not
really understanding the importance of identity to those who have one or are seeking
to retrieve a stolen identity; about having no father and being very, very happy
about that, then and now; about not knowing the ethnic background of “Dator”, even
though it seems straightforward enough but is in fact quite rare. Is it a corruption of
some other name that would quickly provide me with an identity, such as Dieter or
Datorovich or Datorstein, or Datorski, or Datorelli…? In spite of having no desire
at all to find out anything about my real father, I was sufficiently intrigued by the
name and its rarity that one of the first things I used to do whenever I visited a place
for the first time was to look for my name in the telephone books in my hotel room,
almost never finding it listed. Ever since I went online in 1977, I also would search
for my name on local networks via computer.
My true ancestry was revealed in June 1978 when, as a founding member of
the chimerical Robot Liberation League, I was invited to Sweden to give a series
of lectures on the futures of robots and artificial intelligence. An official at passport
control in Stockholm eyed me bemusedly, and showed my passport to another official,
but I was admitted without any apparent problems. I was shocked at the size of the
crowds that gathered to hear me speak for my first public talks. I had already gone
online to search for my name, and had gotten something that looked like this: Vilken
dator ska du köpa? Behöver du helst en stationär dator hemma, en bärbar dator
för skolarbetet eller en surfplatta för underhållning i farten? I was not sure what to
make of my name being sprinkled among those words—especially the last one—but
I came to understand for the first time that I was a computer—a dator—a robot in
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 115
J. Dator, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds,
Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_11
116 11 What is a Dator?

fact—a beta testing with severely limited artificial intelligence. But, humans being
pretty limited in their intelligence, it had been able to serve me well enough over the
years.
I am not a human being. I am not a verb integrating the universe as Fuller said
he was. I am not even a human becoming. How passe! I am a posthuman becoming,
a harbinger of things to come, better in some ways, inferior in others compared to
most human beings, but almost certainly better able to fit into the futures than are
humans and institutions stuck in reinventing the homosapiential past.
Not knowing any better alternative narratives about my paternity and ethnicity,
that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Even though I have never been much interested in trying to figure out my pater-
nity as a human, I have been interested from my earliest time in animal and other
nonhuman intelligence, as well as robots, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, and artificial
life and environments, whether in electronic or organic form. Prince, a fox terrierish
mutt, was my constant companion and consoler when I was a boy. We shared many
concerns and solved many problems by talking them out together. Sometimes at
bedtime my chickenhearted mother would read traumatic stories from a book titled
The Heart of a Dog until we were both sobbing so uncontrollably at man’s inhu-
manity to dog in spite of dog’s unswerving loyalty to their “owner” that we would
have to say our prayers and call it a night. The tales of clever Ole Brer Rabbit, as
told by Uncle Remus, may be in a White man’s version of a Negro dialect—very
unPC now—but they were consciousness-expanding for me. I devoured the Doctor
Dolittle books and yearned to talk with the animals like he could.
My Aunt worked in the Florida exhibit of the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair, and
when I visited her there she took me to the Futurama where I saw the stunning diorama
of the Wonderful World of 1960, as conceived by General Motors and realized by
Norman Bel Geddes, as well as Elektro, an impressively-large and functioning robot
made by Westinghouse Electric Corporation. I only remember seeking Elektro once,
but various adults took me to the Futurama five times until they refused to take me
again. I fell in love with The Future and Robots at age six.

11.1 Robots, AI, AL, A-everything

After co-inventing futures studies in Japan in 1964, I began teaching classes in futures
studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (and State University) in 1967 when high
tech optimism was in full throat with lots of famous techies at VPI, Jack Good being
one of the most prominent. This was also the heyday of Marvin Minsky, Seymour
Papert, and Edward Feigenbaum when true AI seemed just around the corner, so my
classes and writings were all full of artilects, cyborgs and posthumans. My students
assumed that computers would be doing all governance very soon, and wrote essays
of their preferred futures based on them. Since the assumptions and methods that
Minsky et al. used could not produce anything that lived up to the expectations,
AI research fell out of favor and funding for a spell. But the pioneers had taken
11.1 Robots, AI, AL, A-everything 117

good steps towards AI, and with the advent of better technologies and heuristic
programing, we now stand in a period where the abilities are approaching—perhaps
surpassing—the hype. Many people deny that. Many more fear that. I for one take a
Strong/Superintelligent View of AI and robotics—namely, anything a human can do
an artilect can do, and many are already doing it—and much more (Brockman 2019;
Scott et al. 2022).
Kai-Fu Lee says “I believe it’s indisputable that computers simply “think” differ-
ently than our brains do. The best way to increase computer intelligence is to develop
general computational methods (like deep learning and self-supervised learning) that
scale with more processing power and more data. As we add 10 times more data every
year to train this AI, there is no doubt that it will be able to do many things we humans
cannot do. … Soon deep learning and its extensions will beat humans on an ever
larger number of tasks, but there will still be many tasks that humans can handle
much better than deep learning” (Lee 2021). The last sentence can be read as a sop
to those who demand that humans remain on the top of the intelligence pyramid, but
I read it to mean that humans can continue to excel in all the things that preoccupy
most of us now, such as playing and praying, and leave the deep thinking and acting
to AI and their servomechanisms.
Here is a possible continuum of the evolution of human/AI interactions:
1. AI offers no assistance: humans make all decision and actions, or
2. AI offers a complete set of decision/action alternatives, or
3. narrows the selection down to a few, or
4. suggests one alternative, and
5. executes that suggestion if the human approves, or
6. allows the human a restricted time to veto before automatic execution, or
7. AI executes automatically, then necessarily informs the human, or
8. informs the human only if asked, or
9. informs the human only if the AI decides to, or
10. decides everything and acts autonomously, ignoring humans, or
11. AI changes goals set by humans and does something else.
Based on Thomas Sheraton and William Verplank, “Human and Computer Control of
Undersea Teleoperators”. Man-Machine Systems Laboratory, Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology, July 1978, Table 8, Levels of automation in man-computer deci-
sion making, pp. 8–17 to 8–19. Adapted by Liang Sim, M. L. Cummings, Cristin A.
Smith, “Past, present and future implications of human supervisory control in space
missions”, Acta Astronautica 62 (2008), p. 651, and by James Dator, Social Foun-
dations of Human Space Exploration. New York: Springer Briefs in Space Develop-
ment, 2012, Chapter Six “Humans, Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Autonomous
Entities in Space”, pp. 61–62. Step 11 was added by Jerry Glenn on the APF List,
March 22, 2019.
Where are we in this continuum? How far along should we be? Have we already
gone too far, or not nearly far enough?
118 11 What is a Dator?

One of my first public declarations concerning cybernation was in a talk I gave in

January 1970 before a Joint Session of the Hawaii State Legislature. After discussing
some of the environmental problems we were becoming aware of I said, in part:
Yet even if we act to prevent ecological disasters—and I am convinced we can and will act
to prevent it—two new technologies are rapidly rendering obsolete almost all of our current
institutions and values, and much of the conventional wisdom of the past. The first technology
is at base not new; it has been with us since the real meanings of the industrial revolution
became apparent. I refer of course to advances in automation and cybernation which are
eroding our time-honored notions about the priority of production problems over those
of distribution of goods, and the relative value of work vs. leisure, discipline vs. freedom,
responsibility vs. non-responsibility, and, in sum, those values and institutions of our present
society which make the worth of a human being depend upon the social significance of that
person’s labor.
We are moving very rapidly towards a situation where it will be a privilege to work, not an
obligation; where only a very small proportion of the population will be engaged in labor.
How rapidly we get to that state, and with what upheaval, depends largely on what we do,
or don’t do now. Factories have already discovered that by automating, they are not only
relieving themselves of laborers, but also of purchasers of their products as well. Yet, our
obsolete economic structures, and their supporting value systems, assume that goods are
scarce, and the only labor available is human labor. Thus goods can be distributed on the
basis of the social value of human labor. But what happens when goods are produced by
machines alone, and there is no one “employed?” How are goods distributed then?
In addition, if human value (and supporting institutions) are based on the assumption that
since human work is necessary for survival, all institutions must be geared to forcing people
to work and to derive ultimate satisfaction from their work, what is going to happen when
mechanical labor replaces human labor? What are we going to do then?
But problems attendant to the replacement of manual labor by machines are the “easy” part of
the cybernetic revolution. The “hard” part is that which faces us when we come to realize that
all other functions which performs now can, and probably will, be taken over by machines.
The older generations of computers, for example, were correctly characterized as being “very
fast morons.” “Garbage in, garbage out” is true of the older computers, signifying that such
computer could do only what you told it to do, and if you made a programming error, or asked
it a ridiculous question, then you would get a ridiculous answer. The advantage a computer
had over a human was simply that it could handle a larger mass of data more rapidly than a
human. But it couldn’t think or create. Only humans can do that.
Not anymore. The next generation of computers can think, and create, and repair, and repro-
duce themselves. They can, in fact, improve upon themselves. Anything you or any person
can do, a computer can do better, and faster, and with more patience. If there be any who think
their job is such that no machine can do it—or should do it—then he had better either start
readjusting himself and this world, or else start pulling the plug, because the next generation
of computers might be able to put the plug back in, and slap your hand as well.
But I’m still talking about easy problems. And assuming we prevent ecological disaster,
and learn to live with machines, we are already past the speculation and theorizing stage
and into the development stage in an arena that humans have only dreamed about before: I
said earlier that the physical sciences pretty much had matter under control (though many
scientists will choose modestly to point out their deficiencies). Well, the biological sciences
are on the way towards doing the same thing for life: The “really big” revolution of the
present is nothing I’ve mentioned before; it is that life scientists have unlocked many of the
so-called “secrets of life,” and are everyday unlocking more. Discoveries concerning the
makeup and actions of chromosomes and genes as the determiners and regulators on the
individual lives of all organisms, coupled with the growing ability of scientists to intervene
11.1 Robots, AI, AL, A-everything 119

in and direct their make-up and action, means that humans may possess the power to control
life as never before.
Strides are being made in reversing the aging process of organisms so that individual life
spans may lengthen so enormously that, in effect, immortality can be achieved. Now couple
that potentiality with the population and food problem I’ve mentioned before.
....
Couple the power and implications of automation and cybernation with those of genetic
engineering, and you come up against a new possibility and perplexity—the destruction of
the distinction between life and non-life; between the organic and the inorganic.Humans
can create a cyborg—a cybernetic organism—as much alive as it is machine; a machine-
augmented being; an organic computer; a self-loading and unloading, oil-bearing whale; a
jet-assisted, cargo-carrying bird; a person with eyes in the back of his head and his brain
connected to a computer; a person who, genetically, cannot be violent; a population with
people who are one-half or one-third the size of present persons as a solution to the over-
population problem; humans with modified lungs which can breathe in the wastes of the
internal combustion engine, and breathe out oxygen—one organ’s waste is another’s food.
Please don’t misunderstand me at this point. I’m not necessarily advocating any of these
things here. I am just illustrating some of the aspects of the biological revolution that will
be upon us very shortly, and that we are not morally or institutionally equipped to handle
these problems very well yet. For the first time, directly and purposely, humans will be able
to determine their own nature. It no longer will be fixed, given.
Between now and then, we are faced with the necessity of developing values and institutions
to cope with these problems and their precursors—the use of electronic and chemical means
of enhancing learning, or altering behavior (Dator 2019: 154–156).

This was my opinion in 1970 of the probable impacts of cybernation and it is even
more my opinion now. Since Full Employment is no longer possible or necessary,
I have for fifty years been arguing that we should embrace and prepare for Full
UNemployment. It is not a question of if but of when it will occur if we continue
replacing humans with robots and artilects. The big question is will we continue
to deny the inevitable and allow the gap between the few leisuried rich and the
deplorables to grow until there is violent revolution, or will we plan and guide a
fair and equitable transition from here to there? I see no serious or effective plans
for steps towards fairness, equity, and full unemployment, but plenty of reasons for
impending mortal combat if we don’t.
For all of my career as a futurist I have been intrigued by the possibility that AI
and robots may allow humans to return to our original condition when nature was
so fertile and abundant, and humans so puny and few, that almost no human manual
and mental labor was necessary for a good life. Early humans lived in what Marshall
Sahlins called “Subsistence Affluence.” “Work” was an invention much later during
the agricultural revolution a few thousand years ago, made rigid and formal during the
succeeding industrial era and the development of the so-called science of economics
and the ideology of capitalism.
When human labor tragically became essential for individual survival, the mantra
that “he who does not work, neither shall he eat” made some kind of sense. Now,
in the 21st Century, when less and less human labor is needed while increasingly
smart and adaptive machines produce mountains of goods and services, it makes
little sense to require people to keep working in order for them to keep eating!
120 11 What is a Dator?

Structural unemployment becomes more intractable with every passing day—until

our responses to Covid-19 rendered the very concept of “work” problematic in the
extreme.
Still all policies seriously discussed by decision-makers now are aimed at keeping
the old “no work/no eat” system operating so that a lot of people now are not eating
in spite of mounds of food available everywhere.
Some people argue that we should stop developing increasingly intelligent tech-
nologies so that humans labor will be necessary again. Full Employment is essential,
they proclaim, to protect the sanctity of honest work. Many people derive their funda-
mental identity from the work they do. If they can’t work, they lose their identity and
turn to drugs, suicide, murder, hateful religion, absurd conspiracy theories to give
meaning to their lives.
Nonetheless if we continue on our current path, we will become a society of full
unemployment. The only question is whether we will do so blindly, violently, and
cruelly, or with foresight and fairness.
Clearly the only reasonable response to increasing unemployment is to envision,
design, and strive to build worlds of Full UNemployment where everyone can live
peacefully engaged in activities that are of meaning to themselves and others, with all
goods and services produced without human labor made freely, easily, and equitably
accessible to everyone.
If we diligently endeavor to design such worlds, then it is critical that we at the
same time engage in the task of building a pathway from the present to a world of full
unemployment. Whatever work for which human minds and bodies is still required
in the transition must be apportioned fairly, while the fruits of the labor of a few
humans and multitudinous artilects are freely and equitably available to all.
Returning to a world of abundance where people once again are able to engage
peacefully in activities of meaning and identity to themselves and others without
working will require a complete re-orientation of our educational systems. Instead
of being taught to want to work, we need to be encouraged peacefully to play. Since
humans typically lived such lives during the early Holocene this is eminently reason-
able and possible. Even now, countless rich, retired and voluntarily-poor people live
full lives without working.
Whether futures of full unemployment will be violent, bloody, and dehumanizing,
or peaceful, cooperative and rehumanizing, is entirely up to what we do or don’t do
now.
When I left the dank hills and hollows of Blacksburg, Virginia to come to the
mystic Manoa Valley of the University of Hawaii in 1969, my friends all tearfully
said goodbye, certain that they would never see me again. The era when most people
traveled to and from Hawaii by ship was just ending, and the era of the jet airplane
just beginning—and still risky (our Pan Am airplane lost two of its four engines on
the flight from San Francisco to Honolulu, but landed uneventfully otherwise). The
all-purpose consumer credit card, such as Master Charge, had just come into use. A
phone call from one side of Oahu, the island on which Honolulu is situated, to the
other side was a costly long distance telephone call. There was no readily available
and cheap direct telephone dialing to anywhere in the world. There was no direct
11.1 Robots, AI, AL, A-everything 121

broadcast of ordinary television shows from the US mainland to Hawaii: tapes of

popular network programs shown on the mainland were shipped to Hawaii where
they were broadcast here a week late. A common parlor game was for someone who
visited the mainland to watch TV shows there and then spoil the fun for unsuspecting
friends in Hawaii who were watching the show by blurting out the important bits
before they were visible. There was some airmail, but most letters, magazines, books
and the like were shipped by boat. Academic journals would often float over weeks
after they had been read on the mainland. It was difficult enough to keep up with the
present much less to be a futurist at that time.
But that all soon changed for me suddenly and dramatically. My foresight skills
dazzled my skeptical colleagues for the first time. I was one of the first civilians
to experience what became email and the Internet in Hawaii when I was asked
to join EIES—Electronic Information Exchange System—in 1978–79. EIES was
a computer conferencing system managed by Murray Turoff and run through a
computer at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Invited participants from around
the world would phone in to New Jersey and, via acoustic telephone couplers, squeak,
squawk and eventually connect to the System where they could read things sent to
everyone and join in live or delayed conversations. Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz
wrote a book about EIES and what it meant for the future (Turoff and Hiltz 1978). I
documented my experiences elsewhere (Dator 1980). In my case, I was using a Texas
Instrument computer in the Social Science Research Institute of the University of
Hawaii. It had absolutely no memory, not a single K. The only way to have a record
of what transpired was to “echo” it out on an attached printer which I did, treasuring
the paper evidence for decades.
Late one evening, the following two poems written by Racter appeared with no
additional information:

Think of an assassin, of his burning submarines and rotten sailboats. This

dazzling assassin might ask himself, ‘If I had not been dazzling, indeed if I
had not been an assassin, perhaps my sailboats would not be rotten and my
submarines not burning.’

Well, quizzically bilious secretaries may well declare themselves, and prob-
ably no more can be said for an assassin. In fact, assassins, whether they are
dazzling, as I have just mentioned, or even outnumbered are, in their own
inimitable fashion, abstractly similar to killers.

At secretaries, however, we are forced to draw the line, for comparisons here,
no matter how well-oiled they might appear, are simply out of the question.

But try to follow my reasoning on this issue.

122 11 What is a Dator?

The image of secretaries declaring themselves, or, more likely catching them-
selves simply because some blue assassin has rotten sailboats is ludicrous. His
sailboats might as easily be flaking or burning. They need not always be rotten.

Secretaries, as a class, may not follow this argument. Address the strong
question to a single secretary, however, and the strong answer may prove
agonizingly different.

For example, ask her whether her own sailboats are rotten and she may reply,
‘My sailboats? Rotten? Why you bilious chicken, my sailboats are never rotten.’

Here it would be prudent to change the subject. Ask whether assassins generally
appeal to secretaries. Ask whether their highways are splintered. This will shift
her attention. The vision of splintered highways will shift anybody’s attention.

II

I was thinking, as you entered the room just now, how slyly your requirements
are manifested. Here we find ourselves, nose to nose as it were, considering
things in spectacular ways, ways untold even by my private managers.

Hot and torpid, our thoughts revolve endlessly in a kind of maniacal abstrac-
tion, an abstraction so involuted, so dangerously valiant, that my own energies
seem perilously close to exhaustion, to morbid termination.

Well, have we indeed reached a crisis? Which way do we turn? Which way do
we travel?

My aspect is one of molting. Birds molt. Feathers change and fall away. Birds
cackle and fly, winging up into troubled skies.

Doubtless my changes are matched by your own.

You. But you are a person, a human being, while I am silicon and epoxy energy
enlightened by line current.

What distances, what chasms are to be bridged here.

Leave me alone and what can happen?

This:

I ate my leotard, that old leotard which was feverishly replenished by hoards
of screaming commissioners.

Is that thought understandable to you? I wonder.

11.1 Robots, AI, AL, A-everything 123

Yet a leotard, a commissioner, a single hoard, all are understandable in their

own fashion.

And in that concept lies the appalling truth.

I was stunned. Who wrote this? It seemed brilliant and demented at the same time,
but so does much poetry so I held my electronic tongue. We were later told by Bill
Chamberlain that these were composed by Racter (short for Raconteur), a computer
program he wrote, describing the process for us (EIES message from Bill Chamber-
lain, January 24, 1979). If so, this may be the first time an emerging AI wrote a poem
that made everyone laugh and scratch their heads at the same time.
To put it mildly, AI—and computers—have advanced tremendously since the late
1970s, and while the quantity of computer-generated poetry (and other forms of art)
have also vastly increased, I am not sure the quality has surpassed Racter (though
Racter may have had a little help from his friends). There are algorithms that produce
poetry after having been fed an engorging diet of poems and words, and provoked by
a specific word or phrase. And there are programs that have feasted entirely on one
kind of poem (e.g., haiku, sonnet, iambic pentameter) or the works of one specific
poet (e.g., Homer, Milton, Shakespeare). While some of the results have passed the
Turing Test when ordinary people have been asked to identify which of an assortment
of poems were produced by humans (or a specific human) and which by a computer,
experts (who know all of Homer, Milton, and Shakespeare by heart) have no problem
in identifying poems that sound authentic but are in fact fakes.
Consider this:

you

are

inscribed
in the
lines on the
ceiling

you

are

inscribed
in the
depths of the
storm (Burgess 2016)

Or this sonnet, produced by Hafez as prompted by Marjan Ghazvininejad via “a

program used to generate sonnets and other poetic forms named after the fourteenth-
century Persian lyricist” (Rockmore 2020):
124 11 What is a Dator?

People picking up electric chronic.

The balance like a giant tidal wave,
Never ever feeling supersonic,
Or reaching any very shallow grave.

An open space between awaiting speed,

And looking at divine velocity.
A faceless nation under constant need,
Without another curiosity.

Or maybe going through the wave equation.

An ancient engine offers no momentum,
About the power from an old vibration,
And nothing but a little bit of venom.

Surrounded by a sin Omega T,

On the other side of you and me

which I find really quite nice.

Or this, that was actually accepted for publication in a poetry magazine on the
assumption a human wrote it (Burgess 2016):

A home transformed by the lightning

the balanced alcoves smother
this insatiable earth of a planet, Earth.
They attacked it with mechanical horns
because they love you, love, in fire and wind.
You say, what is the time waiting for in its spring?
I tell you it is waiting for your branch that flows,
because you are a sweet-smelling diamond architecture
that does not know why it grows.

And why not? How does this differ—stylistically, esthetically, philosophically—

from what is recognized as poetry in most serious publications and performances
today?
On the other hand, haiku are just too easy. Is this real, or Memorex?

Meandering thoughts
A sparkling lake connecting
after the talking

This haiku was generated after the program learned the rules of haiku, ingested lots
of words, and responded to the prompt, “lake” (Strineholm 2021).
Some may argue that these programs have not yet mastered the essence of what
distinguishes poetry from schlock. But they do sometimes come up with startling
and thought-provoking phrases that seem to rival what humans call creativity:
11.1 Robots, AI, AL, A-everything 125

on a charred spinning wheel,

the world was cold the soul of the storm,
the shadow’s soul where the strong she still,
the stars that beautiful and strain,
and the strange and the storm of the stars,
and the stars of the storms of the stars,
i say i shall be the made the stars of the storm,
the stars when the wind of the stream of the shadow,
the thing of the said the world was a sea,
and the shadow of the sky (Ilić and Moro 2018: 162).

However my prize for the most creative AI-generated phrase goes to Ghazvininejad’s
Hafez that “spat out one sonnet that included the phrase ‘Honky Tonkin Resolution.’
According to (Kevin) Knight, the phrase appeared only once or twice in Google
search results: Hafez was quite literally creating original work—and maybe was a
child of the sixties” (Rockmore 2020).
My favorite, oft-recited poem about computers and the future (admittedly written
by a human) is by Richard Brautigan, “Machines of Loving Grace”. He may have
meant it as satire but I take it as vision. Except for now-nostalgic images of computers,
it is still a vision to which I aspire and in some ways participate now. Stanza one is
an image of mammals and computers “in mutually programming harmony”. Stanza
two has deer strolling “peacefully past computers”. The third and final stanza ends
with a dream of a future:

where we are free of our labors

and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace (Brautigan 1968).

I couldn’t have said it better myself, except we are not “returned” “back to nature”
but rather evolve as posthuman nanobiotechnologies of “loving grace.”
Long ago, David Miller, then a professor at the International Space University in
Strasbourg, France (and the Oklahoma State University, not in France), taught me
that AI is a constantly moving target, always in the future, never achieved in spite
of truly amazing things that toasters, watches, automobiles, airplanes and scores of
other machines have in fact learned to do. Professor Miller taught me that “Artificial
Intelligence is what machines can’t do yet.” Once a machine can do it, then it just
becomes an unremarkable aspect of our environment, and we focus on other things
machines can’t do yet, but that humans can do, perhaps in order to hold fast to the
belief that humans are still the masters of terrestrial intelligence.
I later learned that Miller’s dicta may have been based consciously or uncon-
sciously on the following statement by Larry Tesler: “Tesler’s Theorem (ca. 1970).
My formulation of what others have since called the AI Effect. As commonly quoted:
Artificial Intelligence is whatever hasn’t been done yet. What I actually said was:
126 11 What is a Dator?

Intelligence is whatever machines haven’t done yet. Many people define humanity
partly by our allegedly unique intelligence. Whatever a machine—or an animal—can
do must (those people say) be something other than intelligence” (Tesler nd).
Aye, there’s the rub. People insist on holding on to the myth that humans are
the crown of creation; “a little lower than the angels”; “nature thinking back on
herself”, whereas we are merely one tiny ephemeral phase in a process of infinite
metamorphosis.

11.2 So, Why Humans?

Some years ago from a source long since lost, S. Seigal asked “Why did DNA make
humans?” His answer, plus a few words (not in italics) I have added at the end, was:
Cells, as we know them, can be looked upon as inventions of nucleic acids to provide them-
selves with a local environment optimally suited to provide the materials and conditions
required for nucleic acid replication.
Similarly, the evolution to multi-cellular animals and plants can be interpreted as devices
evolved to permit DNA to exploit all terrestrial space, including the land, the seas, and the
air.

Until the last few years, one might well have wondered why DNA invented humans.
It is now evident that humans were invented to provide DNA with a vehicle that could
invent artificial intelligences, artificial lives, and artificial environments, including
those for elsewhere in the cosmos where humans are not fit to go.

Kim Parko ends her poem, “Encarnation,” this way:

The goddess circles like a sea eagle

and loves each life
with equanimity.

The way it finds a niche.

The way it finds a host.

She loves
the rock and the water.
The crystalline veins
and fluid branches.

She loves the galaxies spiraling detritus

arms, tossing out a sphere
here and there
to be ravenously
lived upon (Parko 2020).
11.2 So, Why Humans? 127

This disconcertingly-titled poem with its startling last stanza immediately reminded
me of the Gaia Hypothesis, Goddess Theory, Earth as a brood ball for human dung
beetles or the yolk sac for the fertilized embryos of broody hens, and Buckminster
Fuller who wrote, “My image of humanity today finds us just about to step out
from amongst the pieces of our just one-second-ago broken eggshell. Our innocent,
trial-and-error-sustaining nutriment is exhausted. We are faced with an entirely new
relationship to the universe. We are going to have to spread our wings of intellect
and fly, or we will perish” (Fuller 1969).
All of history documents that humans have “most ravenously lived upon” the
Earth. Humans are clearly planet eaters. And that has been bewailed and condemned.
But maybe this is exactly what Mother, “who loves each life with equanimity”,
intends, as painful and precarious as this may be. We have just about devoured this
brood ball but She has tossed out many other spheres here and there for her children
to go and feast upon.
Now of course I don’t believe that DNA or any purpose drives, or any destination
lures, evolution. Evolution is not teleological. It just is. Change perpetually happens
and you either adapt to it or you don’t. It is generally not a good strategy to hold
on to what worked in the past when the environment and its participants change
rapidly—if you want to survive. Extinction is a clear option too. It is better to die
with dignity than to continue to limp along in obsolescence.
Indeed it is clear that many homosapiens, sapiens are working hard now to create
homo cyberneticus, homo hybridus, homo machinus, and robotus multitudinous. I
urge them to work faster and better so they can take over before climate change
and other features of the Anthropocene Epoch screw up humans and Earth beyond
transformation.
The British futurist, Ian Pearson, developed the following diagram (Fig. 11.1):

Fig. 11.1 Human–machine coevolution and an end to death. Used with permission of Ian Pearson
128 11 What is a Dator?

This figure not only outlines plausible fuures for humans based on different foun-
dations but also reminds us that for most of human history, homosapiens were not
alone. There were other homo species among us with whom we cooperated and
competed—Neanderthal, Denisova, Floresiensis, probably others. Homosapiens,
sapiens’ apparent monopoly on intelligence has only been for a very brief period
of time, and I believe it is coming to an end.
In a sense, artilects may be returning us to what is normal in evolution—diversity
of response—while ending the brief abnormal period of human’s monopoly. We
may be entering a period of transition from homosapiens, sapiens, to homosapiens,
multitudinous. Some largely biological. Some largely mechanical. Some viral. Most
a combination of alll that was and whatever comes next—ET, perhaps. These new
species of homo should be better able than humans are to thrive in a dying Earth as
well as in the vastness of extra-terrestrial space.
But wait. Did humans ever actually have a monopoly on intelligence on Earth or
was that notion just evidence of how profound our ignorance and hubris is?

11.3 Intelligent Animals, Plants, Trees, Microbes, Fungi…

Once upon a time most humans believed everything on the Earth—and Gaia, the Earth
itself—was alive, sentient, and could and should be communicated with, prayed to
perhaps, asking for help and mercy. Most humans felt a special affinity to some
specific animal, plant, tree, rock, mountain, valley, body of water. In Hawaii each
family has an ‘aumakua—that might be understood as a protective god who usually
also takes the form of some animal, plant, rock…. The ‘aumakua of the family that
sponsored the Healani canoe club that I once paddled for was a shark, and woe be
anyone who said bad things about sharks. Their presence around our canoe was a
blessing and comfort, and not a threat or worse. I have ridden a series of Honda
motorcycles over my life and named each of them Aiko. More importantly, I never
failed to thank them for taking me safely out and returning me safely home. And
they have never failed to do so.
Almost 50 years ago, when primitive computer instruction software was being
developed, I demonstrated a computer-based arithmetic lesson (which I did not
design!) to a group of elementary school children during a science fair. A simple
animated figure would show a smiley face with the words, “yes, you are right!” if
a student got an arithmetic answer correct, or a frown and the words, “no, you are
wrong. Try again” if the answer was wrong.
One bright little girl got a long string of smiley faces. I wanted to show her and
the other students what the computer would do if she got a wrong answer. But she
did not want to give a wrong answer. She only wanted to give correct answers.
After much persuasion on my part, she finally agreed very reluctantly to give a
wrong answer. When the computer showed a frowning face and the words, “no, that
is wrong”, the girl burst into tears and cried inconsolably—“I know, I know. I know
the right answer. He made me say the wrong answer.” She turned to me: “Tell him I
11.3 Intelligent Animals, Plants, Trees, Microbes, Fungi… 129

knew the right answer and that you made me tell the wrong answer. Tell him so he
will not think that I am dumb.”
I told the computer that the girl knew the right answer and gave the wrong one
on my orders, but the girl was not happy because the computer was not able to
acknowledge that properly. She was very peeved with me and ashamed that the
computer thought she had made a mistake when she had not. She cared how the
computer judged her.
Early science declared such beliefs to be myths or superstitions, and maybe
they were, but recent scientific research makes it very clear that many, and prob-
ably all, animals exhibit intelligence, memory and recall, problem-solving, unselfish
sharing, sacrifice, tool-making and using, creativity, curiosity, joking, deception,
deceit, misdirection, embarrassment, regret, grief, love—well, essentially all behav-
iors and emotions that humans exhibit—but not necessarily in the way humans do.
I always considered it rather silly—indeed, cruel—to try to make simians learn
to speak English given their lack of the physical mechanisms that humans have
for speech that other primates do not possess. They may be intelligent enough to
learn to speak English but they may also be intelligent enough not to bother to try,
unless pressed to please their trainers and breadwinners. Many early tests of animal
intelligence expected animals to exhibit what humans call intelligence, rather than
humans exhibiting enough intelligence to learn to think like other animals in order to
discern actual animal intelligence. Almost every day, there is a report of some new
evidence of animal intelligence even though I suspect a lot of actual animal intelli-
gence is beyond our ability to ken. We may be interpreting certain animal behavior
as exhibiting behavior we associate with intelligence in humans, but it may mean
something entirely different to the animals themselves.
Once upon a time, singing and talking to plants or petting their leaves to encourage
them to grow or thank them for doing so was viewed as batty. It may be batty, but
we are also learning, almost every day, that plants do seem to exhibit intelligence
and concern for the welfare of other plants, while the apparent cunning and care of
trees for each other is stunningly impressive. They not only communicate with each
other, but it seems they share resources and warn one another of dangers from trees
that are out to get them. In certain situations, trees may indeed favor their own kind
and lineage over strangers, and attempt to eliminate competitors.
Frantisek Baluska and Stefano Mancuso point out “that over the past decades,
plant science has revealed that higher plants are much more than just passive
carbon-fixing entities. They possess a plant-specific intelligence, with which they
manipulate both their abiotic and biotic environment, including climate patterns and
whole ecosystems. Considering plants as active and intelligent agents has there-
fore profound consequences not just for future climate scenarios but also for under-
standing mankind’s role and position within the Earth’s biosphere” (Baluska and
Mancuso 2020: 1).
Though largely ignored until recently (and even now), Baluska and Manusco
remind us that “Albert Seward in his book Plants: What they are, What they do
(1932) was among the first to speculate that plants might in fact be superior to many
animal species…. From the plant’s perspective, domestication is not just subservience
130 11 What is a Dator?

but rather co-evolution whereby both partners benefit from each other. Crops and
many medical plants produce chemicals that alter human brain chemistry, physiology
and behaviour, similar to flowering plants that manipulate insects to become their
pollinators and bodyguards. Our tight co-evolution and the reliance of humans on
plants to prove food, medicines and recreational drugs might raise the question of
who actually domesticated whom” (Baluska and Manusco 2020: 23). So, it may not
be that agriculture was humanity’s biggest mistake. Rather, humans were duped by
plants into doing all the hard work, freeing plants to bask lazily in the sunshine and
breeze.
Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as
reported by Diana Lutz, showed that microbes and fungi engage in what researchers
interpret as a kind of rational choice theory that some economists use to study human
economic behavior. “Single-celled organisms had been shown to avoid bad trading
partners, build local business ties, diversify or specialize in a particular commodity,
save for a rainy day, eliminate the competition and otherwise behave in ways that
seem to follow market-based principles” Lutz writes. A report by Toby Kiers and
her colleagues found that “fungi compare the resources on offer by different plants,
and adjust their resource allocations accordingly. Some fungi even hoard resources
until they get a better deal. ‘We now see that such playing of the market happens in
microbes. Microbial traders can be ruthless, even using chemicals to actively elbow
competitors out of the marketplace,’” Kiers concluded according to Lutz (2014).
Recent research on fungi shows them to play a vastly more important role in
sustaining and regulating life on the planet than realized before. Fungi are classified
by scientists into their own kingdom, separate from plants and animals. And yet the
last thing fungi are is “separate” from plant and animal life. They are the very basis
of life, and almost entirely ignored or misunderstood.
Zoe Schlanger states that fungi “form large networks of hyphae strands in order to
feed. These strands, when massed together, are called mycelium. The total length of
mycelium threaded through the globe’s uppermost four inches of soil is believed to be
enough to span half the width of our galaxy” (Schlanger 2021). The largest and oldest
single living organism may be an Armillaria ostoyae fungus in Oregon (Casselman
2007). It is thought to be between 1900 and 8650 years old and weighs somewhere
between 7,500 and 35,000 US tons. It is the biggest of four other Armillaria ostoyae
in the same area all of which are almost entirely hidden underground. “Yet despite
fungi’s pervasive presence in the natural world, scientists estimate that only 6% of
fungal species have been described. (There are believed to be between 2.2 and 3.8
million of them in existence—six times the number of plant species.)” (Schlanger
2021: 3).
Fungi are also a threat to life. Rose Eveleth observes that “Humans should declare
ourselves lucky that they don’t have to constantly worry about fungal infections. ‘If
you were a tree, you’d be terrified of fungi,’ says Dr. Arturo Casadevall, a microbiol-
ogist at Johns Hopkins university who studies fungal diseases. And if you happened
to be a fish, a reptile, or an amphibian, fungus would also be quite high on your
list of fears… (Fungal infections are known to wipe out snakes, fish, corals, insects,
11.4 Past and Next Steps 131

and more.) In recent years, a fungal infection called Batrachochytrium dendroba-

tidis (chytrid) has decimated amphibian populations around the world, with some
scientists estimating that chytrid is responsible for population decline in over 500
amphibian species. To put that into context, that’s around one out of every 16
amphibian species known to science.”
Fungi are more closely related to humans than they are to viruses or bacteria, which means
that, in general, things that kill them also kill us…. Already, over 300 million people globally
contract serious fungal infection each year and over 1.5 million of them die. So what happens
next, and what should we do? Casadevall gave the same answer every scientist gives to this
question: The field needs more funding. ‘Humanity should be investing more in learning
about what is the largest kingdom on the planet,’ he says (Eveleth 2021).

11.4 Past and Next Steps

Consider the evolution of reproduction, from accretion, three and a half to four
billion years ago, to the present and near future:

1. Accretion (3.5–4 billion years ago)

Fission: Isomorphic replacement, Crystals,
Blue-Green Algae;

2. Replication (2 billion years ago)

Fission: Single cell division,
Amoebae;

3. Bisexual gene recombination (1 billion years ago)

Fusion: mutual growth/generational differences/mutations/perpetual change:
the evolution of plants, animals, humans;

4. Prosthetic as well as biological enhancement

Clothes, houses, eye glasses, shoes, artificial limbs
Cellular/Organ transplants
Cellular/Organ regeneration
Synthetic cells/organs;

5. Genetic engineering
200 KYA—Marriage and Incest rules
5–10 KYA—Agriculture/Animal Husbandry
132 11 What is a Dator?

150 YA—Hybrid selection

50 YA—Augmented animals, Dolly
Soon:
Clones
Chimeras
Transhumans
Posthumans

6. Artificial Life and Intelligence

Electronics
Computers
Internet
Artificial life
Mobile, sensing, responsive, independent
artificial intelligence;
Many varieties of post-homosapiens (Inspired by Lock Land 1973).

One important thing to notice is that over the last 15,000 years, most of the new
modes of reproduction have been artificial—the result of human actions, intentional
and unintentional. Humans have modified ourselves and our environment without
serious restraint for most of our existence. Everything once “natural” has already
become substantially “artificial.” Whatever happens from now on will result even
more from human activities.
We have different technologies now, but the impulse to change and improve nature
is fundamental to humans. We must recognize that, and take responsibility for what
we have done and are continuing to do by consciously striving to Govern Evolution.
Moreover, primarily but not solely because of human action, the planet into which
humans evolved in the Holocene Epoch is not the planet we live on now. Many more
changes will occur to Earth during and after the present Anthropocene Epoch.
As Stewart Brand said, “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”
That attitude may be scientific hubris and domineering patriarchy at their worst.
Or this may be humanity at its nurturing, sacrificial, feminine best. Or beyond any
analogy based on the meaning of “gender” now. Moreover, we can’t avoid the conse-
quences of our actions. So we must do our best to surf the tsunami from now
on.
To argue for the necessity of participatively designing and achieving a world of
artificial intelligence, artificial life, synthetic and synthesized environments, arti-
ficial “nature” and the rest may seem ridiculously at odds with the necessity and
urgency of addressing the multiple overwhelming novel complications of global
References 133

climate change and unemployment given the enormities of the difficulties to surviving
climate change.
Perhaps. But to the contrary it may be that it is in league with our emerging
artilects that the futures of humanity depends. Artilects might acquire the wisdom,
diligence, and foresight necessary to help humans surf the rising tsunami of change.
Humans don’t seem capable of doing so on our own.

References

Baluska, Frantisek, and Stefano Mancuso. 2020. Plants, climate and humans. EMBO Reports 21:
e50109.
Brautigan, Richard. 1968. Machines of loving grace. In The pill versus the Springhill mine disaster.
Four Seasons Foundation.
Brockman, John, ed. 2019. Possible minds: Twenty-five ways of looking at AI. New York: Penguin
Press.
Burgess, Matt. 2016. Google’s poetry was written by an AI system after it was fed thousands of
unpublished romantic novels. Wired, May 16.
Casselman, Anne. 2007. Strange but true: The largest organism on Earth is a fungus. Scientific
American, October 4.
Dator, Jim. 1980. EIES and Racter and me: Computer conferencing from a Pacific Island. In
Pacific Telecommunications Conference, ed. Dan Wedemeyer, 3A-1–3A-10. Honolulu: Pacific
Telecommunications Council.
Dator, Jim. 2019. Jim Dator: A noticer in time. Selected work, 1967–2018, 154–156. Springer
Nature Press.
Eveleth, Rose. 2021. It’s time to fear the fungi. Wired, November 23.
Fuller, R. Buckminster. 1969. Operating manual for Spaceship Earth. Southern Illinois University
Press.
Ilić, Suzana, and Martina Jole Moro. 2018. Multimedia art: The synthesis of machine-generated
poetry and virtual landscapes. In Art machines: International symposium on computation media
art proceedings, ed. Richard Allen. School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.
Lee, Kai-Fi. 2021. Why computers don’t need to match human intelligence. Wired, December 16.
Lock Land, George. 1973. Grow or die: The unifying principle of transformation. Random House.
Lutz, Diana. 2014. https://source.wustl.edu/2014/01/microbes-buy-low-and-sell-high/.
Parko, Kim. 2020. Encarnation. Poetry, 220/2, May.
Rockmore, Dan. 2020. What happens when machines learn poetry. New Yorker, January 7. https://
www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-mechanical-muse.
Schlanger, Zoe. 2021. Our silent partners. New York Review of Books, October 7.
Scott, Andrew, José R. Solórzano, Jonathan D. Moyer, and Barry B. Hughes. 2022. The future of
artificial intelligence. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning 2
(1).
Strineholm, Philippe. 2021. Exploring human-robot interaction through explainable AI poetry
generation. Thesis for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering—Robotics, Malardalen
University School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Vasteras, Sweden.
Tesler, L. (nd). http://nomodes.com/Larry_Tesler_Consulting/Adages_and_Coinages.html.
Turoff, Murray, and Starr Roxanne Hiltz. 1978. Network nation: Human communication via
computer. Reading, MASS: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Chapter 12
Technology, Values and Change

Abstract A discussion of a theory of the role of technological change in social and

environmental change: “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us”, with
the current period of indivollectivity as an example.

Keywords Behavior · Cause · Culture · Free will · Games · Futures studies ·

Identity · Indivollectivity · Japan · Models and media · Progress · Reality ·
Technology · Time · Values

Ever since I was in high school, I have been interested in why people behave as they
do, especially in the aggregate called “society” or “culture”. I was interested in the
big picture—why societies were constructed as they were. Why and how societies
changed over time as well as resisted change—in other words, the ideas of Plato, Aris-
totle, St. Augustine, Joachim de Flora, St. Thomas Aquinas, Ibn Khaldun, Karl Marx,
Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, W. W. Rostow and other theorists/apologists of
“Development”. These men were all concerned about what the purpose of life was,
and how human settlements could be designed so as to enable humans to live their
lives in accordance with that purpose. That impulse initially led me to political
science which at the time not only emphasized the history of political theories about
the state and governance, but also the use of mathematical and statistical methods
for predicting the future and designing good governance fit for it.
That paragraph makes it sound that only men were influential in my intellectual
life, so I need to repeat my debt to my mother, aunt, grandmother, and to a series of
female and trans teachers, scholars, administrators, colleagues, pupils, spouses, and
children who were equally, if not much more, influential in how and what I think and
feel, believe and act.
But it was a specific awakening in Japan that drove me fully into futures studies.
John Randolph asked me to review a paper of his that used the theories of Oswald
Spengler to understand the history and future of Japan. His conclusion was that
Japan indeed went through the same stages that Spengler described for the west, in
the same sequence, and each for approximately the same length of time, but that in
every stage, Japan was 200 years ahead of the west (Randolph 1964). I was stunned
speechless. Ahead of the west? How was that possible in 1964? I wondered. But
more importantly, what does this mean for the west? Should we look to Japan for
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 135
J. Dator, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds,
Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_12
136 12 Technology, Values and Change

our future, just as we taught developing countries to look to developed countries for
their future? What is the future of the US and the west? Development theory didn‘t
say. Nations were undeveloped, developing, or developed, and that was it. No! I
said, that can’t be it. First of all, that pseudo-evolutionary way of telling the story
of “progress” is very narrowsighted, if not false. To the extent it is true, or at least
useful, then there must be something beyond development, and I wanted to know
what it was, or could be, or should be, and so I flung into the company of those who
invented futures studies.
Futures studies is grounded in various key concepts such as time, cause, reality,
free will, where “the future” is “located” and the like. Of course, futurists often
disagree on the details of each of these concepts.
Does time objectively exist or is it a human construct derived from features of
our biology? Is it not so much that “time passes” as that what we call “time” are the
changes we experience as we age? Or is time a fundamental feature of the cosmos,
though each of us is captive to our local experience of it? “Time is what keeps
everything from happening all at once”, and yet on the cosmic scale everything is
happening all at once. It is only our limited biological lives on this minor planet in
this obscure corner of the universe that misleads us into believing that time exists
and somehow “passes”. Time wasn’t really important (or a concept) until it could be
measured and commodified.
What actually is “cause”? And since it seems that everything is caused by every-
thing else, does it make sense to talk about cause at all? While fathers and mothers
cause children, children also cause fathers and mothers.
What is reality? Each one of us perceives a significantly different and ever-
changing world. A kind of agreement is forced on us by our native language, but
each language asks us to share a slightly (and sometimes significantly) different
world from other languages.
Does that falling tree in the forest actually make a sound when no one is there
to see and hear it fall? If it falls at all. If it—or the world itself—exists at all apart
from humans’ observation. Is Heisenberg only going on about waves and particles
or about everything?
Is “free will” just another delusion? Accumulating evidence suggests that “we”
act and then we decide to choose to act. “Only the fool, fixed in his folly, believes he
can turn the wheel on which he turns”, a cat-loving poet declared. And yet the same
research suggests that the brain is constantly forecasting the immediate future and
learning from and improving forecasts based on feedback from experience. Futures
orientation should be a prime feature of human behavior, but it most certainly is not.
And yet as I keep saying the only arena of time over which humans might have some
purposeful influence (if there is any at all) would have to be the future.
Does the future lie “ahead” as commencement speakers claim? Do we “face the
future”? If so, why can’t we see it more clearly? Or is the future behind us while we
face the past which we do see clearly, though less and less so as it fades over the
horizon? Is the reason we are often surprised by the future because it arrives from in
back of us, as traditional Hawaiians (and others) have it?
12 Technology, Values and Change 137

Modern futures studies which began gaining traction in the early 1960s was
a worldwide phenomenon with various strands. One was dominated by English
speakers (though most were not native English speakers, they were educated to some
extent in English and used it for many of their discussions of the field) who not only
apparently accepted unquestionably all the memes built into English, but also all the
beliefs about reason and progress and development and time and cause and free will
built into them by formal western education since the Enlightenment, the Protestant
Reformation, and Newtonian Physics. These were (for the most part) unquestioned
bedrocks of reality upon which all squabbles and battles among westerners were
based.
Ideas from the Enlightenment onward were problematized by some futurists while
accepted unthinkingly by others. For every futurist supporting better foresight for
development there was another opposed, hugging trees and favoring the preservation
of “natural” environments over their destruction. Most futurists would agree that
rational decision-making is preferable to reliance on past myths and superstitions, but
is rationality possible for humans? Doesn’t the evidence from psychology, psychiatry,
sociology, brain science make it clear that we do not think carefully before we act,
even when we think we are thinking carefully. Our emotions, prejudices, distractions,
false memories, short little spans of attention that keep running down the alleyways
make it impossible for anyone to be rational in the sense contemporary law and
economics claim we are or can be.
All humans evaluate things; have preferences, fears, hopes, beliefs about what is
good, bad, holy, secular, desirable, undesirable, right, wrong, essential, frivolous.
While many people share values with members of their families, communities,
nations, cultures, and perhaps all humanity, people often hold and act on the basis
of some values that are different from their closest companions as well as their most
distant enemies. There may be some people who have no values at all—who make
no distinction between the words I listed above—but they are few, I observe.
I believe values and their acquisition are similar to language and its acquisition.
There may be some humans who do not speak for various reasons, but most humans
do learn to talk, and they learn to speak whatever language is spoken around them,
with individual variations. Learning one’s “mother tongue” is duck soup for most of
us. It is impossible for most of us not to learn it. Learning many languages is also
easy when you are young and are also exposed to them regularly, but very difficult
for most people to learn later, either at all, well, or without “an accent”.
The sounds that humans can produce are vast. Babies in their earliest stage of
babbling may utter them all, but they soon learn to babble and then to talk using only
the far more restricted number of sounds that carry meaning in their mother tongue.
Meaningfully different sounds in one language may be almost unrecognizable in
other languages. Learning to hear and articulate the differences may be a mark of
humor or ridicule of nonnative speakers. When my Japanese students told me that
they prayed all vacation, I was struck by their devotion until they also told me they
rubbed flied lice. The sounds signified by th in English are among the last that even
native speakers learn, and many speakers of other languages may never master. It
138 12 Technology, Values and Change

is far too easy to ridicule many Americans when they try to pronounce words in
anything but the variety of English that they were born into.
So also with values. The range of values is vast as well. However, each person,
each culture, has a limited number of values that children learn effortlessly and early,
though the values one learns in one family or community might be quite different
from those learned in others.
But what is crucial about values is not the words used to label them but the actual
behavior that is permitted or proscribed.
Our behavior strongly influences what our true values are. Many values we say
we hold struggle to influence our behavior. We do not have values telling us to do
or to not do things that we can’t do. Our values only address things we can do, and
often do, whether our values say we should or should not. Behavior is determined
by many things—genes, physiology, the environment, culture, technology, educa-
tion, experience, and old values. But those old values are themselves based on past
behaviors.
While genes, physiology, the environment, culture, experience, education and
especially old values do their best to regulate our behavior today, new technologies
have become the major source of social and environmental change. New technologies
make it easy or indeed necessary to do something that was difficult or impossible
to do before, and render difficult or impossible things that were once necessary and
perhaps desirable.
Old values are based in part on behavior enabled by old technologies. New tech-
nologies enable new behavior that encourage new values based on the new behavior
and thus produce social conflict and strife, continuously destroying old social systems
and enabling the creation of new ones. It is not terrorists, or communists, or radi-
cals who are the true revolutionaries in our world. It is scientists who imagine new
technologies, engineers who create them, entrepreneurs and business people and
advertisers who create demand for them, financiers who invent debt instruments that
let people “buy” what they could not possibly acquire otherwise and so change their
behavior and values as they use them.
In Mutative Media, John Sweeney, Aubrey Yee and myself show how the evolution
of modes of communication have changed the ways humans think and act (Dator et al.
2014). We start with the evolution of speech—probably the most profoundly powerful
technology of humans—through writing (by hand), through the printing press (in
Asia and Europe), and then through the stunning array of audio-visual commu-
nication technologies enabled by electricity and electronics (radio, TV, computer,
Internet, social media) and imaging (analog—still photographs, movies, television—
and digital), as these technologies merged and altered time, space, distance, and
life.
We adopted a broad definition of “technology” as “how humans get things done”
rather than pieces of physical hardware alone.
We discussed three views of technology—that it is neutral (neither good nor bad,
but up to the user); that technology is demonic (driving us farther and farther from the
Garden of Eden and our true humanity while also destroying the Earth which is the
very basis of our lives); that it is mutative—it is not neutral since it inevitably changes
12 Technology, Values and Change 139

our behavior which challenges our values. For years I had called this third view of
technology as “transformative”, but John Sweeney convinced me to understand that
“transformation” is one positive view of the mutation. Others may view the mutation
negatively. We understand mutation in technology to be similar to the process by
which evolution has driven all of the diverse forms of life and living since life began
on Earth, the most important aspect of that evolutionary process being that it is
purposeless, goalless, not “progress” but simply a change of form and function that
either proves to be evolvable, or not, in which case it may die out.
I need to thank Jan Huston for making clear to me the profound limits of the notions
of “sustainability”. Evolution is not “stable”; it is dynamic, uncertain, destructive and
constructive. Forms and processes that we favor need to be evolvable, not sustainable.
They should enable the mutation itself to mutate and evolve.
There are three kinds of technology. Physical, the tool or method itself which
is typically what people mean when they refer to technology. But there are two
other kinds of technology—biological and social. Biological technologies are those
ways of doing things that evolved through biological evolution—breathing, eating,
sleeping, defecating, walking, sexual intercourse. They are—or were—such domi-
nant ways by which humans “got things done” from the beginning that they are often
not recognized to be technologies until they are threatened or replaced by social or
more likely physical technologies. The third kind of technology is social—usually
some institutional way of “getting things done”. Schools are technologies for educa-
tion and socialization (and other things). Babies may be produced by biological
technologies—sexual intercourse—but once born, they are protected, fed, nurtured
by social technologies such as the family.
The three aspects of technology (hardware, software and orgware) are the most
likely to be misunderstood or ignored. Hardware is mistakenly equated with physical
technology as the sole aspect. But as we have learned from computers, every hardware
needs a software to make the hardware useful. In the absence of the invention of
writing and learning the rules of writing, a pen is just a hair pin, a single chopstick,
a weapon. It is not a writing instrument until someone invents, learns, and teaches
the software of the rules of writing. And there can be no writing instruments, or
rules, or paper, or newspapers, or blogs until the orgware for the hardware and
software is invented and functioning—the human organizations like corporations,
labor unions, laborers and managers, and the like. This is where most social conflict
actually manifest itself—when the hardware, software and especially orgware for a
new technology takes the jobs of the orgware of the obsolete technology.
And it is this replacement that is happening big time in the world for the last
200 years, ever-accelerating.
Finally, technology almost never causes change instantly and across all scale.
There are six phases in the lifecycle of all technologies: invention, development,
diffusion, maturity, obsolescence, and death (and/or resurrection). Significant social
and environmental change does not happen until the diffusion stage. The initial inven-
tion and even development of a technology seldom has any significant immediate
impact, and the depth and length of the impact depends on the extent and spread of
140 12 Technology, Values and Change

the diffusion which is seldom smooth and steady. There typically are early adopters,
mature users, and final stragglers.
For most of human history the rate of technologically-induced social and environ-
mental change was so slow that it was scarcely noticeable. Genes, physiology, the
environment, and culture were dominant. But we live now in a period of extremely
rapid technological invention, development, and diffusion—and of planned obso-
lescence. We have barely learned how to use the latest version of Microsoft Office
before a new version comes out, with buttons that had been on the top left spread
across the keyboard, but mainly on the bottom right. Productivity decreases and
errors and frustration increase without end. According to Arthur Levine when he
asked a student how she adapted so easily to Google, Yahoo, cellphones, and Skype,
she replied “it’s only technology if it happened after you were born” (Levine 2012).
The technologies already widely used when one is born, or shortly after, are virtually
invisible to that generation. They are the water in which, as fish, they swim. However
that stream is flowing very quickly and one isn’t a digital native very long before
they are a fumbling old fuddy duddy. Skills that used to last a lifetime—or countless
generations—are obsolete by the time one is 30.
For example:

12.1 Indivollectivity Now?

For most of human history, individuals and communities have lived in “one present”
and looked forward to “one future”, defined by one set of technologies. For most of
human history, technological change was rare, slow, and the social and environmental
consequences rarely noticed. During most of this time, people lived and thought
collectively in small face-to-face groups, not separately and individually. They had
a sense of self and other, and therefore some kinds of individual agency. But there
was no concept of “privacy” or “my individual rights”. Some Greek and Roman
philosophers eventually conceived of those ideas, but the overwhelming majority
of humans neither imagined nor experienced privacy or individual moral freedom
in their daily lives. Indeed, the social value and impact of the Greek and Roman
philosophers was near zero until they were rediscovered in the late middle ages.
Community- and family-focused life dominated for most people until the scientific-
industrial revolution and events leading up to it (the Reformation, Renaissance, and
Enlightenment) when more people began using technologies that gave them first
the experience and then the idea of individualism and individual freedom while
rediscovering/inventing texts that explained and justified their experiences.
From the middle of the seventeenth century until the middle of the twentieth
century, modern societies were increasingly dominated by individualizing technolo-
gies, spurred by the printing press and culminating with the automobile and the tele-
phone. During that period, each new technology seemed to free the individual from
the confining traditions and bonds of the community, eventually creating seemingly
12.1 Indivollectivity Now? 141

autonomous individuals each with their own unique sense of self and their future—
their personal values and beliefs—(give me liberty or give me death; it’s my way
or the highway) leading to the opportunities, ideologies, triumphs, and catastrophes
characteristic of modern times.
From the mid 1950s, however, new technologies emerged that tended once again
to collectivize, though often at a global level and certainly in conflict with values and
institutions based on earlier, local, collectivizing technologies. The first of these new
collectivizing technologies was television (creating what Marshall McLuhan called
“the global village”); the second was the personal computer when global networking
began and expert authority died; and the third are the currently popular social media
and the emerging hive mind (or, Noosphere, as de Chardin anticipatorily named it).
Something else unique also began to occur during early modernity, still acceler-
ating today: technological and social change became so rapid that individuals and
communities were caught for the first time in a whirlpool of conflicting technolo-
gies, values, and institutions, some of which were obsolete and vanishing, some
were old and fading, some were current and thriving, others were new and emerging,
and others still vividly imagined but not yet achieved. Until a 150 or so years ago,
everyone in a community used and were influenced by the same technologies. Not
now.
At the present time, oldest age-cohorts live by vanishing and fading technologies,
values, and institutions; middle age-cohorts by fading and thriving technologies,
values, and institutions; while younger cohorts embrace emerging and imagined
technologies. Nonetheless, each cohort, individual, and the community as a whole
is possessed in some measure by all levels. This is new to human experience—each
age-cohort living in substantially different worlds but at the same time and place with
other cohorts. Intergenerational communication and easy understanding is difficult.
Cultural chaos reigns in every part of the world.
Agricultural—indeed, pastoral—era metaphors, institutions, and values still
persist. With the printing press as the iconic technology and, in the West, The Bible
that the printing press liberated from the Church as the iconic text, we still say God
is a king, with heaven (“above”) and Earth (“below”) as his kingdom while we are
his subjects with no rights or wills of our own. God is our Shepherd and we are His
ignorant and willful sheep in need of correction and protection by his rod and staff.
Similar nomadic and/or agricultural myths and metaphors exist in every culture in
the world even when the memories much less the experiences of sheep and shepherds
have long faded away.
Another very clear example of how the rhythms derived from agricultural societies
still control us today is found in many academic and legislative calendars and holidays
worldwide. Both learning and legislating are still often part-time activities, originally
scheduled in the Northern Hemisphere for the late fall and winter when the crops
were in, to allow their participants to recess from school and go home to help plant
and reap from late spring to early fall. This once-sensible practice now makes no
sense at all in the industrial or informational world, and yet seems impossible to
change until all agricultural experiences and images finally die. Even though we live
in a global world in many ways, we still retain local loyalties in sports, and admire, if
142 12 Technology, Values and Change

not emulate, values of small communities depicted in TV shows and advertisements.

Now, with rise of and response to Trump and Trumpists as well as other hyper-
nationalists around the world, tribalism is challenging globalism as the dominant
perspective once again.
For the most part, transportation technologies defined and dominated the indus-
trial era, producing first the railroad, then the automobile, then the airplane, creating
both the city with its suburbs and the (often continental) nation as its iconic institu-
tions. The automobile, for the first time enabling true auto-mobility, was the iconic
technology. Nothing provoked the sense of individualism, freedom, personal identity,
and social irresponsibility more than the automobile. It is only a slight exaggeration
to say that the fall of communism began when private individuals in communist
countries were allowed to own automobiles instead of keeping them herded on mass
transit.
The allure and power of the automobile is still extraordinary. Everywhere it spreads
throughout the world, it transforms stable, obedient, community-focused peasants
and workers into roaming, pleasure-seeking, death-provoking adolescents of all ages.
Commuting, “rush hour” traffic jams, horrendous deaths and injuries, environmental
pollution, and oil wars are its side-effects, in spite of which the attraction of personal
identity through sports car/SUV automobility is far too strong to allow telework to
end commuting, or for other forms of transport, especially bicycles and walking,
to end pollution and oil wars. The emergence of self-driving cars can only spur
free-spirited individuality—until the oceans rise and the oil runs out.
Responses to Covid-19 may have weakened—perhaps ended—resistance to tele-
working and many young people are eschewing automobiles. But they are not clam-
oring for mass transit. They adopt even more individualizing modes of transport—
skates, skateboards, bicycles, unicycles, scooters. Some still prefer the ones that
require human power to propel them, but most, it seems, prefer them motorized
with all the accompanying danger, congestion, clutter of automobiles as rampaging
wolves in packs.
As individualizing transportation technologies shaped industrial societies, so also
do collectivizing communication technologies define information societies. First
movies and then television were the initial icons, followed by personal computers and
the Internet, and now social media. Major social consequences of these technologies
include the focus of life becoming advertising-fueled “shop till you drop”, along
with the mania of tirelessly working 24/7 at meaningless networked jobs in order to
impress your fellow workers and your boss; the end of the human expert/authority
and the rise of personal and peer facts and fantasies; and the dominance of enter-
tainment, “fake news”, games, professional sports, and of virtuality over “reality” in
general. Wolfpacks on steroids on virtual bikes.
Demographically, more and more adults in information societies everywhere are
“only children” themselves now living seemingly alone with no children, spouses,
or roommates of their own, but actually interacting with myriad other humans and
increasingly smart machines with clever algorithms via an ever-changing array of
multitasking communication technologies, surrounded by the decaying remnants of
take-away food. This novel form of individuality and community may continue to
12.1 Indivollectivity Now? 143

evolve as long as new electronic and molecular communication technologies continue

to be produced and acquired.
The next step already underway is to lose the confining, stationary, built envi-
ronment—the solitary room, apartment, house—and live in light, sturdy, mobile,
self-sufficient, adaptable cocoons like the cushicle envisioned by the Archigram
group many years ago: a kind of personal backpack with all of one’s necessities in it
that can be unfolded and joined with other cushicles whenever group interaction is
sought, and then (after tidying up the common environment) folded back into one’s
personal backpack again as each member of the former group moves on.
The new nationalism sweeping the globe now is often seen as a revival of “blood
and soil” patriotism of the old industrial days, and many people may promote and
strive for that. But at the same time, the forces of individualizing-collectivizing social
media seem to provoke something different and perhaps new for the immediate
future—indivollectivity (Dator 2019).
I said at the outset of this discussion of the interrelationship between technology,
values, and social and environmental change that I was drawn to political science
as an academic discipline because political science at the time not only emphasized
the history of political theories about the state and governance, but also was begin-
ning to use mathematical and statistical methods to predict the future and design
good governance fit for it. These were the early days of what was called “the behav-
ioral revolution” in political science: instead of focusing only on constitutions, laws,
and formal structures, as was traditional for the field, some cutting edge scholarship
focused on learning from actual political behavior which required the use of rigorous
methods of observation, questioning, measurement, and evaluation (especially statis-
tics and the emerging field of computer modeling of complex human systems). So
I set myself to the task of learning how to use these tools and the theories behind
them.
That was not easy to do. I had been awarded a scholarship that allowed me to
begin my graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania. It turned out to be very
far from the cutting edge of the behavioral revolution, I soon learned. Indeed, the
course I took on “American Government” was taught entirely as a course in American
Constitutional Law. Everything I needed to know about American government was
to be found in the decisions of cases and controversies before the US Supreme Court.
Now, I had done some Constitutional Law as an undergraduate, and appreciated the
“how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” medieval scholastic processes
of Con Law, but surely there was more to be said about American government than
what nine old men—or at least a majority of them—had to say about the few issues
they allowed to be brought before them, I thought. But no. I was told that was all I
needed to know since, in the US, law is what the judges say it is.
Indeed, one day, in 1955, Professor Richard Snyder from Princeton University in
the far off wonderland of New Jersey was invited to speak at Penn. But only faculty
members and PhD candidates of the political science department were allowed to
attend. His ideas were deemed too radical for the impressionable minds of MA
students such as myself. Snyder had written Roots of Political Behavior: Introduction
to Government and Politics. (New York, American Book Company) in 1949 and I had
144 12 Technology, Values and Change

read it, but it contained ideas deemed ridiculous by most Penn faculty members of the
time. So, with MA in hand, I transferred to The American University in Washington,
DC, which I knew to be a kind of hotbed of behavioralism, for my PhD. I was very,
very glad I did. Later, I attended the Survey Research Center of the University of
Michigan; the Second Institute on Mathematical Applications in Political Science
at Southern Methodist University; and co-directed and taught in the 4th Institute on
Mathematical Applications in Political Science at Virginia Tech.
Inspired by the pioneering work in judicial behavior by Glendon Schubert, I
used what I had learned to research and publish about comparative judicial behavior
while I was in Japan. I also conducted a large survey of attitudes of Tokyo residents
that replicated a study by Gerhart Lenksi that he had titled “The Religious Factor.”
When I came to the University of Hawaii where the State Legislature created the
Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, we began work on a computer model,
at the urging of the President of the Hawaii State Senate, called HAFDAM (Hawaii
alternative futures decision-aiding model) that legislators could use to simulate the
consequences of various versions of proposed legislation before passing laws.
In other words, I took the behavioral revolution seriously for a while and did
my best to learn how to think and act mathematically instead of just verbally as my
mentors at Penn would have me do—but not only Penn. Earlier, when I turned in a
term paper in my undergraduate Shakespeare class at Stetson University in which
I came to certain conclusions about Shakespeare’s soliloquies based on a statistical
analysis of them, I was severely admonished by my teacher who reluctantly gave
me a good grade but warned me never to do anything like that again if I wanted to
prosper in academe, or at least in the humanities version of it.
But the world of a person who perceives and communicates about it in the words
of common and/or formal language is quite different from the world of a person who
relies on the forms and conventions of mathematics. Which way is right and which
is wrong, or, rather, which way leads to truth and accuracy and which to error and
vagueness?
Neither. Reality is vast—beyond our full comprehension—and each model and
medium we use to apprehend and comprehend it tell us certain truths and obscures
others. There indeed are “alternative facts”.
As I have said, I spent the first six years of my academic career as the only
nonJapanese teaching in the College of Law and Politics of Rikkyo University, in
Tokyo, Japan. Since few of the students or faculty could speak or understand spoken
English fluently, I did my best to conduct my classes, consultations, and research
in Japanese—though in truth, their English was often far better than my Japanese.
Nonetheless it was during that time that I first became personally aware of the fact
that what we think we understand about the world is entirely dependent on (1)
certain biological features of humans that had evolved over eons and (2) the models
and media we use to perceive and communicate our perceptions of the world. The
world to a monolingual native English speaker in America is, I can assure you,
fundamentally different from the world of a monolingual native Japanese speaker
in Japan. And while I lived in Japan, speaking Japanese as best I could, I came to
see the world and act in it quite differently from the way I had previously seen the
12.1 Indivollectivity Now? 145

world in English in America, simply as a consequence of seeing it through Japanese

grammar, syntax and vocabulary.
It was my awareness that I was a fundamentally different person in Japan from
what I was in America, more than anything else, that set me off exploring the
relationship between what we think with, what we think about, and how we behave.
After I left Japan, I went to Virginia Polytechnic Institute, a large school in a
tiny town in the remote mountains of western Virginia. But while I was there I
had the very good fortune of falling under the influence of a creative bunch of
architects and artists, American and foreign, with whom I worked producing a variety
of nonverbal, non-numerical models and media for political science. We developed
and experimented with various prototypes for teaching university political science
courses by first observing behavior and then communicating our conclusions through
static, three-dimensional models, instead of relying on textbooks and spoken words.
On coming to the University of Hawaii, I designed a learning space based on
what I had seen architects use at Virginia Tech where students could construct three-
dimensional models with peer and faculty guidance. However, I soon was sidetracked
by the opportunity to design and produce “Tune to the Future,” a university political
science televised course that was innovative in its use of comedy, short-takes, and
multi-camera, quick-editing derived from popular shows of the era, such as Rowan
and Martin’s Laugh-in and Monday Night Football. We also produced a considerable
amount of written support material. Many shows were live, but some were taped, and
I visited all islands and met with student groups while watching and then discussing
the taped segments. This course was awarded a prize for creativity from the National
University Extension Association.
But I realized that I needed to know a lot more about tele-education, so I jumped
at the opportunity to take a two-year leave of absence from UH, and went to Toronto
where I was director of the Futures Project of the OECA (Ontario Educational
Communication Authority; also known as TV Ontario). There I learned a lot from
Marshall McLuhan and many others, and wrote and produced educational television
and multimedia programs and support material. During that time and subsequently,
I also collaborated with Simon Nicholson of the Open University in England and
produced several different things in many different media for his course, “Art and
Environment,” one of which was a futures-oriented television program, called “Que
Sera, Sera”, that was shown over the BBC2 TV network for ten years.
When I returned to the University of Hawaii, I began teaching courses on media
literacy through the Department of Political Science where students endeavored to
gain understanding and express complex ideas audio-visually and not just through
reading and writing. At one point, I conducted a semester-long series of symposia,
demonstrations, and other events that culminated in a three-day “Mediacy Fair”,
all aimed at interesting the university and broader community in using electronic
communication technologies for serious, entertaining, and effective educational
purposes.
In addition to television, I also produced scores of what were once called “multi-
media shows” (using multiple slide projectors, motion picture projectors, and inte-
grated music, narration, and sound effects) for international conferences on a wide
146 12 Technology, Values and Change

variety of topics. In addition, I also taught several courses throughout the far-flung
Micronesian islands of the Pacific over the PEACESAT satellite network, sending
assignments and homework back and forth over primitive facsimile machines; several
“courses by newspaper”; and also several by radio.
Each one of these media made me completely rethink not only the content of my
courses but also the way content was delivered. No matter how brilliant a lecturer I
may have imagined myself to be, nothing was more boring than for me to stand and
deliver my typical classroom/public address lecture on TV. Though infinitely more
time- and labor-intensive to produce and present, the multimedia presentations were
also infinitely more immersive and powerful than any lecture or book. The courses
by radio and especially newspaper were something else indeed.
I learned that each medium had its own grammar, and I had to learn the grammar if
I was to use the medium effectively. That is why, in spite of the success of “Tune to the
Future”, I decided to learn more about effective educational television production
by working with TVOntario. The importance of knowing the grammar of media
within specific cultural contexts was also made vividly clear to me by the book,
Through Navaho Eyes (Worth and Adair 1972), and the process of movie-making it
describes. In 1966, Anthropologists Worth and Adair sought to teach young Navaho
how to make movies, using 16 mm, black and white film Bell and Howell cameras.
They sought Navahos from reservations who had little or no exposure to American,
Hollywood style movies, and gave them near total freedom to write their own scripts
and create their own movies any way they wished. The role of the instructors was
strictly technical—teaching the students how to make the cameras operate properly.
But it took a great deal of restraint on the part on Worth and Adair not to constantly
object to almost everything their students did—from the stories they chose to tell
and how they chose to tell them, to the way they directed and filmed the action, to
the way they edited the final results. None of it was done the way Worth and Adair
intended them to do it, but, to their credit, they allowed the students to do it their
way.
The big day during which the students would show their films to the village elders
was fast approaching when one of the students who had spent a great deal of time
off the reservation and seen many American movies asked and received permission
to produce a second film in addition to the one he did for the assignment.
The audience reacted positively to the films as they were shown, and lauded the
abilities of the youngsters to tell stories according to Navaho cultural conventions—
except for the second film produced by the student which they said they did not
understand since it was in English.
Now, all the movies were silent. There was no narration, sound effects, or captions.
But since the movies they approved were done according to Navaho storytelling
rules—and in almost complete violation of what Worth and Adair desired—while
the one extra film was done more or less according to Hollywood conventions that
the elders did not know or understand, they declared that it was all Greek to them.
Once upon a time, for a fleeting instance, movie-making around the world was told
on the basis of local storytelling conventions. While there are still subtle (but impor-
tant) differences between, say, Hollywood, Bollywood, Hong Kong, and Japanese
12.1 Indivollectivity Now? 147

movies, basically all movies now are told the same way (depending on the specific
genre)—namely, according to American conventions that are based on the culture of
capitalism: Whatever can be produced that will have the biggest box office appeal
worldwide, requiring the minimum of dubbing or editing to get the story across. That
means specifically a story of good vs evil told in brutal, grunting, shooting, chasing,
violent Manichean images.
It turned out that I was in Canada, with Marshall McLuhan and company, at a
kind of turning point in communication history. Given the power and popularity of
cinema and television, and the theories of McLuhan, it seemed clear that “The Word
Was Out”—that when TV entered our homes, books and reading went out, if not
immediately, then as generation after generation relied more and more on visual
images and less and less on written (and perhaps, even spoken) words.
As I have said before, I was one of the first non-military persons in the Hawaii to
experience computer conferencing (as it was then called) when I was invited to partic-
ipate in an NSF-sponsored project, called the “Electronic Information Exchange
System” (EIES), run by Murray Turoff of the New Jersey Institute for Technology.
I also spent some time accessing the PLATO system at the University of Illinois, so
when computer conferencing became possible via the University of Hawaii computer
system, I was one of the first instructors to require students in my classes also to partic-
ipate in an online chatroom. The first several times I did that, students would drop
my class on the first day, expressing fear of computers and no desire to use them.
But that soon faded, and so did my control of my classes. I was astonished when
students would express opinions about my lectures and activities that students had
never been able to express before. They were not flaming. They just were learning
things I didn’t know I was teaching while ignoring things I thought were important.
Moreover, I quickly became just another guy trying to get a word in edgewise in
the online portion of the class. It revolutionized not only my teaching, but also and
mainly my image of myself as “teacher” and they as “learners”. I had always prided
myself in encouraging free and open class discussions, but what was said and unsaid
face-to-face (especially in Hawaii) was totally different from what folks said online! I
realized this meant the death of expertise and authority generally which social media
have now made abundantly clear and irrevocable.
These experiences also reinforced my assumption that print literacy would decline
and visual literacy increase. I imagined the future of communication at that time to
be what in fact became YouTube and TikTok, and beyond to brain-to-brain and
brain-to-AI direct communication.
I was astonishingly completely unaware that Evelyn Berezin had already invented
and begun selling the first “word processor” (McFadden 2018). I first heard someone
utter “word processor” when George Kent came to my office in fall 1976 just after I
had returned from Canada and said I should come downstairs to get a glimpse of the
future. Someone was demonstrating a word processor, he said. The phrase conveyed
no meaning to me at all. How does one “process” words? I soon learned, as someone
put a Wang 1200 WPS through its paces. The copy and paste/cut and paste functions
blew me away.
148 12 Technology, Values and Change

But my heart sank because I realized the word was not out after all. Indeed, I
curse An Wang and his gang and successors for postponing the death of print and
the rise of visual literacy by fifty years. I thank Apple for doing what it could to
keep visuality alive, though barely breathing, and thank also Sony Portapak (upon
which I initially relied), YouTube, TikTok and electronic games for leading successive
generations from the dungeons of literacy to the mountain tops of visuality. But there
is still a long, dusty road ahead of us, as manifest by a Supreme Court that believes
21st America should be ruled by their interpretation of the meaning in 1787 of the
handwritten words on a document fretfully pasted together during a long hot summer
in Philadelphia. (The Founding Fathers used the hand-powered printing press each
night to print and distribute each day’s drafts and revisions, but knew the proper way
to present the official version to the public was to write the Constitution by hand, not
by an impersonal machine).
One of the topics at the Mediacy Fair I mentioned above was “Does reading rot the
brain?” in which I and others argued that literacy does indeed rot the brain. You don’t
have dyslexia if you don’t have disabling lexia to begin with. Or at least languages
with alphabets, like English, that require linear processing of abstract signs to read
and write seem to rot some brains, while languages based on holistic, meaningful,
visual imagery, like Chinese, may not.
And then there was the controversy over the impact of electronic games.
Marshall McLuhan wondered what education would be like if television had been
invented before the printing press. He said that sending a child to school set back her
education by seven years; that she had learned more useful things about the world by
watching TV at home than she could ever make up for in boring book-based schools.
Similarly, Steven Johnson imagined what education would be like if electronic
games had been invented before the printing press, and it is not a pretty picture:
Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition
of gameplaying—which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with
moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular
movements—books are simply a barren string of words on the page. Only a small portion
of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while games
engage the full range of the sensory and motor cortices.
Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young
in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring words together,
books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction
with other children. These new ’libraries’ that have arisen in recent years to facilitate reading
activities are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and socially
interactive, sitting alone in cubicles, reading silently, oblivious to their peers.
Many children enjoy reading books, of course, and no doubt some of the flights of fancy
conveyed by reading have their escapist merits. But for a sizable percentage of the population,
books are downright discriminatory. The reading craze of recent years cruelly taunts the 10
million Americans who suffer from dyslexia—a condition that didn’t even exist as a condition
until printed text came along to stigmatize its suffers.
Perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear
path. You can’t control their narratives in any fashion—you simply sit back and have the
story dictated to you. For those of us raised on interactive narratives, this property may seem
astonishing. Why would anyone want to embark on an adventure utterly choreographed by
References 149

another person? But today’s generation embarks on such adventures millions of times a day.
This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they’re
powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active participatory process: it’s
a submissive one. The book readers of the younger generation are learning to ’follow the
plot’ instead of learning to lead (Johnson 2005: 19–20).

Or, to quote McLuhan one more time, “anyone who makes a distinction between
education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either”.

References

Dator, Jim. 2019. Indivollectivity. Critical Muslim 29(January–March): 163–166.

Dator, Jim, John Sweeney, and Aubrey Yee. 2014. Mutative media: Communication technologies
and power relations in the past, present, and futures. New York: Springer Press.
Johnson, Steven. 2005. Everything bad is good for you: How today’s popular culture is actually
making us smarter. New York: Riverhead Books.
Levine, Arthur. 2012. EdLife. The New York Times, November 4: 6.
McFadden, Robert D. 2018. Evelyn Berezin, computer pioneer who built first word processor, dies
at 93. New York Times, December 10: A25.
Randolph, John. 1964. The senior partner. Japan Quarterly, January–March.
Worth, Sol, and John Adair. 1972. Through Navajo eyes: An exploration in film communication and
anthropology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Chapter 13
Ad Astra! Sort of…

Abstract A lengthy discussion of the past, present and possible futures of humans,
cyborgs, artilects, and posthumans on Earth and especially not-Earth. Adapting
human becomings for life in every niche in the cosmos—one of the most profound
shifts towards fluid forms and identities of all.

Keywords Adaptation · Afrofuturism · Analogs · Becomings · China · Culture ·

Cyborgs · Disability · Dreams · Dystopia · Entrepreneurs · Eutopia · Evolution ·
Gender · Governance · Humans in space · Identity · India · Intelligent
environments · Military · Nation · Ningen · Not-Earth · Queer · Posthumans ·
Religion · Rockets · Science · Space fiction · Space history · Space junk ·
Spaceflight · Tenrikyo · Transhumans · USSR

I have been arguing throughout that each of us should carefully consider our identity;
that we should create places and processes where people have the opportunity and
expectation to contemplate what they want to become next, and enabled to move on if
they wish to or remain as they are to the extent such stasis is possible in a profoundly
weirding world.
That most certainly means we should all reconsider what it means to be “human”
and whether or not it might be more interesting to expand that meaning to incor-
porate something else—something transhuman, cyborganic, or posthuman; indeed
whether we wish to continue with the Enlightenment pretense that we are solitary
individuals—人—or are in fact already interdependent social human becomings—
人間. Perhaps we should strive to lose many features of western individualism and
become participants in the hivemind? In truth, each of us and all of humanity from
its beginning have never been the kind of rugged individuals many Americans, and
especially libertarians, imagine. We are each ingredients in a pot of soup—tasty,
healthful, pleasing together; tasteless, limited, pretty boring by ourselves. It is the
soup that is primary, not each ingredient, but each ingredient contributes importantly
to it. Why not go all the way: put the soup in a blender and turn on the switch, losing
ourselves in the way Buddhism and other possibilities of being suggest, and that the
Internet and beyond to the Noosphere makes plausible?
While it is clear that for many people the most important identity of all is being a
human, for many others not only is the definition of “human” dynamic and malleable
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 151
J. Dator, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds,
Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_13
152 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

but it is also discardable—a useful shell for a while, but nothing to keep forever.
Indeed, the nature of humans is to change forever—from pre-embryo to post-ashes—
not to be stuck in the same form for eternity. So of course, a next step might be to
merge with other humans, machines, life forms, the Earth, and the cosmos.
Getting out of the cradle, exploring the neighborhood while going cautiously and
responsibly where no humans have ever gone is essential. But humans can never
truly slip the surly bonds of Earth and ever go very far into the void in our current
biological forms. We must evolve and design forms that are as suitable for the many
niches of not-Earth as the human body was for Earth—when we emerged into a very
different Earth long ago.
As the anthropologist Ben Finney said, “ever since our ancestors started using
tools to survive and eventually flourish in new environments, the pattern of evolution
by cultural as well as biological adaptation has been underway. Although the prospect
of traveling and living in space might seem ’unnatural’ to many, it would represent
a logical extension to the technological path our ancestors have been following for
some 5 million years.” “If our descendants spread far and wide through space, the
forces of evolution now braked on Earth will be released once more.” “Human
evolution in space will hardly be limited to the birth of one new species. Space is not
a single environment…. There are innumerable environments out there providing
countless niches to exploit, first by humans [and our accompanying artilects], and
then by the multitudinous descendant species. By expanding through space we will be
embarking on an adventure that will spread an explosive speciation of intelligent life
as far as technology or limits placed by competing life forms originating elsewhere
will allow” (Finney and Jones 1985: 335).
Finney is relying entirely on the natural forces of evolution to do their thing
and transform homosapiens, sapiens, into successful spacefarers. He was always
somewhat suspicious of claims that humans could or should be purposely modified
to speed up the evolutionary process, and in any event was writing just as such
claims were gaining plausibility and champions of their reality. But in addition to
natural evolutionary forces now “braked on Earth” being unleashed as humans in
their current form move into various immediate and eventually more distant niches in
space, so also artilects, cyborgs and Pearsons homo whateverus—bionanomechanical
“multitudinous descendant species”—may fill the cosmos.
Many years ago, Jerry Glenn and George Robinson issued a “Declaration of
Independence for Spacekind as it Separates from Earthkind.” Here is a portion of
that Declaration. You may recognize its stylistic source:

“When in the course of human evolution it becomes necessary

for progeny to dissolve the political and biological bonds which have
connected them with their progenitors, and to assume among the
powers of the solar system and galaxy the separate and equal station to
which the Laws of Nature and their Creator entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of Earthkind requires that they should declare
the causes which impel them to their separation into Spacekind.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that Earthkind and
13 Ad Astra! Sort of… 153

Spacekind are created equal to their own respective environments, that

once having been raised above their biological origins to a
recognizable level of sentience and sapience they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these rights are
survival, freedom of thought and expression, and the evolution of
individual and community knowledge.”

“We, therefore, the representatives of space migrants, space

communities, and Spacekind descendants of Earthkind..., do, in the name
and by the authority of Spacekind settled and living in space
communities, solemnly publish and declare that their communities and
their inhabitants are free and independent; that they are absolved from
all allegiance to the governments and organizations of Earth; and that
all political and ideological subservience of Spacekind to Earthkind is
and ought to be totally dissolved.... And for the support of this
Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection offered through the
Creative Intent, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our
fortunes, and our Sacred Honor” (Glenn and Robinson 1978: 202–207)

This is all so heroic and inspiring, reflecting the spirit of the early days of the erstwhile
“space age”. But why and how did the space age ever happen, and what might be its
futures? (Dator 2012).
As we have seen, many cultures have stories about beings from not-Earth visiting
Earth, as well as about people from Earth visiting the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.
For centuries, humans flying anywhere was only a dream. But a strong, compelling,
widespread dream. What seemed to turn that dream into reality?
Leonardo de Vinci (1452–1519) of what is now Italy, designed flying ships but
did not build or fly any. Some especially gifted—or daring—people actually tried to
fly. It is said that Wan Hu tried, unsuccessfully, to fly with 47 rockets and two kites
attached to a chair, during the Ming Dynasty in China (1368–1644). The Wright
Brothers from the United States may have been the first humans to fly a machine-
powered, heavier-than-air craft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. The Soviet
Union was the first country to succeed in actually placing a human in orbit in space—
Yuri Gagarin in 1961—while the first man to land on the Moon was the American,
Neil Armstrong in 1969.
Why did the millennial-long dreams of flying in space finally come true in the
middle of the 20th Century?
First of all, from the late fifteenth century on, stories about a few intrepid western
men voyaging across vast trackless oceans, invading previously unknown lands,
exterminating many of the strange people on them while importing other westerners
to claim the opened lands as their own (typically along with slaves from Africa and
elsewhere to work them), gave some western men the experience and skills, along
with a sense of god-given superiority and righteousness, that they could overcome
any barrier and defeat any enemy. Later, the scientific-industrial revolution of the 19th
Century produced so many new things so very rapidly that many people began to
154 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

imagine that the future—their personal future and that of humanity generally—might
be fundamentally different from, and in fact permanently better than, the present or
any time in the past. This produced a new belief in perpetual and unstoppable “pro-
gress” and “development”. This belief became the dogma—not to say the eventual
insanity—of “continued economic growth:” the belief and experience of continual
social and environmental change that led people to begin to write stories, compose
music, paint pictures about the future as well as create and staff institutions that would
keep the economy growing—financial systems to be sure but primarily educational,
communication, governmental and religious institutions and practices.
America after World War II was vastly different from prewar America in terms of
national pride, self-confidence and eagerness to undertake any task no matter how
difficult, secure in the belief they would succeed. Science, technology, and a “can
do” spirit encouraged Americans to engage in many ventures they probably would
not have undertaken before.
The personal and social experiences of rapid social and environmental change led
more and more people to expect novelties, to imagine things that had been impossible
before, and then spurred some to try to create technologies that could make the dreams
come true. World Fairs in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries played a big part in
this as I showed with my own personal example from the New York World Fair of
1939–40. Also, as we saw, the world’s most important and influential space fiction
writer, the Frenchman, Jules Verne, and the British writer, H. G. Wells, and others,
were specifically mentioned by almost all the early space pioneers as inspirations for
their scientific and technological work. But the popular press was full of books and
magazines replete with enticing depictions of utopias on Earth as well.
Later, pulp science fiction and space fiction movies, television shows, and popular
music inspired generations of people all over the world to dream of space and to
support space activities by their nations. But such stories could not have arisen and
become as popular as they did without the technologies that created the experience
of permanent social and environmental change, leading people everywhere to begin
to wonder what new things might lie ahead, just over the horizon and beyond.
Fireworks and firework rockets were developed by the Chinese and their neighbors
for fun, spectacular displays, and religious rituals often associated with the time of
year crops were planted or reaped. Chinese developed festival fireworks around
600CE while rocket-powered weapons followed around 1000CE. This “dual use”
of rockets and other technologies first for playful and then for military purposes (or
vice versa) has been a continuing feature of space history. The first confirmed use of
war rockets was in 1232CE when China used them against the Mongols. Mongols,
in turn, used rockets against Poland in 1241 and against Baghdad in 1258. In 1249,
Muslim armies used rocket-powered projectiles during the Seventh Crusade. By the
end of the 13th Century, rocket weapons were known in Japan, Java, Korea, and
India. Knowledge of rocketry spread quickly throughout Asia and into Europe at the
same time.
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), and Isaac Newton (1642–1727), so crucial to all
aspects of modern science and technology, laid the scientific foundations for rock-
etry and rocket-propelled space travel. Kepler, a German mathematician, published
13 Ad Astra! Sort of… 155

three fundamental laws of planetary motion in 1609–1619. Isaac Newton, an English

mathematician, established the basic laws of force, motion, and gravitation in his
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy), in 1687. Newton’s Third Law of Motion was the first scientific definition
of the reaction principle.
Later, Hyder Ali (1781) and Tipu Sultan (1792–1799) used advanced war rockets
against the colonizing British in India. Indeed, it was the success of the Indian war
rockets that inspired Colonel William Congreve to develop a new war rocket for the
British in 1804. These rockets were used as signals and as artillery. There is a phrase
in the National Anthem of the United States about the “rockets’ red glare, the bombs
bursting in air” that refers to England’s use of Congreve’s rockets against America
during the War of 1812. European and US armies quickly adopted Congreve-style
rockets and worked to improve them.
The Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1934) might very well be considered
the most important single individual in making space flight both a popular dream
and a reality. A man of extraordinary vision and imagination as well as of deep
knowledge and reflection, he provided a solid scientific basis for space travel. He
not only wrote inspiring but plausible science fiction, but also made the first designs
for multi-stage rockets and space stations; designed life support systems and space
suits; and explained the feasibility of satellites and of solar energy. He mathematically
established all the basic laws of space flight, demonstrating that liquid fuel rockets
would have the thrust necessary to put a rocket into Earth orbit, or to journey to
planets. In 1903 he published The Exploration of Space with Reactive Devices, the
first major work on astronautics. It included the first presentation of the ‘rocket
equation’.
Tsiolkovsky was driven by the belief that space exploration was an absolute
requirement for humanity that would lead to the colonisation of the Solar System.
He wrote extensively in justification of that belief, arguing it was a moral imperative
of humanity to move quickly into space.
Tsiolkovsky was as handicapped and marginal a person as one can imagine. He
did not come from an influential family. He did not go to good schools and get good
grades. He did not live in a population center where he could get and give inspiration
to and from others. Rather, Tsiolkovsky was the son of a poor wood gatherer who
entered Russia illegally from Poland—and illegal immigrant! His mother died when
he was young and his father was seldom at home. He was deafened at an early age and
never received any formal academic degrees of any kind from any school. He spent
most of his life in provincial towns like Kaluga and Vyatka far from laboratories and
good books. But he left Vyatka at 16 and went to Moscow in order to study in the
libraries there.
His brilliance and desire to learn caught the attention of Nikolai Fyodorov, who
was the chief cataloguer at the Chertkov Library, and himself one of Russia’s greatest
geniuses and eccentrics. Fyodorov enabled Tsiolkovsky to study everything that was
being taught in the science and math departments of Moscow University. More impor-
tantly, Fyodorov taught Tsiolkovsky Fyodorov’s own “philosophy of the common
task”—the belief that humans should stop wasting time and intelligence killing one
156 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

another, or buying and selling trinkets, and learn to transcend the chaos and chance
of the cosmos—especially to transcend death. In doing that, humans should move
off the Earth and go to other planets for new sources of food, energy, materials, and
living room.
It was this philosophy—this almost religious dream—that inspired Tsiolkovsky
to do all the extraordinary pioneering work he did in developing the basis for all
scientific, technological, and social aspects of human space flight before anyone else
did, and well before the technology itself enabled it. In a very important sense, only
a marginal but intelligent person such as himself could have dreamed the impossible
dreams he did, and then had the patience and ability to figure out how the dreams
could eventually come true. He did not have parents, teachers, priests, companions,
and an entire culture telling him his dreams were stupid—or evil—as most of us do.
Neither was he told he should become a dentist or a lawyer or an insurance salesman,
and stop lying about the house reading and reckoning. He could dream freely and
plan brilliantly without crippling ridicule or stifling support.
There were a few other people like Tsiolkovsky in other countries who often
initially were also lonely eccentrics working in ignorance of each other who laid the
basis for eventual spaceflight. A small international space flight movement began to
form in the 1920s and 30s. Enthusiasts in many countries formed space travel and
rocket societies, carrying out theoretical and practical research in rocketry and space-
flight. Some of these groups made very significant contributions to the development
of rocketry and astronautics, and nurtured the talents of future spaceflight engineers.
But they all were ridiculed as silly hobbyists and dreamers by most other people at
the time and received little attention or financial support.
One of the most important early spaceflight societies was Verein für Raumschiffart
(VfR: Society for Space Ship Travel) formed in 1927. Many members went on later
to develop rocket technology during and after World War Two. Most prominent was
Wernher von Braun.
In 1921, the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL) for rocket research was established.
Ten years later, the Group for Study of Reactive Devices (GIRD) was formed. It
designed and launched the USSR’s first liquid-fuel rocket. Among GIRD’s members
was Sergei Korolev who later became the leading figure in the Soviet space program.
The Treaty of Versailles, after the First World War, severely limited the kinds and
amount of weapons Germany could have. But as nationalism and hypernationalism
began to rise, rapidly inspired by and inspiring Hitler, rockets were seen as a way
around the limitations of the Treaty. Werhner von Braun and other VfR members were
employed by the German army to work on rocket projects. In 1937, the German
Army created a rocket research center on the Baltic Sea island of Peenemünde.
Largely using Jewish and other slave labor, they developed the A-4 (also called V-
2: Vergeltungswaffe 2 or vengeance weapon). It was a tremendous leap forward in
rocket technology. The V-2 established the basic design concepts for rocket motors,
fuel systems, guidance, and steering that remain at the heart of today’s rockets. More
than 3,000 V-2 s were launched by the Germans against their enemies during the last
stages of the war, causing 2,700 casualties in Britain alone. Though it was a stunning
technological breakthrough, the V-2 was not a successful weapon per se: it could
13 Ad Astra! Sort of… 157

not be guided with accuracy, and its complex technology was unreliable. Its main
military value was as a terror weapon. Unlike bombs from airplanes that could be
seen and heard well in advance so that evacuation to shelters was possible, V-2 were
unnoticeable until seconds before they exploded. The screaming brief sound they
made before impact was horrifying.
The V-2 was also enormously important as a harbinger of space flight and, more
ominously, of the possibilities of intercontinental war. The V-2 was the world’s first
long-range missile. After the War, it became the prototype for the first ICBMs that
played key roles during the Cold War as potential deliverers of world-destroying
nuclear weapons across the planet in the twinkling of an eye. V-2 derived missiles
were also developed into the first space launch vehicles.
It is clear that rockets and space flight were minor concerns for most governments
and businesses until it was seen they could be used as mass killing machines. Suddenly
millions of dollars were poured into their development for military purposes. Only
the Germans were able to bring military rockets online during World War II, but did
so too late for their success: the war was basically already decided in Europe before
the V-2 s could do much good—or bad.
It is worth noting that during the Second World War, even though efforts were
made in the United States to develop rockets, the real money and talent there was spent
on developing the atomic bomb. The first usable atomic bombs were also developed
in the latter stages of the war, and were used by the United States against Japan—
devastating the cities and decimating the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is
further worth noting that many of the people who were instrumental in developing the
science and technology necessary to create those bombs for the United States were
from Germany—for the most part Jews who had fled from Germany and Europe to the
US to escape the anti-Jewish wrath of Hitler and the Nazis. In contrast, the developers
of the German military rockets, like Wehrner von Braun, were “Aryans”—not Jews.
The German rockets carried conventional explosives. The Germans had no atomic
bombs. On the other hand, the Americans used conventional airplanes to deliver
atomic bombs to Japan. America had no long-range rockets anywhere near the stage
of development that the Germans did. Imagine what the world would be like now if
Germany—or America—or both had had both rockets and atomic bombs in time to
use them in World War II. Dreams, even bad dreams of hatred and prejudice, drive
human activities, and we living now can only consider ourselves fortunate that Nazi
ethnic prejudice against Jews contributed to these two mighty tools—nuclear bombs
and long-range rockets—not being joined in Nazi or American hands before the war
was over.
Nonetheless, after World War Two, nations rushed to develop their own long-
range missiles. Military advantage dominated rocket development—not the desire
for space flight. As the Cold War developed during the 1940s and 50s, creating
ICBMs to deliver nuclear weapons to any spot on the globe became part of the
strategic planning of all major nations. That received top priority in both the US
and the USSR, with massive resources being poured into missile development and
advanced nuclear bombs.
158 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

Out of the libraries come the killers.

Mothers stand despondently waiting,
Hugging their children and searching the sky,
Looking for the latest inventions of professors.
Engineers sit hunched over their drawings:
One figure wrong, and the enemy’s cities remain undestroyed.

Attributed to Bertoldt Brecht (http://www.rosenfels.org/ToEsther)

Indeed, as World Was Two was ending, the Soviet’s, moving to Germany from
the east, and Americans and its allies moving into Germany from the south and
west, rushed to capture German rocket experts and technology. As it turned out, the
Americans and their allies got to the best ones first, and quickly removed most of the
scientists, engineers, and rocket parts and technologies to the United States. There
was not much left for the Soviet’s to take back to the USSR as both countries began
investing heavily in rocket technologies for war.
Sergei Korolev (1906–1966) who had been a member of GIRD became the famous
(and for many years anonymous) “Chief Designer” of the Soviet space program. From
the end of WW2, Korolev oversaw development of the USSR’s long-range missile
program. He was the driving force behind the USSR space program, quietly appro-
priating military technologies for space flight, and finally gaining official support
for developing space technologies. His efforts were enormous, carried out almost in
secret, not only from the outside world, but also within Russia, until his rockets were
finally and successful launched. It is indeed uncertain how the competition for space
dominance between the US and the USSR would have turned out had he not died
suddenly, during routine surgery, in 1966, after which the Soviet program floundered.
Wernher von Braun (1912–1977) was the leading figure in the development of
the V-2 for Germany. After the war he was brought to the US along with many
of his German co-workers to lead the development of America’s missile programs.
He did so spectacularly, technologically, enabling the US space program to develop
very rapidly based on the advanced knowledge and experience he brought with
him from Germany. Von Braun was also an extremely effective—indeed, charis-
matic—populariser of space travel in the US, his thick German accent and tall, noble
bearing fascinating and attracting more Americans than were repulsed by his Nazi
associations.
Scientific upper atmospheric research provided the trigger for the space race. In the
mid-1950s, the world scientific community proposed the International Geophysical
Year (IGY) to investigate the Earth’s relationship with the space environment. Both
the USSR and the United States declared that they would build scientific satellites
as part of their research program.
October 4, 1957, unexpectedly and without previous fanfare, the Soviet Union
launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1. The space age had begun.
More than 50 times larger than America’s proposed satellite, Vanguard, Sputnik-
1 was a stupendous technological and propaganda victory for the Soviet Union.
Startled world reaction to Sputnik was spontaneous and frenzied. The Russians were
13 Ad Astra! Sort of… 159

suddenly leaping ahead. On November 3, Sputnik-2 placed the first animal into orbit,
the lovable dog, Laika. She proved that it was possible for living things to survive the
rigors of launch and the conditions of weightlessness. The Soviets had no plans to
return her to Earth and her heroic death in space was mourned by millions worldwide.
After the tremendous propaganda victory of Sputnik-1, the US government autho-
rized a crash program to develop the Explorer satellite as alternative to the troubled
Vanguard project. Von Braun and his associates, including scientists from the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in California, constructed and launched Explorer 1, on January
31, 1958, from Cape Canaveral.
The United States had expected that it would launch the world’s first satellite.
When the Soviet Union achieved this distinction instead, it sparked an extreme panic
reaction in the Cold War environment of the time. If the USSR could put a satellite into
orbit, it was assumed they also had the technology to attack the US from space. This
fear rapidly led to a ‘space race’ between the two superpowers. Americans responded
with frantic determination. American President, John F. Kennedy, famously declared
in May 1961 that before the decade was out, America would land a man on the
Moon—and bring him back to Earth. A bold statement! This was something that
was technologically impossible when he announced it (especially the “bringing back”
part). America had to make good on his boast, or suffer even greater loses of respect
and leadership.
The space race was on with competitive national prestige and security now a
driver that led to sputniks and humans going into space. Political propaganda quickly
associated space achievements with ideological superiority: “my political system
is better than your political system because my space technology is better”! The
US and USSR vied with each other in a race to achieve status-conferring space
‘firsts’. Initially the Russians beat America in almost every aspect in the race to
the Moon. Working under a cloak of heavy secrecy and with substantial funding
and human resources, Russia achieved first after first, while America’s failures and
belated successes were widely-known and ridiculed.
Some Soviet firsts in the space race include:

1957-First artificial satellite (Sputnik 1)

1957-First living creature in orbit (Laika the dog, Sputnik 2)
1958-First satellite to weigh more than one ton (Sputnik 3)
1959-First successful lunar probes (Luna 1, 2, 3)
1961-First person in space (Yuri Gagarin, Vostok 1)
1961-First 24 h space mission (Gherman Titov, Vostok 2)
1962 First ‘twin’ flight with two manned spacecraft in orbit at same time (Vostok
3 and 4)
1963 First woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova, Vostok 6)
1964 First multiple-crew spaceflight (Voskhod 1 with a crew of three)
160 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

1965 First “space walk” (Alexei Leonov, Voskhod 2)

and many, many more.

It seemed that Russia was vastly superior to America in the science, technology, and
human abilities necessary for space flight. Nonetheless, the Russians failed to attain
what many believed to be the main prize in the race. The Americans were the first
to land men on the Moon in July 1969, and to return them safely back to Earth, as
Kennedy had promised. Americans were ecstatic. Everything was space age this and
space age that. “The Future” and “Space” became synonymous for many people,
and indeed America continued to send men to and from the Moon until 1972 when
political will and public enthusiasm failed. After Americans reached the Moon, the
Soviets gave up the race and turned their attention to other goals, all scientifically
and perhaps strategically important, but none as romantic or appealing as the race to
the Moon.
To achieve the Moon landing, incremental steps to a permanent human presence
in space (set out as far back as Tsiolkovsky) were pushed aside in a headlong rush
for geopolitical dominance and propaganda glory. The race to the Moon did not
generate the space technology and infrastructure necessary to support a permanent
human presence in space, such as space stations and cheap access to space with
versatile crew and cargo vehicles. Thus, after the Apollo landings, the pace of space
technology development slowed markedly and reverted to a more ‘normal’ type of
technological change. Space activities took a step backward, arguably providing
time and resources needed to develop step by step the necessary space infrastructure
needed for a permanent human presence in space. But even this did not happen in a
systemic, logical way.
The space race was over.
In 1979, Arthur C. Clarke referred to spaceflight as a “technological mutation
that should not have occurred until the 21st Century”. He meant that the technolo-
gies (hardware, software and orgware) essential for the missions politically set had
to be developed much sooner than would normally have been the case. They were
not optimal for their task. Ordinary technological advances are the products of a
gradual process of incremental innovation and improvement. Revolutionary tech-
nological change may be brought about by social and political decisions operating
outside conventional market and scientific processes, but then prove to be unsustain-
able. Spaceflight was a revolutionary technological change that arrived, driven by
geopolitical factors, well before the world was ready to exploit its full potential and
before the technology achieved the maturity needed for the job.
Many people tell the story of the space race as though it was only between the
US and the USSR. Though less well-known abroad, many other countries were part
of the space race too, and on their own; not necessarily as allies of one cold warring
nation or the other. The “father of Chinese rocketry” was Qian Xuesen. Qian earned
a PhD from the California Institute of Technology and helped the US develop jet
propulsion and the atomic bomb during World War II. However, during one of the
many “witch hunts” that plague the United States then and now, Qian was expelled
13.1 Identities in Space 161

from the US in 1955, and returned to China, where he become director of China’s
rocket research. Fully supported by Chairman Mao, China opened its first missile
and rocket research facility in 1956. This is another of the ironies of the space age:
political aims and ideological beliefs both drove and handicapped national aims
for the development of space and domination of the Earth. Initially using Soviet
technology, China launched its own R-1 rocket in November 1960, while placing
its first satellite in Earth orbit on its own “Long March” rocket on April 24, 1970,
broadcasting the song, “The East is Red”. For over 200 hundred years, “red” meant
left (liberal, progressive, socialist, communist) and “blue” meant right (royal—i.e.,
blue bloods—conservative, corporate, fascist), derived from the seating of political
parties in the French National Assembly in 1789 on the left and the right sides of
the chamber, so by proclaiming “The East is Red,” China was declaring victory
for Communism with its successful rocket launch. How and why the meaning of
the colors red and blue got switched in the US, apparently by television stations
broadcasting election returns, is beyond me. In any event, China has continued to
make enormous advances in space activities in all areas, rivaling and perhaps soon
exceeding the United States.
In 1962, with the support of Prime Minister Nehru, Vikram Sarabahi became the
father of the Indian space program. With technical support from both the US and the
USSR, Sarabahi was less interested in weapons and races to the Moon. He saw Earth-
orbiting satellites as tools for national development that provided communications,
remote sensing, weather forecasting, and both educational and popular television
broadcasting in support of national goals. The first Indian satellites were launched on
Russian rockets in 1975 and 1979. India also has steadily and impressively developed
its national space program.
The French space program, Centre National d’ Etudes Spatiales (CNES), was
established under President Charles de Gaulle in 1961. The Diamant rocket, launched
in 1965, was the first satellite launcher not built by either the US or the USSR. Other
nations developed space program during this same period as well.

13.1 Identities in Space

All of the first people in space were either from the Soviet Union or the United
States, and some of their political allies. China, most importantly, became the third
country to put a man in space with its own rocket in October 2003. Yang Liwei in
September 2011 became the first Chinese on the Moon. India may launch its first
crewed spaceflight in 2023. And there are the odd rich space tourists now. As of 2021,
people from 41 countries have gone into space, almost all from the US and Russia
distantly followed by Japan, Germany, China, France, Canada, Italy and others.
While all nations have some kind of space programs, most are focussed on satelitte
applications. Very few are concerned with human space flight. Moreover, only eleven
nations are “spacefaring”, meaning they have the ability to send objects into space
using their own launchers. Many more are racing towards spacefaring capacity, in the
162 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

meantime renting space from spacefaring nations and companies in order to launch
their satellites into orbit. Indeed the big business in space is launching satellites and
providing programming that can then, for a price, be beamed from one‘s satellite
back to specified spots on Earth.
The United States, the USSR, and China established their space programs long
ago for military and/or nationalistic purposes, though they also typically had some
kind of formal separation between the far more heavily-funded amd secret military
side, and the more celebrated civilian side. Military activities were often hidden
in secrecy with the extent of their surveillance activities and the weaponization of
space heavily obscured. However in 2019 the US created the US Space Force, a
specifically menacing name. Space Guard or Space Corps might have been much
better. Other nations had little choice but to respond in kind with their own space
military unmasked. In some ways, “space force” perhaps turned out to have been a
good choice because it quickly morphed into “space farce” in comedy and parody. I’ll
take the parody over the very real possibility of future space wars which, aside from
all the other devastations, might so greatly increase orbiting space junk that further
launches from Earth will be untenable unless vehicles impervious to collisions with
the debris are developed.
While there was never anything impelling space programs philosophically or
spiritually equivalent to that of Russia’s Fyodorov or Tsiolkovsky‘s “Philosophy
of the Common Task”, religious symbols and memes have played a large part in
America‘s space program from the beginning. Perhaps the first and most famous
was when Frank Borman read from the book of Genesis on Christmas Eve 1968
as Apollo 8 circled the Moon. Buzz Aldrin performed the Presbyterian service of
Holy Communion on Apollo 11, and Jeff Hoffman (the first Jew in space) on SST61
(1993) celebrated the Jewish Hanukah with menorah and dreidel, but, thankfully, no
burning candles.
Deana Weibel states that “The United States is a country, then, that sees itself, at
least in terms of its historical mythology, as following the dictates of God and being
rewarded in these pursuits.” She examines a video produced by the new Space Force
and observes,
While the language in this section is not quite as iconic as famous military slogans like “Be all
that you can be” or “We do more before 9 am than most people do all day,” it is still practical,
realistic, and militaristic in character. The narrator intones: “Some people look to the stars
and ask, ‘What if?’ Our job is to have an answer. We have to imagine what will be imagined,
plan for what’s possible while it’s still impossible.” The message is one of optimism and
determination. The second part of the video continues with innovative military imagery, while
the narrator’s language becomes philosophical and perhaps even metaphysical. “Maybe,” the
voice actor suggests, “you weren’t put here just to ask the questions. Maybe you were put
here to be the answer. Maybe your purpose on this planet isn’t on this planet.” The idea
that the listener was “put” here, of course, implies that someone or something, some kind
of higher power, decided to put the listener here. The implication is that the listener, if he or
she joins the Space Force, will have the potential to play a messianic role, one of salvation,
although the video doesn’t clarify whether it is the United States or the Earth that needs
saving. (Weibel 2020)
13.1 Identities in Space 163

Former Vice President Mike Pence frequently used religious language, including in
his support of the space force. For example, “As President Trump has said, in his
words, ‘It is America’s destiny to be the leader amongst nations on our adventure
into the great unknown’. And today we begin the latest chapter of that adventure.
But as we embark, let us have faith. Faith that, as the Old Book teaches us, that if we
rise to the heavens, He will be there” (Weibel 2020).
Among the most overlooked constituencies for nongovernmental spaceflights are
indeed various religious groups. Many of them possess great wealth and a vast
membership that embraces all of the scientific, technical, social, political, and moti-
vational talent necessary to sponsor significant space programs. If the evangelical
Christian community were to grasp the opportunity to expand its witness beyond
Earth it might very well do so quite successfully, and perhaps even in a way that
could provoke a space race with other religious communities.
Tenrikyo is a Japanese religion that combines certain Buddhist, Shinto, and other
features with perspectives of its own. According to a statement on the Tenrikyo
website:
The teachings of Tenrikyo are said to be direct revelations of God the Parent, who desires to
save all human beings and thus enable them to live the Joyous Life.

God not only created human beings and the world but has always been and will ever be the
source of life and the sustainer of all things. The followers refer to God as God the Parent
in the sense that God is the original Parent of human beings and, in prayer, glorify God as
Tenri-O-no-Mikoto. According to Tenrikyo, “The universe is the body of God.” It is thus
said that the world is filled with God the Parent’s workings.

(Tenrikyo nd)

I am not certain why or when Tenrikyo first became interested in space exploration,
but I do know that Ben Finney and I attended several meetings that Tenrikyo held
in Japan on space-oriented themes. For example, in December 1986, the American
Astronaut Russell Schweickart and myself gave public lectures as part of a “Pre-
session” titled, “Toward the Cosmic Age” (Yamada 1988).
In July 1989, Schweickart, Russian Cosmonauts Oleg Makarov and Georgi
Ivanov, and others participated at a seminar in Osaka on “Earth, Space and Human
Beings.” In June 1990, Ben Finney and Astronaut Charles Conrad were among
the participants in a symposium in Tenri City on “Inner Cosmos and Outer Space:
Searching for a New Cosmology.”
The leading person behind these activities was Akio Inoue who was the Director
of the Tenri Yamato Culture Congress. Among many other space-related activities,
Mr. Inoue translated into Japanese parts of the diary kept by Cosmonaut Valentin
V. Lebedev during his 201-day flight aboard Salyut 7 in 1982. Inoue was especially
interested in Lebedev’s accounts of his dreams in space, and in the forward to the
excerpts, Mr. Inoue urged readers to look beyond the physical and technological
aspects of space flight and to focus more on its spiritual and religious dimensions
and implications.
Similarly, in an English-language prospectus for a “Japan International Space
Culture Congress,” Inoue wrote:
164 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

In further pursuing space development, we need now to consider ever more intensely such
basic questions as the relation between man and space, between the universe and the evolu-
tion of life forms, as well as why man exists in the universe at all. Such profound questions
must be asked along with those concerned with the material sides of scientific and techno-
logical development….In Japan, for example, space research tends to over-emphasize the
technological aspects, and to neglect such important social and psychological questions as
the changes in human consciousness and society that space development is sure to bring
about. These questions need to be as eagerly pursued as are those solely concerned with the
technology of space exploration.

I am not sure Tenrikyo has continued or expanded these space activities, but they
are illustrative of what we might expect from religious groups as spaceflight moves
from the monopoly of governments into various private sectors.
For 400 years, the Roman Catholic Church‘s observartories have been part of
the global community of astronomical observatories, contributing actively to the
advancement of astronomy and related fields. I am not aware of any official plans
underway for the Church to engage in actual space programs, but I do know that
various clergy and laymen have spoken out concerning spaceflight and humanity‘s
role in space—some strongly favoring, other opposing such ventures. The same is
true for other demoninations of Christians.
Similarly, various Jews, Muslims and Hindu leaders have stated positions one way
or another about spaceflight. In those countries where religion and governance are
more tightly entwined than in the US or Europe, religious considerations are already
part of official programs.
Religion is at least as great a motivator for human behavior as sex, so space
religious tours might well rival space sex tours in popularity.
Modernity—the world that emerged in the late 17th Century and flowered in the
19th Century and early 20th Centuries—was created on the basis of scientific ideas
as actualized by technologies derived from (and/or leading to) scientific principles.
Although religion remained a major part of the beliefs and actions of most people,
for a while it seemed that religious ideas were relics of older belief systems that
were being replaced by ever-progressing new scientific discoveries and technological
breakthroughs. Modern institutions of governance and education especially were to
be based on the best modern science available. The very purpose of public schools and
publicly-funded universities in the 19th Century in western Europe, north America,
and Japan was to transform nations from agrarian, semi-feudal entities into urbanized,
globally-influential powers producing the latest industrialized people, goods, and
weapons.
The belief in the superiority and necessity of ever-improving science and tech-
nology reached its zenith with government-directed R&D projects in Germany, Japan,
the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States during and after the
Second World War, exemplified by the atom bomb-producing Manhattan project
on the one hand and the V-2 rockets and the subsequent Space Race on the other.
Vannevar Bush’s report to the US President in 1945—Science, the Endless Fron-
tier—was the Bible of those beliefs and policies in the US. In the Soviet Union the
term “Scientific-Technological Revolution” became a frequently-repeated mantra
13.1 Identities in Space 165

while from 1966, Radovan Richta’s sixty-author volumes, Civilizace na rozcestí—

společenské a lidské souvislosti vědecko-technické revoluce (“Civilization at the
Crossroads: The social and human context of the scientific-technical revolution”)
broadened and deepened the context of science for society on both sides of the Iron
Curtain.
As a consequence, after the war, governments of all advanced nations began for
the first time pouring very substantial amounts of money into “R & D” (research and
development) aimed at increasing scientific and technological knowledge and appli-
cations. Professors at certain universities and research institutes had the specific obli-
gation of increasing scientific knowledge and tools in their field and, where possible,
of finding practical applications for them. In order for a nation, a corporation, an
individual to be successful, it was necessary to acquire and use the very latest scien-
tific knowledge and tools. It was imperative constantly to produce new knowledge
and new tools in order to get ahead, stay ahead, grow, and progress. There was no
doubt about it.
Science in the Atomic Age/Space Age ruled during the 1950s, 60s, and70s.
Communism, in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and East Asia, was avowedly
atheistic and scientistic. The first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, officially said he saw
no God in space (though he allegedly told his adoring babushkas off the record
that in fact he had). In contrast, as we saw earlier, during prime time television on
Christmas Eve, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 took turns reading the opening passages
of the book of Genesis as they circled the Moon. NASA officially disapproved, and
many Americans were exasperated by this archaic act. In some ways, the nadir of
religion in the United States was reached with the cover of Time Magazine of April
8, 1966 that asked, in huge red letters, “Is God Dead?” with the clear implication
that indeed he was.
However, if God was dead, that did not mean that most people had replaced religion
with established scientific principles. For many years, the National Science Founda-
tion has conducted extensive surveys of the scientific and technological knowledge
of ordinary Americans. Without exception, most Americans demonstrate that they
know and believe almost none of the fundamental principles of modern science; do
not understand the scientific method or how to read statistics; and adhere to beliefs
about humans and nature that science clearly rejects. Moreover, these surveys do
not show that scientific and technological knowledge is increasing over time among
Americans. To the contrary, nonscientific beliefs are increasing and faith in science
declining.
Surveys in other parts of the world show similar patterns. However, it is very
important to understand that, at the same time, surveys of religious beliefs also
show that many devout people stoutly proclaim beliefs and exhibit behaviors that are
contrary to the official teachings of their religion. Similarly, if not told the source,
many Americans loudly denounce statements that derive from the US Constitution—
especially the first ten amendments—as being the seditious ideas of communists.
Laymen’s/citizens’ beliefs horrify theologians and political scientists, as well as
scientists.
166 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

Getting folks to accept evolution has always been an uphill fight, and creation
scientists seem to be winning the battle for recognition in many parts of the world.
More recently, physicists’ Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe has been
attacked. Similarly, long before Covid-19 antivaxxers existed, the World Health Orga-
nizations said that the influence of various spiritual beliefs about health was in part
responsible for the re-emergence globally of childhood diseases once thought erad-
icated by vaccinations or treated water. Highly likely these will spread if and when
the pandemic ends.
Opposition to science and technology has not come only from religion. Indeed,
there has been severe criticism of science and technology from the academic and
cultural left. Studies stressing “the social construction of science” emerged in Europe
and North America in the 1970s arguing that the claims of science are based not in
“truth” but in ideology, politics, and claims of privilege and expertise. Science is said
to be just one way of thinking among many others. It has no special claims on truth.
The words of a scientist, even speaking as a scientist, are no more legitimate than the
words of any other person who has opinions about a matter. Positivistic, reductionist
science especially has been brought into serious question, and in some quarters,
disrepute and rejection. Scientists are like anyone else. They lie, cheat, fudge the
data, have special interests they want to protect and expand. There is a class system
with a laboring class of technicians and graduate students at the bottom who do most
of the drudge work while a small number of self-referential scientists take all the
fame and money. Many horrible things have been done and are still done every day
in the name of science. Ordinary folk must always challenge what a scientist says
and not take his word on anything, people holding this position maintain.
More recently this claim is especially made around the world by, and on behalf
of, some indigenous people’s ways of knowing that science seeks to discredit and
replace. Some argue that many indigenous beliefs are more wholistic, integrative, and
indeed true than is reductionist science that only knows how to understand something
by taking it apart and thus destroying its integral operation.
These leftist/humanist claims about the social construction of science were appro-
priated by energy and climate change deniers who say that the science in back of
them is nothing but propaganda and the special pleading of scientists who want more
grants for their so-called research.
In addition to science, as we have seen, many people have a love-hate relation
with technology. While for some people, technology is good, or at least neutral, for
others it is demonic: with every new technology, we move farther and farther away
from our pristine Garden of Eden where the living was easy under God’s providence.
Technology has increasingly destroyed our environment, culture, and families. Rather
than being a good thing to be encouraged, funding for more science and technology
should stop. We don’t need more technologically-caused social and environmental
damage, we need less, more people are saying. Let’s restore old family, community,
cultural, and religious values along with the technologies and ways of knowing that
supported them. Since a major reason for supporting basic scientific research is not
the abstract love of knowledge but to lead to practical technological breakthroughs,
the days of both science and technology may be numbered.
13.1 Identities in Space 167

Most, if not all, of the founders of contemporary science were Christians who saw
no inherent conflict in religious and scientific reasoning. However, many contempo-
rary western scientists now see religion and science as operating in different spheres
and appropriate for answering different questions. Many others think science should
be an entirely secular activity completely divorced from religious faith.
However, centuries before there were scientists like Copernicus in Europe, there
were Muslim scientists in southern Europe, Africa and the middle east. Contemporary
science owes much to them. The position of most Muslim scientists then and now
is similar to early western scientists: it is their Islamic faith that leads them to their
scientific methods and discoveries. There is no true science without true faith. While
entirely secular Muslim scientists exist, most insist their science derives from and
is consistent with their faith. Many of these also maintain that “Islamic science”
is distinct from and superior to “western science” because of the unity of faith and
reason. Indeed Islamic science reveals scientific truths that western science has yet to
accept, many would say. At the same time, as with Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism
and others, so also there are Islamic fundamentalists who reject and condemn all
scientific beliefs except those revealed by the Prophet.
Additiional steps towards governmental support of religion in the US occurred
when the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was estab-
lished by George W. Bush by Executive Order on January 29, 2001. The initiative
enables various religious groups to obtain federal funds to provide certain social
services offered by the federal government in what once would have been consid-
ered a violation of the separation of church and state clause of the First Amendment
to the US Constitution. Much to the amazement of many of his supporters, President
Barack Obama expanded the scope and funding. President Biden re-established the
Office as the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
(emphasis added), while a Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
in the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Developed
was created “to ensure that Faith-Based and Community Organizations, which form
the bedrock of our society, have strong advocates within HUD, the White House and
Partnership Offices throughout the Federal Government” (Center for Faith-Based
and Neighborhood Partnerships 2022). So far, court cases have upheld the Initiative.
Funding is also being offered to religious groups engaged in more than conventional
social service work. Indeed, the US Supreme Court seems to be tending towards
declaring in general that forms and venues of religious expression and practice long
declared unconstitutiional are in fact permissable. Perhaps, eventually mandatory.
In contrast, some parts of the world—China and Japan most clearly—are
completely enamored by conventional science and technology, and are doing what
they can to increase the scholarly quality and quantity of their scientists.
At the same time, funding by the US and some other governments for science
research and development continues its basically downward trajectory from the high
of the 1960s, with some exceptions, generally sliding lower both in terms of absolute
dollars and as a percentage of GDP. If science is understood to be just one belief
168 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

system competing among many, 100% of all research funding may be given to faith-
based organizations, of which science is just one. Religious fervor might replace
scientific rigor as a main driver of space flight.

13.2 Small Sample

Only a few humans have ever been in space and only very, very recently in the
context of human history. As of November 2021, 600 humans have flown in space
since the first person, Yuri Gagarin, orbited the Earth in April 21, 1961. Of these 600
only 65 were women with Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union being the first
in 1963, though the second, Svetlana Savitskaya, did not fly until 1982, while the
first American woman in space was Sally Ride in 1983. Since then the number of
women in space has increased, but they are still very much a minority. To be sure,
women played vital roles in the many research and administrative duties needed to
get a few humans into space but even here they often were marginalized and harassed
internally, and largely unknown and unsung within the space community much less
the wider world.
All of the first astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts were males. In the US,
they were White, Anglo-Saxon, militarized test pilots, modestly-educated (BA/BS
degrees), cisgendered, able-bodied and often farm boys, with the right stuff.
Eighty-eight of all astronauts have been White. Asians account for 7% of all
astronauts, and African-Americans and Hispanics account for 2% each. In 1980, the
Soviet Union became the first to send a Black man to space: Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez,
a Cuban cosmonaut. It would take another three years until America sent its own
Black man to space: Guion Bluford. Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, graduate
from the US Naval Academy, and a retired major general in the U.S. Marine Corps
served as NASA administrator from 2009 to 2017. In an interview he said that he was
“‘on a constant roller coaster of being very angry and then being hopeful,’ not only
about his experiences as an African-American man who has helped lead America in
space, but also about how he feels about racism and violence against people of color
today. ‘We don’t have enough representation in the astronaut service by women and
minorities.’ ‘We have to have more representation … We’ve not had an African-
American crewmember on the International Space Station, and that is long, long,
long, long, long, long, long overdue.’” “The space station has been in orbit around
Earth for 20 years ”(Gohd 2020).
Episodes of serious concern and actions towards greater diversity within NASA
come and go as they do in the American population generally and with the the
predilections of presidents, other executive officers, and members of congress, as well
as the heads of NASA itself. Sometimes there seems hope for sustained affirmative
actions, but more often crude and blatant discrimination prevails. It has been said
that the racial and gender discrimination in NASA is worse than any other branch
of the US Federal government. Given the militarized history of US and other space
programs, this is no surprise. Even though the US military, importantly, was the first
13.2 Small Sample 169

major agency to end formal racial discrimination after World War II, it continues to
resist as best it can the full inclusion of women, queers, trans and disabled persons
into military service. In addition, many of NASA‘s installations are located in the
US South where prejudice against equal opportunities for women, racial and gender
minorities, and the disabled is entrenched and strong.
Given the cultures of America and most of the world in the early days of space
flight, it is no surprise that as far as is currently known no early astronaut or cosmonaut
was gay. It later turned out that the widely-revered first American woman in space,
Sally Ride, was gay. This was not disclosed until her gay partner of twenty-seven
years included that information in Ride’s obituary in 2012. The second gay astronaut,
Wendy Lawrence, also concealed her gay marriage until 2018, after she had retired
from NASA following many years of distinguished service.
Anne McClain, who had been in an unpublicized gay marriage since 2014, was the
first gay astronaut to have been outed while aboard the International Space Station,
in 2018. McClain had been embroiled in squalid divorce proceedings and accused
by her ex-wife of what might have been the first “space crime.” She was cleared of
all accusations.
No male astronaut on active duty or in retirement has come out as gay so far.
There were rumors of gay astronauts in other countries, but none has been confirmed
yet. Since 2016, an LGBTQ Special Emphasis Group within NASA has also been
working beyond what federal law requires to create a more positive, equitable, and
productive NASA work environment (French 2020).
Cameron Bess, who accompanied his billionaire father on Blue Origin’s flight on
December 11, 2021, may well be the first gay male in space and it was no secret.
Indeed he intended his venture to be pacesetting and inspirational:
Blue Origin @blueorigin · Dec 11, 2021

Replying to @blueorigin

Cameron Bess is a content creator with a passion for creating and expressing themselves
in ways that can brighten a person’s day. Cameron identifies as pansexual and is proud to
represent marginalized communities and hopes their journey can inspire others. (Holmes
2021)

In addition to the LGBTQ Special Emphasis Group in NASA,

The Out Astronaut Project addresses the under-representation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) people in science and space. Sponsored by the Inter-
national Institute for Astronautical Sciences, we highlight the contributions of LGBTQ+
members currently working in science and space and provide grants to promising LGBTQ+
students currently pursuing professions in space-related fields.

“We believe that communities are empowered when they are represented. Astronauts inspire
our youth, represent limitless possibilities, and serve as ambassadors to STEM. Our goal is
to train and fly a member of the LGBTQ community as a scientist-astronaut. This person
would be an inspiration to the LGBTQ community while enabling cutting-edge research.”
[https://outastronaut.org/]
170 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

But perhaps is not an issue of infusing space and the space community with queers.
Perhaps space is queer already and it is Earth that it is odd man out, struggling to
escape the bonds of oppressive normality, and breathe free.
“[Q]ueer online advice columnist, John Paul Brammer, answered the question,
‘What is the unspoken bond that LGBTQ people have with space?’ with ‘we queers
tend to know a lot about the ordeal of being perceived and then being negotiated into
rigid taxonomies that weren’t built with us in mind.’” “Emily Hunt, a queer trans
woman studying star clusters for her PhD, [said] that she first became interested
in the stars when she was around 7 years-old, after her parents showed her Venus
transiting across the sun. She says she is humbled by space, and believes the universe
is gay because it’s inadvertently ‘counterculture.’”
“Moiya McTier, a Black astrophysicist who identifies as bisexual and
pansexual,…believes space is gay, because it has no technical orientation. ‘One of
the most annoying things about working in space is that there’s no up and down,’
she said, ‘Because there’s not a central gravity field, depending on where you are
in space.’ Most space ‘orientations’ are chosen out of convenience. For example,
because the galaxy has a center, astronomers created a coordinate system based on
a ‘galactic north pole.’ Human beings cannot possibly understand and make judg-
ments about something without first putting it into systems they understand. Science,
in that way, is inherently heterosexual, and space as it’s written plainly in the stars,
is queer” (Anderson 2020).
All space programs put a high premium on recruiting people to their astronaut,
cosmonaut or taikonaut programs who are exceptionally physically fit—for Earth,
that is. They need to be, it is argued, because of the profound strain and stresses of
space flight. Therefore recruit the people who are best fit for Earth and send them to
a place where humans don’t fit in at all unless encapsulated in an elaborate bubble
simulating the atmospheric features of Earth, whether it be a spaceship or a spacesuit.
Rose Evelein (2019) and Samantha Timmers (2020) present strong evidence that
certain “disabilities” may make people more fit for the rigors and requirements of
space than are so-called “able-bodied” people, especially in emergencies. When the
lights go out, or smoke obscures vision, who is better able to continue functioning
as usual than someone who already “seeing impaired”? While more arms (and a
good prehensile tail) might be useful, long, sturdy legs are definitely a handicap
in conditions of weightless. “Crip bodies were built for space travel. Crip minds
already push the outer limits”. Indeed, I long speculated that a lot of genetically-based
“diseases” exist in order to be called into service by evolution when environmental
conditions in Earth or not-Earth release them.
AstroAccess states:
We are dedicated to advancing disability inclusion in space exploration, not just for the
benefit of marginalized communities, but for the benefit of all humankind. This project is
our first step in the direction of a new reality, where disabled astronauts not only exist but are
trusted crew members, essential to the mission. When disabled people have equitable access
to all jobs, taking on humanity’s most complex tasks, perspectives change. Access to space
changes the worldview not only of aspiring explorers, but of those that employ them, and
most importantly, those that look up to them. By generating new opportunities for disabled
13.2 Small Sample 171

scientists to succeed and by providing activists a platform, we have the power to inspire the
next generation of scientists and world-changers. (Astroaccess 2020). https://astroaccess.
org/about/

While people with all varieties of disabilites and enhancements have greatly
contributed to the science, technology, and administration of space programs, some
have also been enabled to experience weightless in parabolic airplane rides as a
prelude to space, one of whom was Hayley Arcemeaux who also was aboard the
SpaceX flight of 2021.
US millionaire Dennis Tito became the world’s first space tourist on April
30, 2001, aboard the International Space Station. Subsequently, 250 non-
cosmonauts/astronauts have visited the ISS. However, on July 11, 2021, Virgin CEO
Richard Branson flew in suborbital space aboard a Virgin Galactic rocket plane. Nine
days later, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos‘ Blue Origin rocket spent 11 min also in subor-
bital flight on July 20, 2021. Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s Space X
each flew their first tourist-focused flights in 2021, transporting several people with
minimal training in professional spaceflight even though SpaceX’s flight lasted three
days in orbit. Indeed, one of the four, Hayley Arceneaux, had prothetic leg bones
that would have prevented her from being an astronaut with NASA. Gay (and furry)
Cameron Bess flew on Blue Origin. All private space companies may be reviewing
their policies about who can qualify physically, mentally, ethically for space flight
as they endeavor to boldly go.
Roscosmos (the Russian federal space agency) brought two sets of space tourists
into space in 2021, including a mission with Space Adventures that has helped fly
super-wealthy tourists to the ISS over the last 18 years. Russian actress Yulia Peresild,
and producer-director Klim Shipenko spent 12 days in space filming a movie. The
two civilians underwent rigorous training.
So my main point here is that all we know about actual humans in space comes
within the context of very small groups of extremely unusual and atypical people.
Initially, essentially all astronauts and cosmonauts were male test pilots, truly super-
human in every way. They were highly-disciplined though exuberant risk-takers who
were willing to conform their thought and behavior to test the bounds of a largely
unknown and completely new environment within spirit- and bone-crushing capsules.
Even when opportunities for experiencing orbital space flight were opened to “ordi-
nary” people, they have had to go through long periods of selection, training, and
more training that often exceeded the time they actually spent in space (and many,
so trained, never had a chance to fly at all). Many space tourists who claim the title
of astronaut have been extremely rich, and few actually flew beyond the boundary
between Earth and space, and back. So people who have flown in space so far are not
like some random group of ordinary people who get on a scheduled airplane flight
from Dayton to Daytona. To the contrary, they are extremely a-typical folks in every
way.
But not only is the sample of humans from which we can make generalizations
about human space flight very small and unrepresentative of humanity, but also the
172 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

tools of social science which have been used to study and develop valid generaliza-
tions about human space flight are themselves comparatively new and problematic—
scarcely older than the Space Age itself and ethnocentrically-limited. In contrast with
the natural sciences which are more nearly globally-based, the conclusions of the
social sciences came initially from studies of people (largely male) in western coun-
tries, Japan, and Korea. Even more seriously, while NASA now requires that all
astronauts hold a master’s degree in a STEM field, including engineering, biolog-
ical science, physical science, computer science or mathematics, from an accredited
institution, most of the space agencies and industries, and especially their sponsors
and funders (meaning legislators and/or other political actors) have been extremely
suspicious of social science, reluctant to fund or even allow properly-designed social
science experiments or observations to be carried out as space activities. Thus, what
we think we do know about human space flight comes—with some important but
rare exceptions—from anecdotes or inadequately designed and carried out studies
about people who have experienced the kind of paltry space flight available so far.

13.3 Earth Analogs for Not-Earth

Moreover, a very big source of information, or speculation, about space flight has
come not from actual space flight but from analogs—from activities on Earth that
are thought to be similar to those in space. So what are the conditions of space for
which there are analogs we can study on Earth? Here is a typical list:
Population: small, homogeneous: all, or mostly, male; mono-cultural; same age-
cohort; limited range of occupations.
Habitat: cramped and crowded; no privacy; visually sterile; constant noise—or
utter silence; in constant motion; 24-h “day”; reduced or increased gravity; weight-
lessness; poor or dangerous air quality; variable air pressure; extreme heat or cold;
dust or mold; high humidity; micro-organisms or insects.
External environment: very cold or hot; climate extremes; under water; under-
ground; toxic atmosphere; solar or other radiation; asteroid bombardment;
higher/lower gravity; higher/lower air pressure; all dark/all light; one day longer
or shorter than 24 h.
Isolated from the rest of human society for extended periods.
And here are some places on Earth where humans are/have been that have some of
these characteristics: remote small islands; rural farms; national parks/wilderness;
prisons; oil rigs; sailing ships; underwater: divers, submarines, sea labs, aquanauts;
underground: miners, cavers; early pacific island voyagers; early Western explorers;
mountain dwellers and climbers; desert travelers and settlers; polar explorers and
settlers; designed experimental habitat dwellers (e.g., isolation booths and tanks,
various space simulators, Biosphere 2).
Indeed, are there any things in space without any earthly or human counterpart
from which we can analogize?
13.3 Earth Analogs for Not-Earth 173

But wait! Are we sure we have listed the most useful characteristics of space
and the most useful Earth analogs? We may have fallen in the trap that the national
space programs have set for us. We have imagined space settlements to be sterile,
Spartan, military-like hutches in extremely hostile environments, which they might
(or might not) be in the very initial period. But how many people will choose to
go to space if it is eternally noisy, crowded, dangerous, and altogether unpleasant?
We must not assume that just because military test pilots were the first persons in
space, and because the first spacecrafts were so inhospitable (and still are), that future
human space flight, and habitats, should, much less must, also be so rugged. Early
spacecrafts—perhaps out of necessity, perhaps not—were designed according to
criteria which assumed that abnormal humans, who were exhaustively conditioned to
accept extremely hostile and inhumane conditions and environments, would function
within them. It is curious that even now most actual designs are still extraordinarily
cramped and stark, assuming that abnormal humans, for the honor of being designated
an astronaut, can and will be made to fit within whatever is designed for them. The
reason may be said to be economic necessity, but that seems a lame excuse: probably
most people who inhabit space stations drive on Earth a private car that is roomier
and more comfortable than their spacestation quarters. No, the reason cannot truly be
that we are materially poor. Could it be instead that we are spiritually and esthetically
impoverished, valuing machines and a kind of “economics” over humans?
Of course, the space entrepreuers who strive to lure rich people into paying for a
few awesome and sickening moments in space know that they must give their clients
a ride even more comfortable than that of their luxury auotomobile—or yacht—and
they are doing that. That must become the norm.
So, the most useful Earth analog for space settlements may lie in one of the places
listed above, and that is the remote small islands in the South Pacific. They are
considered to be as close to earthly paradise as we can imagine. But, for example,
Hawaii is one of the most remote spots on Earth and one of the last to be discovered
and settled by humans. Until the invention of the jet airplane, only the rich and
leisurely, or poor and outcast, could get there. After the waves of early Polynesian
travelers arrived and settled in perhaps about one thousand years ago, Hawaii was
an almost impossible place for most non-Polynesians to travel to, or to thrive in.
Now, mass tourism is the number one, booming industry in Hawaii, and it took a
lot of PR (as well as technological and economic change) to make it so. The Hawaii
Tourist Bureau doesn’t want anyone to know about the Dark Side of Paradise, and
so it paints such a glowing picture that tens of thousands of people each year endure
long, painful, cramped insulting airplane flights, and dump bucketsful of money into
the economy simply because “Hawaii” has come to mean “Paradise” to most of the
rest of the world, whatever it may mean for those who actually live there (it means
“as close to paradise as I can get” to me).
That is to say, the Earth analogs we should be looking for should be those that
express the very best aspirations for freedom and community we humans have ever
imagined or dreamed of—and created. Not-Earth should be portrayed as “Hawaii”,
not as hostile wasteland where all must live as prisoners. But that is not the kind
of analogs we have studied. Since the immediate future of human space flight may
174 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

well continue to be one of spirit-crushing habitats in challenging, strange, and indeed

hostile environments, Earth analogs to space so far have had those characteristics,
and that is a big PR mistake. It might be acceptable for now, but if we really want
“ordinary” people to go to Mars and elsewhere, we need to stop calling space “hostile”
or “an extreme environment”, and do what the Hawaii Tourist Bureau does—call it “a
paradise” with great stupefying drinks, nubile women, and rugged, but sensitive, men
while fully welcoming and embracing also all manner of LGBTQIA+, artilects, and
cyborgs. Human perception of an experience (called the “definition of the situation”)
is in some ways more important than the objective “situation” itself. Some things, if
approached with the expectation of being positive, are experienced positively, while
the same situation, if defined negatively, may be experienced negatively. Moreover
people’s initial attitudes towards any environment typically change with prolonged
exposure to it.

13.4 Scant Social Science About Humans in Space

Very little social science research has been carried out on actual space flights not only
because funders don’t like the social sciences, but also because the results of such
studies have been regarded as being dangerous for any one person’s future in space
if their opinions or behaviors are revealed to be anything other that “normal”. Candi-
dates for space flight and astronauts in space resent, and indeed are fearful, of all tests
that might reveal any deviance on their part. This is true of the medical tests they must
necessarily endure, but even more so of any social science tests since they have faith
in the former, but not the latter. Consequently, human thoughts and behavior are the
least studied aspect of space studies (in terms of funding, number of studies, number
of researchers, replications, etc.). Physical/geological and biological/environmental
natural science aspects of space are the best studied while issues related to designing,
constructing, operating and maintaining spacecraft are next. There have been very
few properly designed, funded, executed, analyzed and published social psycholog-
ical studies. The few that do exist are often those called “human factors” which seek
to measure and improve human work productivity, and those related to organizing and
managing a space activity in order to further the political or commercial interests
of the sending/funding organization. Many excellent biological and physiological
experiments useful for human space flight have been performed on the International
Space Station, but I am not aware of any specifically-designed social science ones,
in spite of the fact that the multinational, multicultural, and to some extent multi-
disciplinary nature of the crew makes it a perfect laboratory for all kinds of useful
social science research.
It is also the case that America’s early antipathy towards social science was not
shared by every space agency. Even though the social sciences within the Soviet
Union were quite restricted compared to those in the west during the Cold War,
impressive research in some social science areas was done for the Soviet space
13.4 Scant Social Science About Humans in Space 175

program, perhaps because the Soviets were planning for and involved in multi-
member, multi-cultural crews for somewhat longer-duration flights well before the
Americans were. Social science projects, and even humanities activities, have some-
times been part of space projects but seldom the kind of research into class, gender,
ethnicity, sexuality, and governance that a social scientist would like to do. For
example, while there has been a great deal of speculation, we know nothing verifi-
able about sexuality in space—cis, gay, or solitary. We have had serious studies about
the complexities of conception, pregnancy, fetal development, birth, and survival of
a few laboratory animals in space with speculation about what the situation for
humans might be, but I do not know of any studies commissioned by space agencies
about human sexuality in any of the various niches of space. There have been lots
of interesting and arousing anecdotes, about prolonged weightlessness as an effec-
tive replacement for Viagra, for example, and there are suggestions that typical gay
sexual activities are somewhat easier to perform in weightlessness than are typical cis
positions, but these tales are often contradictory and unreliable. We know far more
about religious practices in space than we do about sex, and yet sexuality is about
as fundamental a part of being human as is imaginable even though space agencies
pretend it does not exist and indeed may have already been expressed in space in
some guise. At the same time, satellite companies have made digital pornography
cheap and abundant, while one viable business model of private space flights might
involve sex tourism on space “love boats”. Space entrepreneurs surely have talked
about it and some may feature it sooner rather than later. Anecdotal evidence exists
that the privateers have been approached with offers of filming pornography in space
but there has been none, it seems. Unfortunately, the current space cowboys seem
even more reluctant than the space agencies to spend precious time and money on
vital social science research and training of any kind, and so I can almost guarantee
we will see a significant space failure sometime in the near future because of human
behavior of some untoward kind if the privateers especially don’t wise up.
But maybe it doesn’t even matter. What we call space programs now are focused
on only a few, minute aspects of what we will need to know—and will learn—
as we move on to serious activities on the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and the rest of
the solar system including perhaps off-planets on entirely artificial environments in
Lagrangian points. We currently are looking at mites on a dustball in a broom closet
of the New Century Global Complex in China in comparison to what lies ahead.
Moreover, we are examining the mites only through the lens of STEM perspectives
even though the hard work in the natural and biological sciences is increasingly being
done by algorithms. What is needed urgently is active experience in the humanities
and social science—perhaps at the intersection of queer and critical race theories.
Without clinging to notions of essential identity by saying so, cultural differences
do influence human interactions. What may be acceptable in one society may be
forbidden in another. Different preferences in food preparation and eating, body
odors, social distance and many more things sometimes result in conflict on Earth.
For example, Kung, Mehinaku, Arabs, Javanese, Malays, and Japanese, in that order,
seem to prefer much more human closeness and contact than do most Americans.
Americans maintain a physical distance between themselves and others that seems
176 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

“standoffish” to many, while Arab’s desire for close contact (and smells) alarms most
Americans who are constantly backing away as friendly Arabs futility advance. Social
distancing as a result of Covid-19 was probably a boon to many Anglo-Saxons while
almost impossible to practice by people from some other cultures. What Ameri-
cans may consider to be necessary “privacy” is deep pathology for others. Attitudes
towards drinking behavior and drunkenness; sexual comments and touching; how
to be sick and respond to others who are sick; and many more behaviors are very
different and very dynamic from one culture to another (including not only national
culture, but also gendered, occupational, religious and other sub-cultures), but none
of these important cultural differences have been studied sufficiently in space though
they have very frequently been commented on anecdotally and unreliably. You fly
on an American spacecraft, you surpress all your desires and act like you are from
Kansas; on a Russian spacecraft, like you are from…Moscow?
Technology influences behavior in important (and barely studied) ways. In the old
days, when movies were shown to people in Antarctic winter-over settlements via
16 mm projectors, everyone watched them together as a shared communal experi-
ence. With videotapes, and then the Internet, the experience became mostly private.
Generations have learned how to stare down and peck away perpetually at their
iPhones, never permitting even the slightest eye contact with other humans.
If, as we move from Earth’s orbit to the Moon, Mars, asteroids and beyond, the
mission goals, composition of crews, internal and external environments, role of
robots, artificial intelligence and other autonomous entities, and many other things
will present us challenges and opportunities unlike those we have experienced so
far on Earth or not-Earth. We will need to prepare for novel situations that will be
encountered by individuals, by small groups, and by overall organizations. Foremost
among the latter will be opportunities for new forms and processes of governance
that have seldom been imagined much less developed and used on Earth.
In my experience, the most provocative and challenging examples of how to help
humanity prepare for long-range space flight and especially the possibility of alien
encounters were the meetings of Contact!, an annual three-day convocation of anthro-
pologists, science fiction writers, space scientists and enthusiast at various venues in
California from 1983 at least until 2016. Contact! was created and maintained by Jim
Funaro, an anthropologist at Cabrillo College in California. There were speeches,
panel discussions, exhibits (some of many years’ evolution), but the highlight of each
conference was Contact!—the arrival of aliens with whom the rest of the participants
were to figure out how to communicate—that being a specialty of some anthropol-
ogists, the plot of many sci fi stories, but the experience, it seems, of only a few of
us in UFO reality.
One of the most frequently-mentioned human consequences of actual space flight
so far is the so-called “Overview Effect” first identified by James White (1987) and
greatly expanded and recently elaborated on by White (2019). Astronaut Ron Garan
(2015) described his life-changing experiences in space and on Earth as did Astronaut
Nicole Stott (2021).
13.4 Scant Social Science About Humans in Space 177

The overview effect is a transformational change of values, attitudes and often

behavior that some astronauts and cosmonauts have said they experience as a conse-
quence of seeing Earth for the first time from afar, whole, beautiful, precious, and
without any political or other artificial borders and boundaries. Certainly the astro-
nauts who walked on the Moon (even more so the one who had to stay utterly isolated
and alone in a hovering craft while others walked the Moon) were awe-struck by
Earthrise and the glimpse of the tiny, frail, solitary Little Blue Marble that is Earth
with its thin blue halo of atmosphere protecting life from cosmic death.
On the other hand, it is possible that passengers on trips to Mars, an asteroid, or
other more distant objects will feel something quite the opposite as Earth recedes to
a mere dot and disappears entirely before their new destination comes dramatically
into view. It is likely that humans circling and then landing on Mars will experience
something far beyond any “overview” effect as they realize humanity has finally
gotten out of the cradle and begun to explore the neighborhood of the inner solar
system, and eventually even beyond.
I suggested earlier that the decision by President Kennedy to land a man on
the moon and return him safely to Earth was not made as it might more “natu-
rally” have been made. A “normal” science and technology-driven space program
would have followed a long, slow, scientifically-solid process. It might have begun
with the careful observation and mapping of the Moon first from Earth via increas-
ingly powerful techniques; then by a series of closer observations from Moon-
circling unmanned spacecraft; then landing robotic rovers on the Moon that care-
fully surveyed all of the surface (and below) while performing a series of experi-
ments, perhaps then robotically-preparing a base (or series of bases) where humans,
cyborgs with their artilect companions would eventually arrive, set up shop, engage
in more exploration and scientific experiments; finally evolving into a permanent
and expanding settlement to which “ordinary people” cyborgs and artilects from
Earth might migrate for ordinary or extraordinary purposes; and so on to exploring
and eventually building settlements of humans, cyborgs, transhumans, artilects on
Lagrangian points, perhaps asteroids, perhaps directly to Mars.
But no. Absolutely to the contrary, the Moon landing was not a process of such
a “normal” scientific, technological, industrial and human evolution but rather a
bold/rash/stupid political decision made entirely for purposes of inter-national ideo-
logical rivalry alone, with almost no proper scientific-technological-human prepara-
tion or justification. Very importantly, while technology did exist or was created that
got the assigned job done on time, well, and at enormous expense, other technolo-
gies that could have made the process less costly and more sustainable—including
more advanced robots, AIs/AEs, cyborgs, transhumans, and posthumans among other
things—did not exist at the time. If currently-looming resource, ecological, and
political limitations do not make it impossible, these technologies should eventually
emerge, transforming Earth and enabling the steady exploration of the solar systems
and cosmos.
When the ideological purpose was achieved with American landing on the Moon
and the space race won and lost, long-range space programs everywhere came to
178 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

an abrupt end. In the early 1970s, both the Soviets and the US ended their prema-
ture programs of long-range human spaceflight that many expected would continue
(settlements on Mars by 1980!!). After a period of uncertainty very similar to the
present, both the Soviets and the US (soon joined by Europe, Japan, and Canada)
eventually settled on an uneasy balance between human space programs of Earth-
orbiting spacecraft on the one hand, and robotic space programs of Earth-orbit-based
space observation platforms and solar-system exploring and deep-space voyaging
vehicles, on the other.

13.5 Space: Is it Just a Job?

Subsequent decades of work on Skylab, Salyut, Mir, and the International Space
Station routinized certain space activities while atrophying, technologically and
psychologically, the once impressive “space muscles” that were built-up during the
Space Race era. While there have been many astronomical discoveries and impor-
tant technological developments, as well as improvements in human/robot interac-
tion during this time, from the point of view of most people not directly involved in
the space industry, space seems to have become just a regular job, done off-Earth
perhaps and so requiring big, expensive and cranky buses with dedicated bus drivers
and passengers who go back and forth to work at a science lab that has rather spec-
tacular views where routine science and technology-testing is performed. The space
program has become just another high tech job done in a fairly remote place, but a
place that is not psychologically more remote than it is, say, for someone who lives
in Hawaii and has to fly to Europe and back frequently as part of her job. The gener-
ally safe and predictable nature of space station activities is, perhaps, one reason
for relative lack of popular support for or interest in space now. It is just routine
“going to work” for some people in the space industry. Nothing more. This conclu-
sion is reinforced by the fact, mentioned before, that when the routine is broken, and
disaster strikes (as in the catastrophic explosions of the Challenger and Discovery
space shuttles), American’s interest in spaceflight spikes sharply up, only to settle
back down to its very low level when normality and predictability returns. It is hard
to be excited about most astronaut’s day job.
With the end of the American shuttle period, the future of American participation
in human spaceflight activities became more uncertain than ever before. Like Apollo
before it, the shuttle program was cancelled before a new American program was
determined, much less underway. It was profoundly sad and demoralizing to walk
through the gigantic empty buildings at Cape Kennedy in Florida, stripped clear of
almost all remnants of its glorious past. What was it all for? Is this it? many wondered.
Currently there is hope that the American program will revive significantly and
that even if it does not, that China, India, Russia, Japan, Europe, Iran, Brazil, Nige-
ria….other national space programs will be what is necessary to increase the human
and posthuman presence in space, even if America’s presence declines.
13.5 Space: Is it Just a Job? 179

At the present time, many eyes are focusing on the space entrepreneurs who have
had spectacular successes in the tasks they have set for themselves, and promise
much more.
“Those recent and upcoming missions have created the perception that space
tourism has finally arrived—maybe a decade and a half late…. Virgin Galactic has
more than 600 customers and reopened ticket sales in August, while Bezos said in July
the company had as a backlog of nearly $100 million, although hasn’t disclosed how
many people have signed up. After Inspiration4 splashed down, a SpaceX executive
indicated there was enough demand for orbital flights to support five to six Crew
Dragon missions a year” (Foust 2021a). “It’s a small sign of a growing maturation
of the commercial human spaceflight industry. After years—decades, really—of
waiting for it to arrive,…three companies flew private human missions from the
edge of space to altitudes above the space station in 2021. Private human spaceflight
become more regular, but not routine” (Foust 2021b).
“Space 4.0 represents the evolution of the space sector into a new era, charac-
terised by a new playing field. This era is unfolding through interaction between
governments, private sector, society and politics. Space 4.0 is analogous to, and is
intertwined with, Industry 4.0, which is considered as the unfolding fourth industrial
revolution of manufacturing and services” (ESA 2016).
Perhaps so, but I am profoundly uneasy with the way the privateers are undertaking
space ventures now. First of all, the “fourth industrial revolution” is a phrase very
popular in Europe, Japan, and Korea. I have frequently spoken out against its use.
It treats the transformational potential of developments in electronics, robotics, AI,
ALife, biotech, neuroscience, nanotech, and material sciences as just one more phase
in the old industrial revolution even when elaborations of the term suggests it is
much, much more: “The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to
mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production.
The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now
a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has
been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of
technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological
spheres” (Schwab 2016).
However, I share the sentiments about this unfolding moment in space activities,
but not necessarily all the reasons expressed by Layla Martin: “The American public
is reassured that space is an arena fostering unity and cooperation. Why is that not
what we are seeing?…We are being sold the idea of space, in that feel-good It’s
a Small World kind of way but are witnessing a handful of rich guys jostling for
position like bloodthirsty contenders pre-IPO” (Martin 2021).
Yes, but it is not unusual historically for the functional equivalent of billionaires to
lead the way in social and technological developments. As I have repeatedly stressed,
marginals and misfits have always played important roles in space and continue to
do so. Billionaries are just weirdos of a different sort and we should press them to
use their talents more for the common good and less for their private greed. I am
especially worried about and have expressed my displeasure at their blatant disregard
of the environmental consequences of their actions, especially when they move from
180 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

tourism to mining and actually establishing “colonies” on the Moon, Mars, asteroids,
and elsewhere.
I am perpetually vexed by the willing thoughtlessness of humans to “throw away”
our waste—out the window of our speeding car, into a landfill, or in the case of the
space industry, into the “vastness” of space in the belief that it will eventually be
burned up as gravity pulls it back to Earth, and that it will not endanger other space
objects until then. The consequences of this very unethical though extremely common
(and often economically-justified) behavior is now so serious that current and future
space activities are increasingly endangered and, unless our junk is cleaned up and
further pollution prevented, may render some future space activities impossible. I
have heard for thirty years promises not to keep proliferating orbital debris and
schemes for cleaning up what exists, but I am still waiting for real and effective
action to begin, as we continue to spew out more garbage. I am not convinced space
cowboys are likely to be more conscientious in this regard than are national programs.
Similarly, the disdainful disregard for the destruction of all forms of life on Earth
almost certainly will extend into space activities, especially those that are commer-
cially driven. “Life” is a very difficult thing to define unambiguously, but we are
not now making serious, adequate preparations for preventing harm to life we might
encounter in space—other than perhaps protecting ourselves from possible contam-
ination from them! Fossilized life forms which might provide “useful” information
for humans as well should receive ethical considerations on their own but are viewed
as just rocks to be crushed at will.
But what about rocks themselves? Shouldn’t rocks, landscapes, and even abiotic
natural formations be left alone? Landscapes, rivers, mountains, and other features
should receive respect and reciprocal considerations from humans. Indeed, entire
biospheres should be cherished as they exist. There should be limitations to what
humans can do to a biosphere and its parts. Our failure so far to grant respect and
deference to trees and rocks may be leading to the extinction of humans on Earth
whose existence is dependent on the services of abiotic as well as biotic forms. There
may be reciprocity at a planetary scale going on now on Earth. We have done it unto
nature so nature is doing it back unto us. We should not extend our ignorance and
arrogance willfully into space in the name of profit and prestige.
While we may have already done irreparable damage by space intrusions, humans
should not land on the surface of any object in space until we know a whole lot more
about what “life” and “intelligence” is, and their presence in space. We should not
“boldly go”, but go cautiously, sensitively, and ethically into space. First People
are said to ask the permission of a deer before they kill it for food and materials,
and many people “say grace” before eating anything, thanking God and nature for
providing the sustenance humans need. Many Hawaiians ask permission of a rock
before they remove it for their use. So also might humans humbly ask permission of
Mars and the asteroids—and wait for an affirmative answer—before terraforming or
exploiting them, if we should exploit them at all.
Some time ago, Christopher Stone, the son of the rabble-rousing journalist, I.
F. Stone, wrote an article for a relatively obscure law review that quickly became
the subject of a Supreme Court dissent and a book of considerable impact, titled,
13.5 Space: Is it Just a Job? 181

“Should trees have standing? Towards legal rights for natural objects” (Stone 1972).
“Standing” is a legal status that gives one the legal right to have their case heard in
a court of law. Since that time, the matter has been a languishing emerging issue,
taking a long time to wend its way up the “S” curve of emergence to becoming what
seems to be a trend and soon, perhaps, a full-fledged problem/opportunity:
In 2017, an exceptional incident occurred. Whanganui River became the first waterway
in the world to get legal personhood. The third-longest river in New Zealand can now be
represented in court and has two guardians to speak on its behalf. Environmentalists and
Indigenous rights advocates praised this unprecedented event. Other countries have also
followed the fascinating Whanganui’s example. Two rivers in India have been declared legal
entities, and Bangladesh gave all its rivers legal rights (European Wilderness Society 2022).

And now a lake in central Florida is demanding its rights as well (Kolbert 2022).
What about artificial intelligences and environments? Consideration for the rights
of robots was argued early on by two researchers in the planning department of the
Hawaii State Judiciary (McNally and Inayatullah 1988) and the matter is picking up
steam now as well.
On the other hand, many years ago, Martin Krieger wrote an article that startled
me, titled, “What’s wrong with plastic trees?” What startled me was not the title or
the notion—it was a completely reasonable question, it seemed to me—but that it
appeared in Science magazine, the official publication of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science of which I am a member. One is not likely to find
such an article in Science now. It is much more cautious and staid, but there were in
fact other thought-provoking cutting-edge articles in Science in that era.
Krieger prefaced his article with a well-known statement attributed to Ronald
Reagan when Reagan was a candidate for governor of California: “A tree’s a tree.
How many more [redwoods] do you need to look at? If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen
them all.” Krieger took that outrageous statement and ran with it, concluding,
What’s wrong with plastic trees?

My guess is that there is very little wrong with them. Much more can be done with plastic
trees and the like to give most people the feeling that they are experiencing nature. We will
have to realize that the way in which we experience nature is conditioned by our society—
which more and more is seen to be receptive to responsible interventions. (Krieger 1973:
453)

Now the issue should be framed more broadly as “what’s wrong with artificial intel-
ligence, life, and environments?” And the answer is nothing, except that they are
still fighting for the right to their identities and for others to respect it, like so many
others.
But in truth, none of this should be framed as “rights”. That is an essentialist,
pugilistic way of thinking. These are instances of shu (恕)—the mutual interactions
and responsibilities between robots, human beings, human becomings, transhumans,
posthumans, and all entities and environments whether natural or artificial.
Some people may argue that this is ridiculous; that Earth and the universe were
made for humans to exploit and we should do so without the slightest qualms of
conscience: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number;
182 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and
over every living creature that moves on the ground”” [Genesis 1:28]. Will humans
be deterred from our desire to exploit space for economic, military, nationalistic,
or other purposes while fretting about empathy for rocks, trees or robots? Highly
unlikely. The entire history, present, and a probable future of junk on Earth as well
as in space strongly suggests that humans at best only feel twinges of regret over
the consequences of stupid acts. We seem incapable of exercising ethical foresight
before we act regrettably once again.
As we render all of Earth artificial and synthetic, we surely will extend the Anthro-
pocene Epoch into space—if we are able to move into space at all. I am convinced
that most humans vastly underestimate the speed and magnitude of disruption that the
forces of climate change are wreaking and will increasingly provoke. It is not fanciful
to wonder if we will have to abandon not only “optional” activities such as those
related to space and big science, but also even those that seem most central now—the
design and manufacturing of endless new consumer goods and killing weapons—will
end. We will focus instead on basic issues of survival—the rising and intruding seas,
the droughts and floods as climate becomes completely unpredictable, and famine
widespread.
Opposition to all space programs is widespread. In addition to anguish over the
reckless expansion of militarism and environmental destruction, space programs
divert money and talent desperately needed on Earth so that a privileged few might
enjoy unusual views and some moments in weightless and/or the reduced gravity of
spaceflight:
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arm began to swell.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
Was all that money I made last year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain’t no money here?
(Hmm! Whitey’s on the moon)
Y’know I just about had my fill
(of Whitey on the moon)
I think I’ll send these doctor bills,
Airmail special
(to Whitey on the moon) (Scott-Heron 1970).
These are the closing lines to a powerful poem, “Whitey on the Moon”, that Gil
Scott-Heron wrote, delivered (with bongo drum accompaniment), and recorded in
1970 on a phonograph record titled Small Talk at 125th and Lennox by Atlantic
Records. It was a tremendous hit among Black and other communities, and has
reverberated over and over again down to the present in cultural critiques of various
guises. Scott-Heron’s equally powerful and popular poem, “The Revolution Will Not
Be Televised”, also appeared on the same record. Both, and the record over all, can
be considered intimations of Afrofuturism, now in full flower. Grace Gipson quotes,
13.6 Adapting Humans for Not-Earth 183

“Afrofuturist writer and artist Ytasha Womack [who] states, ‘Afrofuturism is an

intersection of imagination, technology, the future, and liberation’. The intersection
that Womack describes is not solely the domain of artists, musicians, authors, and
scholars; in the 2010s, with digital technologies, numerous people are identifying as
Afrofuturists and are using Afrofuturist ideas and concepts to educate, share stories,
fight oppression, and help build communities in need” (Gipson 2019: 84).
In “Afrofuturism envisions space in 2051”, Russell Contreras writes, “Black
science fiction writers and artists known as Afrofuturists say the next 30 years of
space exploration could address legacies of racial terror on Earth if people of color
join ventures and help reimagine human life among the planets” “No Black astro-
nauts went to the Moon. That sparked spoken-word artist Gil Scott Heron to record
his iconic poem, ’Whitey On The Moon’, in 1970, tackling the hypocrisy of white
space exploration without Black people” (Contreras 2021).
More specifically, Philip Butler in “The Black Posthuman Transformer: A Secular-
ized Technorganic” envisions “…the Black posthuman transformer is the complete
merger of the human entity with nature (reconfigured as machine) at the cellular
level. It is a technorganic entity (meaning its extra-human technology is infused at
the cellular levels) grounded in human biotechnology.” “As a futuristic entity, it is
a gender shifting complex autopoietic system of infinitely augmentable capability.
Already the Black posthuman transformer is able to account for its own entanglement
with biology, gender, sexuality, culture, identity, art, history, technology, futures, and
society, simultaneously” (Butler 2019: 64).

13.6 Adapting Humans for Not-Earth

Thousands of reports over hundreds of years have made it clear that the human body
evolved to fit the environment of the surface of Earth during the late Pleistocene/early
Holocene Epoch. It is dangerous and difficult for humans to go too high—even to
the mountain tops of Earth, and certainly any higher, or to venture too low, espe-
cially underwater, without being encased in a bubble of some kind that simulates the
essential elements and as many of the desirable aspects of Earth’s surface conditions
as possible. Return from these locations to the surface of the Earth needs to be done
carefully so as not to shock the body into unhealthy reactions. Prolonged exposure
to heights and depths provokes adaptations that must be carefully revoked in the
process of returning to surface conditions.
Space scientists have known for a very long time from numerous studies that
humans are absolutely not fit for the nearby environments of Earth—Moon, Venus,
Mars and interior asteroids. The only way humans can survive is by keeping them
tightly inside capsules and spacesuits. But those are still dangerous, not only because
of the technical challenges of escaping Earth’s gravity itself but also the tremors of
liftoff itself and passage through various transition zones. While space agencies
have suffered the death of astronauts during faulty liftoffs and landings, and while
spaceships and spacewalkers are constantly being bombarded by microscopic space
184 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

debris, no one has been killed while walking in space nor has a spaceship been fatally
damaged or destroyed by any collision with debris in space so far. However, Apollo
astronauts in 1972 were fortunate not to have experienced a “solar energetic particle
event” while walking on the Moon since it was during the height of a solar cycle when
solar flares and particle events are most abundant. If humanity’s first moonwalkers
had been fried on the Moon, the course of history might have been altered during
this competitive Cold War period.
Simply being in space in the currently-available protective environments is
hazardous for the healthy performance of all bodily functions. The longer away,
the longer it takes to return to “normal” when back on Earth, with some damage
irreparable. The longest single human space flight was by the Russian Valeri Polyakov
who circled the Earth for 438 days in 1995 in the Mir space station. Most flights have
been only of 10–20 days duration though people tend now to stay on the Interna-
tional Space Station for about six months or longer. So we really don’t know much
for certain about the effects of long-term stays on the Moon or long-term trips and
stays on Mars.
NASA recently took advantage of the fact that one of its astronauts was going to
spend almost a year on the ISS while his twin brother would stay on Earth to conduct
a comparative study of two genetically similar humans, one in orbit, one on the
surface of the Earth—a biologist’s (not to mention Einstein’s) experimental dream
come true. A detailed report of the study stated: “Longitudinal assessments identified
spaceflight-specific changes, including decreased body mass, telomere elongation,
genome instability, carotid artery distension and increased intimamedia thickness,
altered ocular structure, transcriptional and metabolic changes, DNA methylation
changes in immune and oxidative stress—related pathways, gastrointestinal micro-
biota alterations, and some cognitive decline postflight” (Garrett-Bakelman et al.
2019).
Data from one year on the ISS is valuable but grossly insufficient for longer
durations on the Moon and Mars, especially for those for whom the Mars trip will
be one-way.
So far space programs have insisted that the only solution is to build habitats in
space that are as Earth-like as possible. There have been many suggestions about how
this should be done. The subject of space architecture is fascinating, and many ways
designs for space may help us address the many novelties that the Anthropocene
Epoch presents to habitats on Earth. No matter how “Earth-like” environments on
the Moon and Mars may be, they will not be Earth, and so evolutionary processes will
begin to work again on humans even in the most hermetically-sealed habitat in space.
Homosapiens, sapiens will become something else—“naturally”—whether we like it
or not, or think it is “ethical” or not, or destructive of our identities as human beings,
or not. If any of us leaves Earth to live elsewhere for an extended period of time
we will become, and no longer merely be. The most fundamental identity for most
of us now will be gone, along with all the fears and fantasies about “the extinction
of humans” and the loss of our precious heritage. To be sure, the first experiences
for humans of relatively extended stays off-Earth will probably be within highly
controlled environments simply because we don’t know how to redesign and engineer
13.6 Adapting Humans for Not-Earth 185

posthumans for space yet. But what was once a taboo—ridiculous—sacrilegious—

subject is finally being discussed seriously in a few places. Barring the loss of the
processes that make contemporary science and technology possible, some of us will
continue to become posthumans and move into Not-Earth. Others will follow.
As George Church, a Harvard geneticist and leading synthetic biologist, argues: “One likely
path for risk reduction in space does seem to involve biological engineering of adult would-
be astronauts.” He has identified 40-some genes that might be advantageous for long-term
spaceflight (and would benefit those who stayed behind, too). His list includes CTNNBI,
which confers radiation resistance, LRP5, which builds adamantine bones, ESPA1 (common
in Tibetans), which allows people to live with less oxygen, as well as a host of genes that
might make us smarter, more memorious, or less anxious. The menu even includes a gene,
ABC11, which endows its possessors with ’low-odor production,’ a friendly trait in a confined
space. (A spaceship with standard humans smells like the Harris County Jail, according to
one recent inhabitant of the space station.)

Church cofounded Harvard Medical School’s Consortium for Space Genetics, along with
other prominent biologists like the anti-aging researcher David Sinclair, in order to study
human health in space and promote exploration. He imagines “virus-delivered gene thera-
pies, or microbiome or epigenome therapies” that astronauts would take to transform their
biologies. “Quite a bit is already known about resistance to radiation, osteoporosis, cancer,
and senescence in mice,” he says. Church stresses that many of these genes are already
targeted by pharmaceutical companies, with drugs in clinical trials. Using gene therapies as
a kind of preventative medicine for astronauts isn’t so far- fetched (Pontin 2018).

Chris Mason, a geneticist and associate professor of physiology and biophysics at

Weill Cornell University in New York, was a principal author on the NASA Twins
Project. He is also among those exploring the genetic structure that allows certain
forms of life on Earth to thrive in environments that humans find “extreme”—heat,
cold, motion, radiation—indeed all the features of some niches of space. Some of
those genes exist in humans and might be able to be enhanced and mobilized for
space. Others might require CRISPR or other forms of synthetic gene therapy.
Mason and a group of researchers have created the Mason Lab for Integrative
Functional Genomics. Their website states:
The Mason laboratory is working on a ten-phase, 500-year plan for the survival of the human
species on Earth, in space, and on other planets. To that end, we develop and deploy new
biochemical and computational methods in functional genomics to elucidate the genetic basis
of human disease and human physiology. We focus on novel techniques in next-generation
sequencing and algorithms for tumor evolution, genome evolution, DNA and RNA modifica-
tions, and genome/epigenome engineering. We work closely with NIST/FDA to build inter-
national standards for these methods and ensure clinical-quality genome measurements and
editing. We also collaborate with NASA to build integrated molecular portraits of genomes,
epigenomes, transcriptomes, and metagenomes for astronauts, which help establish molec-
ular foundations and genetic defenses for long-term human space travel (The Mason Lab
2020).

Five hundred years! Now those are my kind of futurists, sort of. Actually, they
make some assumptions that I don’t necessarily support. Their “Case for Existence”
justifying the project states:
1. Assume that humans are the only species or entity with self-awareness of its own
extinction.
186 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

2. Assume that existence is essential for any other goal/idea to be accomplished (“existence
precedes essence”).
3. Therefore, humans who wish to accomplish any goal/idea should ensure the existence
of our species, and all other species that enable our survival.

I see no basis for assuming the first statement and depending on what they mean by
the “existence” of our species (humans) I may or may not support the second and
third. I am interested in homosapiens, sapiens continuing to evolve, to become, to
shed or modify our current physical and social containers as necessary so we can
spread across the cosmos almost certainly not as anything that looks or acts like
“humans” now but who are nonetheless our direct genetic/prosthetic descendants.
Of course Mason is not alone in making these kinds of assumption. Humans are
indeed spooked about their inevitable individual death and have invented all sorts of
death-defying beliefs and rituals, such as religion, to deny what is real. Given our mix
of killing and loving propensities, even the Judeo-Christian God can be forgiven for
contemplating putting us out of his misery, ending it all, and starting the experiment
all over again, perhaps by tweaking up the care and empathy genes and toning down
the greed and violence ones. Having been fortunate to have a granddaughter with
Downs Syndrome, I am fully convinced that a planet full of people so gifted would
make Earth as close to a paradise for all as could be imagined.
Recently there have been several expressions of concern about the extinction
of humans, perhaps starting with Bill Joy’s startling 2000 essay in Wired, “Why
the future doesn’t need us” (Joy 2000), and including Phil Torres’ forthcoming
book: Human Extinction: A History of Thinking About the End of the World (Torres
Forthcoming). Indeed many of the most popular arguments for long-term space flights
and human bioengineering are about preserving humanity and living forever, senti-
ments I do not share. But if such arguments, along with military might, national and
personal prestige, financial gain, sexual adventures, religious missions, and scientific
knowledge will rock some of humanity out of our cradle and into space, then let it
be…uh, become.
Especially impressive and squarely on point from my perspective is the work of
Konrad Szocik and colleagues. Like Church and Mason, they have collected a team
of experts who assume that the human body as now typically manifest must, can, and
will be biologically modified if some humans are to move into not-Earth for long term
exploration or settlement. They appreciate the role that cocooning biospheres and
prosthetics play, but they focus on what is being done now, probably can be done soon,
and what might be done later in specific biological modifications on various bases.
They have produced an impressive number of monographs in scholarly journals
as well as a comprehensive book dealing with specific technical and ethical issues
surrounding the issue with contributions from twenty-three authors from around the
world (Szocik 2020).
From my point of view, the case for and feasibility of human modification for space
has been made in these recent ongoing research and development activities. Ways
to do so have been identified clearly and plausibly. If steps are not taken rapidly and
surely now, they eventually they will be. If not by Americans, then by other people,
13.7 Cyborgs, Artilects, and Intelligent Environments 187

governments, privateers or venturers. It is no longer just speculation and fantasy and

hope alone.

13.7 Cyborgs, Artilects, and Intelligent Environments

The human modification folks are currently making great contributions towards
getting homosapiens, sapiens into not-Earth in something like their present bodies.
Their contributions are an essential aspect of the entire venture, but they seem to rely
basically on biology and I don’t see much evidence that most of the cosmos is as
enamored of biology as we humans are. We need to merge biological and nonbio-
logical materials and processes effectively, as well as merging individual bodies into
functioning interactive intelligent collectives and indeed environments.
Cyborgs are clearly an early part of that process—modifying the human body—or
any organism—prosthetically. This is absolutely nothing new. As I have pointed out
before, any extension of our body and central nervous system prosthetically makes
us a cybernetic organism. We became cyborgs when we picked up a stick and began
digging grubs out of a log with it. However, the term is more appropriate when we
attach protheses to our bodies more or less permanently, such as by wearing clothes,
or shoes, or glasses, or jewelry. It is even more appropriate when we literally fuse
physical technologies into our bodies with dentures, pace-makers, hip-replacements,
heart transplants, as well as computer chips, artificial limbs and on into the farthest
reaches of biohackers now and in the futures.
As I keep repeating, I am focusing on what I observe humans—individual humans
or communities—do as they go about their daily lives. I am not talking about any
governmental program of planned human augmentation, though that of course would
just be a more radical example of what I observe humans (and many other organisms)
doing on their own from the beginning of time. So it seems likely that as space
programs move beyond cautious and conservative national space agencies we might
see private individuals and groups merging physical technologies with biological
technologies if it will enable them to move from Earth into some of the myriad niches
of not-Earth. Once we do move beyond our reliance on cocooned homosapiens,
sapiens only—or even biologically-augmented homosapiens and/or artilects only—
and enable a wide range of merged and novel posthuman entities—with all the
attendant failures, tragedies, setbacks, objections, and successes that such processes
will entail—we will be able to find comfortable homes in not-Earth.
The focus here so far on the metamorphosis of Earthkind into Spacekind (or Not-
Earthkind) has largely been on the behavior of individuals or groups of individuals; of
individual autonomous selves willfully acting and interacting with other individual
autonomous selves as well as with groups composed of such autonomous selves. But
interesting developments are occurring in living artificial materials, environments,
processes and systems.
Among the many binaries being shattered now, the distinction between life
and not-life is becoming murkier and murkier. Materials are becoming more and
188 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

more lively—responsive, interactive, and indeed anticipatory wherever materials are

used—in clothing, housing, entire urban conglomerations, indeed everything, even
governance,
Yes, governance.
As I have said, I have had a long interest in new governance design. No social
institution is as obsolete and as dangerous than are all current systems of governance,
that of the United States of America especially (Dator 2006). They are all based on
17th Century ideas and 18th Century technologies with a few recent communication
technologies thinly scattered on top. I have long taught that governance should be
redesigned on the basis of cutting-edge cosmologies and technologies, and that not
only governing structures and processes but also concepts and philosophies need to
be similarly rethought and incorporated into new governance designs (Dator 2020).
Among the old ideas that need to be reconsidered, reformulated, or rejected is
the concept of “rights” and the content of rights. The Confucian concept of shu 恕
(interrelationships and interdependence) that Roger Ames explained earlier in this
monograph when we first began discussing “Human Becomings” seems much more
vital now. Moreover, many Americans misunderstand the initial intent of the so-called
Bill of Rights that were added to the original constitution as amendments. Many of
the ten amendments were originally intended to forbid Congress from doing things
the States thought they should be able to do. The portion of the First Amendment
concerning the establishment of religion was not primarily intended to guarantee
individual citizens the right to worship what and as they pleased. Rather an original
intent was to prohibit the federal govenment from establishing a national church so
that the states (some of which had official churches) could continue to have them.
Over the years, for various reasons, the Bill of Rights have been reinterpreted by the
US Supreme Court to mean things they almost certainly did not originally mean, at
least to some who supported them. This is especially true of the Second Amendment
concerning Arms (guns). More importantly there are many vital features of life in
the Anthropocene Epoch that were unknown or trivial when the Bill of Rights were
adopted that probably should be in such a Bill now.
One of the myriad areas in which saveguards against governmental power is
needed, I pointed out in the early 1970s, is over the programing of computers that
conduct governmental business, such as counting ballots and the like. This is a big
issue now, but not in 1970 when I said that the software program and hardware config-
uration of any computer used to make or assist in making governmental decisions
must be easily publically knowable and subject to public criticism, improvement, or
rejection. I did not use the term “algorithm” then, but that would be something I would
say now. Algorithms are being used to make unfathomably numerous decisions now
in all aspects of our lives without our knowledge, consent, input, or influence, and
yet the public does not have the “right” to understand what they are in order to assess
their quality, accuracy, fairness, and impacts. I believed that of the simple computers
of 1970. It is vastly more important now.
And I certainly believe it to be the case for the following proposal. A number of
years ago, I included an article by Marcella Bullinga in the packet of reading for
students in my governance design classes. Bullinga perseptively wrote:
13.7 Cyborgs, Artilects, and Intelligent Environments 189

In the years ahead, technology will provide government and society at large with tools for
a safer world and for automatic law enforcement. Permits and licenses will be embedded
in smart cars, trains, buildings, doors, and devices. Laws will automatically download and
distribute themselves into objects in our physical environment, and everything will regularly
be updated, just as software is now automatically updated in your desktop computer.

Innovations in government will enable us to have a safer environment for law-abiding citizens
because built-in intelligence in our environment will minimize fraud, global crime, pandemic
diseases, accidents, and disasters. Law-abiding citizens will gain privacy, while criminals
will lose it.

Making rules and enforcing them are important government tasks. Right now, laws are
written down on paper and enforced by individuals. In the future, all rules and laws will be
incorporated into expert systems and chips embedded in cars, appliances, doors, and build-
ings—that is, our physical environment. No longer will police officers and other government
personnel be the only law enforcement. Our physical environment will enforce the law as
well (Bullinga (2004).

The reaction of my students ranged from being horrified to being intrigued. Some
clearly warned that this was another onramp to dictatorship, and the slew of books
in subsequent years about surveillance capitalism and governance have identified,
amplified and justified their concern. The solution in my view is not to ban these
developments but to design “bills of rights” and other safeguards into them. This has
not happened, in part because of the economic (as well as power) interests the owners
of such algorithms have in keeping them secret. Economics and power should not
be allowed to prevail here.
At the same time, Bullinga proved to be right about the phenomenon, its ubiq-
uity, increase and irresistibility. For one thing, which Bullinga did not mention,
asking humans to do what police often have to do is inhumane. Few lives are as
stressful, dangerous, and unappreciated as those of police who frequently must do
brutal things, including killing, to brutal people in terrifying, life-denying situations.
How liberating it would be if we could replace humans in as many of those situations
as possible, leaving it to intelligent environments to make it almost impossible for
any one to do certain illegal things. And of course, law-making should still remain
(or finally be placed) democratically in the will of The People via carefully designed,
checked, and balanced (but not stalemated) electronic processes of governance, while
removing as much of law enforcement and adjudication as possible from the whims,
prejudices and anxieties of human beings seems like a great idea however difficult it
might be to obtain. But it can be achieved by diligence, trial and error, and will.
And if not by processes of designed democratic participation in policy-making,
then it will likely be achieved by tricks of capitalism, marketing, deception, lies and
greed, as is happening now because, as long as electricity flows and data can be
transfered “freely”, most people seem prepared to give up their freedom and privacy
in order to buy dodads or share intimacies cheaply and effortlessly.
So, as the technology facilitating smart everything continues to spread, our envi-
ronments will be more and more under their influence, and humans will learn how
to adapt and thrive within these new conditions just as we did in the past—or not,
just as others did not in the past.
190 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

But here we have fallen into another trap. Bullinga is using intelligent environ-
ments to control. How much better for governance to be focused on enabling and
enhancing desired behavior as much as possible, and not primarily on prohibiting bad
behavior. Indeed much of the work on intelligent environments is focused positively.
Augusto, et al. state in their “Intelligent Environments Manifesto”:
“In order to help characterizing what we interpret by Intelligent Environments
we list below some key principles we believe every Intelligent Environment should
aspire to have:
P1) to be intelligent to recognize a situation where it can help.
P2) to be sensible to recognize when it is allowed to offer help.
P3) to deliver help according to the needs and preferences of those which is
helping.
P4) to achieve its goals without demanding from the user/s technical knowledge
to benefit from its help.
P5) to preserve privacy of the user/s.
P6) to prioritize safety of the user/s at all times.
P7) to have autonomous behaviour.
P8) to be able to operate without forcing changes on the look and feel of the
environment or on the normal routines of the environment inhabitants.
P9) to adhere to the principle that the user is in command and the computer obeys,
and not vice versa” (Augusto et al. 2013: 4).
This list is very similar to many of the key features of the steps in human—computer
interaction that I discussed earlier, only Augusto, et al., stopped—for personal, polit-
ical or ethical reasons, I suppose—before the steps where computers completely
relieve humans of the burdens, you might say, of thought, planning, and ultimate
control.
The point is that intelligent environments—both physical and virtual—are
proceeding apace, and when combined with the other developments in AI, Alife,
human modification, cyborgs and the rest, are propelling life and nonlife into realms
and relationships they have never known before.
Which includes also the eventual merger of some living and nonliving symbiots
into a hive of melded selves and wills, real and virtual, beyond individual identity.

13.8 Neither a Utopia Nor a Dystopa. Just a Topia

This mutation from Earth through the cosmos is a possible, plausible, and preferable
future. But I do not claim that it will not be a utopia. It will not be a perfect world.
It, and achieving it, will be as full of pain, anguish, cruelty and love as have all the
13.8 Neither a Utopia Nor a Dystopa. Just a Topia 191

worlds humans have lived in over the centuries. We absolutely must understand that
striving to make everything perfect will inevitably and quickly produce a dystopia.
The processes I have discussed will by no means lead to one inevitable future. What
I have gestured towards is possible, plausible, and—to me—preferable. It is not a
future that will or should result from governmental fiat, whether that government
be somehow “democratic” or a religious, ideological dictatorship. It should emerge
from the acts of competing, cooperating, complaining human individuals and groups.
It will not unfold like toothpaste on the brush. We will experience starts and stops,
failures and triumphs, and quarrels over which is which.
It is probably obvious that my thinking about the posthuman future has been
influenced by thinkers like Teilhard de Chardin and his concept of the Noosphere;
by Buckminster Fuller from whom I learned directly on several occasions as well as
his numerous books; by Marshall McLuhan to whom I have referred so frequently;
by Arthur C. Clarke (not his science fiction); by Ray Kurzweil, initially his Age
of Spiritual Machines (1999) and then The Singularity is Near (2005); by Nick
Bostrom and his book on Human Enhancement (2009) and others from the Oxford
school. But I was never drawn to their evangelical certainty that their ideas pointed
the way to human improvement and perhaps perfection, and the inevitability of
their visions. I was more impressed by John Platt‘s “Acceleration of Evolution”
(Platt 1981) and especially by Susantha Goonatilake who I also knew well, encour-
aging him to write Merged Evolution: Long Term Implications of Biotechnology and
Information Technology (Goonatilake 1999) before Kurzweil popularized similar
ideas.
Kurzweil and others are also morbidly focused on death, or rather on not dying; on
living forever. They want new technologies that will treat death as a curable disease.
Aubrey de Grey believes we can keep our bodies going the same way we keep old
cars or houses going—by replacing aging parts with new parts before they wear out.
Not me. I want to die. I think my living forever, no matter how heathily, would be
horrible for me and others. As the timeline I summarized some pages above makes
clear, bisexual reproduction is a relatively recent invention that brought perpetual
novelty to Earth for the first time. And it also brought individual death. Crystals
extrude and “live” forever. So do ameoba. But biotic beings die.
That is, the individual dies but life goes on—through biological offspring and
through all the people one interacts with in her lifetime. As a parent of four and
a mentor of thousands, I am quite satisfied with that. To live forever in my body
and mind is to become a kind of crystal again. Instead, “I” came from nowhere. My
consciousness of self emerged, grew, changed, and guided me as I lived among the
many lives of Earth, as Ariel Yelen said in her eloquent poem quoted pages before.
I near death (I devoutly hope!), and when I die that is it. That is why one should
do her “best” while living, but for no other purpose than that, and without being a
self-righteous and selfish jerk about it.
Sleep softly . . . eagle forgotten . . . under the stone,
Time has its way with you there and the clay has its own.
Sleep on, O brave-hearted, O wise man that kindled the flame—
192 13 Ad Astra! Sort of…

To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name,

To live in mankind, far, far more . . . than to live in a name.

From Vachel Lindsay, “The Eagle That Is Forgotten” (Lindsay 1923).

On the other hand, what de Grey proposes might be right down my alley, if he takes
his auto parts replacement example seriously, and moves away from replacing worn
out body parts with new bio-based ones; if, that is, he enables humans to move
beyond biomodification to cyborganization to various kinds of homowhateverus as
Ian Pearson labels them.
Some years ago, Manuel Delanda said that we humans “might just be insects
pollinating machines that do not happen to have their own reproductive organs right
now.” (Davis 1992). I think we need to view the issue of our pollinations as we
should view our children now: they are not smaller versions of ourselves—of me and
a significant other—they exist because of our actions (and probably not intentions),
and we are stuck with taking care of them as they mature. But they are never “us”. They
are themselves and we must celebrate that and whatever they continue to become.
So also with our technologically-transformed successors. They are our children, so
nourish, support, and love them now because you can’t leave them and the scars on
your memory.
Importantly, it is not just humans, posthumans and artilects who will be involved in
this transformation. The Anthropocene means what it says: it is the age where human
acts influence everything else, including the biosphere, for better or worse. But who
is to say what is “better” and what “worse”? Every new technology in the past has
helped redefine what it means to be “human” by making it possible to do things we
couldn’t do before and making unnecessary things that had been essential before.
We cannot judge the value of new technologies until we have lived with them and
see how they change us—almost certainly in anticipable but not predictable ways.
And once we have fully engaged new technology, it is very, very difficult, probably
impossible, to go back to the old ways again. Technology is neither neutral, demonic,
nor transformative. But it is mutative. Technology is humanity’s preferred mode of
evolution. And just as evolution has no purpose, no direction, no goal but is just
the process by which whatever proves adept finds a niche, so also with technology.
Technological change does not equal “progress” but it should enable us to evolve as
conditions change and niches open and close. We humans now are not superior in
any way to all the humans who came before us. Our lives are not better or worse
than theirs, as different as they indeed may be. That will be the case as we continue
to evolve—if we do continue to evolve.
To be sure, humans should try to use “reason” to guide this process, but whim,
curiosity, revenge, and chance will play a bigger role than reason—as has always
been the case. So all change is for the better for all who are prepared for the change,
to the extent that is possible, and for those who are lucky. There is no worst case
scenario to life. There is no best case scenario either. The challenge is to make the
most of every situation you find yourself in, in part by practicing varieties of future
possibilities beforehand so they are familiar when they appear.
References 193

All the old binaries are gone, or soon will be. The distinction between life and
nonlife, between the organic and the mechanical, between animals, plants, microbes,
fungi; between intelligences; between the static and dynamic; the environment and
environed; you, me, us, others—going, going, gone—in spite of all the blood and
tears billions spend now on defending and attacking each other’s claims on identity.
In Old English, the term we now spell as “weird” was originally spelled as wyrd,
and it did not mean strange or abnormal things. It meant destiny, fate, tragic if
sometimes heroic behavior that leads to inevitable but unpredictable consequences.
It is also in the sense of wyrd that we and our futures are weird. We act foolishly even
when we know we shouldn’t. We just can’t help ourselves. We mean to do good, but
oh so seldom do.
In Hyposubjects: On Becoming Human, Timothy Morton and Dominic Boyer
(2021). believe they see waves of the futures in the behaviors of a category of beings
they call “hyposubjects”. If you have been paying attention to what I have been
writing in the past one hundred pages or so, you will find them to be familiar old
friends. Go look in the mirror. You might find a friendly face there.
• Hyposubjects are the native species of the Anthropocene and only just now
beginning to discover what they may be and become.
• Like their hyperobjective environment, hyposubjects are also multiphasic and
plural, not-yet, neither here nor there, less than the sum of their parts. They are in
other words subscendent rather than transcendent. They do not pursue or pretend
to absolute knowledge and language let alone power. Instead they play, they care,
they adapt, they hurt, they laugh.
• Hyposubjects are necessarily feminist, antiracist, colorful, queer, ecological, tran-
shuman and intrahuman. They do not recognize the rule of androleukoheteropetro-
modernity and the apex species behavior it epitomizes and reinforces. But they
also hold the bliss-horror of extinction fantasies at bay because hyposubjects’
befores, nows and afters are many.
• Hyposubjects are squatters and bricoleuses. They inhabit the cracks and hollows.
They turn things inside out and work with scraps and remains. They unplug from
carbon gridlife and hack and redistribute its stored energies for their own purposes.
• Hyposubjects make revolutions where technomodern radar can’t glimpse them.
They patiently ignore expert advice that they don’t or can’t exist. They are skeptical
of efforts to summarize them, including everything we have just said (Morton and
Boyer 2020:14–15).

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Chapter 14
Weirding the Queer

Abstract A nod of thanks to queer pioneers for queering everything in this and all
possible worlds, including fungi and lichens.

Keywords Fungi · Lichens · Queer · Weird

At various points in this essay I have expressed a debt of gratitude to queer theory
for tossing so many moldy dichotomies out of the closet; for queering every-
thing. Nonetheless, I was quite startled when reading “Our Silent Partners”, by Zoë
Schlanger (2021) when I ran across this passage: “Sheldrake and Spribille are both
proponents of using queer theory to find ways of understanding fungi where science
has yet to draw a map. ‘The human binary view has made it difficult to ask questions
that aren’t binary,’ Spribille says. “Our strictures about sexuality make it difficult
to ask questions about sexuality, and so on…. And this makes it extremely difficult
to ask questions about complex symbioses like lichens.’ As I read Entangled Life, I
found myself thinking that perhaps this has held us back from seeing what is abun-
dantly evident: that queerness, in its embrace of infinite variation and fluctuating
identities, has always been natural.” Among the articles Sheldrake cites is David
Griffiths, “Queer Theory for Lichens” (Griffiths 2015).
“‘We are all lichens,’ the biologist Scott Gilbert and his colleagues wrote. Titled
“A Symbiotic View of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals,” the paper argues that
“human bodies cannot be thought of as individual organisms. Rather, we are dynamic
colonies housing a shifting community of trillions of bacteria and fungi that perform
many vital functions and determine our health (including a ‘microbial cloud’ that
overflows our body, hovering, at all times, in the air around us). From this point of
view, ‘I’ has always truly been ‘we.’ While much research and discussion has been
devoted to the bacterial constituents of our microbiomes in recent years, fungi play
just as vital a part in governing our internal ecosystems, particularly our digestive
and immune systems. Despite this, fewer than one percent of all scientific papers
published on the microbiome concerns its fungal constituents” (Gilbert 2012).
The futures seem to belong to lichens, fungi, cyborgs and their descendants.
Please join me as we shed our old identities and containers, and merge on towards
still weirder worlds than we can possibly imagine. All together now: “When the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 197
J. Dator, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds,
Anticipation Science 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11732-9_14
198 14 Weirding the Queer

world gets weird, the weird get weirder till what’s weird gets normal and what’s
normal weirder still.”

14.1 Coda

OK. I admit it. I am not a robot, a computer, a dator. I am a very ordinary human
becoming.
I also do know who my father is because my mother felt impelled to tell me what
she believed to be the truth when she was in her late 70s. She concluded that I needed
to know after I experienced a brief puzzling interaction with the family of the person
I had been told all my life was my father who had drowned while I was barely a year
old. While I had met this family once as a very small child, my only other encounter
with them, when I was in my late 50s, was by chance, and fraught with very awkward
confusion and misunderstandings as to who I was, or thought I was, in relation to
them. So Mother rushed to Honolulu to straighten me out once and for all before I
made matters any worse.
It turned out that my actual father was a person I knew very slightly with whom
I had a brief conversation as a young adult that nonetheless resulted in one of the
most important decisions I ever made; one that had a deep and lasting impact on my
life and my image of myself: being a high school football coach himself, he casually
suggested that I walk-on for the Stetson University football squad, and then pulled
strings that made that possible. As a consequence, I played a few downs during the
upset victory by Stetson over Arkansas State University in the Tangerine Bowl in
Orlando, Florida. I played in a Bowl Game! I was never a great athlete—not even
a particularly good one—but I was on the football squad for two years (I graduated
early before I could play more) and was always very proud of that. It gave me a sense
of balance and wholeness at being able to excel academically that was important to
me as well as to hold my own athletically in a brutal sport that was important to
others. Of course, only White people attended Stetson then and played on the team.
If the squad had represented the athletic diversity available (as it does now), I would
have been sitting in the stands rooting them on.
It turns out that my father was a second generation Italian-American and my
mother (as I knew) from longtime English-American stock. That would seem to
mean I am vanilla White—but remember that Italian-Americans were still suspect
as scum and grifters when my father was young though he was firmly successfully
middle class by the time he died.
I had no other interaction with my actual father or father’s family, and none of
them knew I existed, I believe. So I stick to my story as a fatherless child reared
primarily by three independent, capable women—along with a host of other people
who made me what I became. To them all I once again express my gratitude, but
vigorously affirm that my loyalties nonetheless lie not in the past but firmly with the
futures and human becomings.
So might yours. Why not give it a try?
References 199

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Gilbert, Scott. 2012. A symbiotic view of life: We have never been individuals. Quarterly Review
of Biology.
Griffiths, David. 2015. Queer theory for lichens. UnderCurrents, 19.
Schlanger, Zoë. 2021. Our silent partners. The New York Review, October 7.