Guests Talk 2: Rejoice's Utopia

Hello everyone, and welcome to Books Undone. I'm your host, Livia J. Elliot and today we have our second Guest Talk, featuring a book that was a five-stars read for me. Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart by Steven Erikson... and yes, that's the author of Malazan Book of the Fallen.

The guests today are: Varsha from Reading by the Rainy Mountain, Jarrod from The Fantasy Thinker, Susana from Den of the Wyrd (and author of the Timelessness series), and AP Canavan also known as Critical Dragon.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome to Books Undone.

(00:12):
I'm your host, Livia J. Elliot, and today we have our second guest talk featuring a book
that was a five-star read for me, Rejoice, A Knife to the Heart by Stephen Erickson.
And yes, that's the author of the Malazan Book of the Fallen.
So without further ado, let me introduce my guests.
I'm Varsha.
I run the YouTube channel Reading by the Rainy Mountain, a long-time fan of Stephen Erickson,

(00:36):
and I'm really excited to talk about this book.
I am Jared.
I run the Fantasy Thinker YouTube channel and also a long-time fan.
Hello, I'm Susan Imaginario.
I'm the author of Timelessness, and I run the YouTube channel Ten of the Weird.
Hi, I'm AP.
I am an inveterate lover of literature and an ex-academic who's slowly working his way

(00:56):
back into academia.
You can find me on a Critical Dragon, the YouTube channel, but I'm here to join you
all to talk about Rejoice, A Knife to the Heart.
Awesome.
Thank you all for being here.
I am honored to have you here.
Before we formally start, let me do the usual disclaimers.
First, there are spoilers in the podcast, so listen with caution.

(01:18):
Second, what you will hear is our subjective analysis of Rejoice, so you are allowed and
entitled to disagree.
Third and finally, if you want to hear my solo take on one of Rejoice's themes, violence
as humanity's identity, make sure to listen to my previous episode.
That said, I have a question to kickstart the discussion.

(01:39):
Rejoice really doesn't hold punches and discusses humanity's value systems at length.
One of those ongoing discussions during Adam's Intervention is that economic efficiency has
triumphed over compassion, they go on discussing that humans often close off avenues of compassion
by relying on moors and taboos, and that actually impides quite a bit on how the characters

(02:02):
in a position of power react to the plot events.
So what are your thoughts on compassion as how it is used in the book?
Novels by just what they are cannot cover every single facet of the complexity of the
human experience.
They are exploring elements and in exploring elements, some elements will not be dealt

(02:25):
with, some won't appear at all, someone will be simplified because that's what fiction
does.
It drills down into certain specific things.
I think you're absolutely right that in this, the focus on the violence inherent in one
view of capitalism and how the interdiction specifically outlaws violence and how that

(02:48):
disrupts our entire world view.
Because when we think about a lot of these systems more conceptually, if we try to step
outside them and understand the values inherent in them, which is very difficult to do when
you're embedded in it, and that's why novels that are thought experiments playing through
these things can be so revealing, that looking at this to understand that cooperation, even

(03:14):
simple basic economic cooperation can sometimes be sidelined in our modern world view or the
goal of profits, profits above all.
And cooperation at its heart relies on the concept of compassion, the concept of empathy,
of understanding, because in cooperation we can work together.

(03:35):
What's the expression about tides?
Tides raise all boats or something?
Are all boats are raised by the tide?
In working together, but in a lot of our modern world, there is an emphasis on individuality
and on the need for the individual to succeed.
And yet that often comes at the expense of the cooperation with others, the understanding

(03:57):
of others, and it becomes a zero sum game.
And so the interdiction as part of this thought experiment that Ericsson was playing with,
if that was prohibited, we would have to find a new way to conceptualize our world, to interact
with our world.
And he's drilling down and focusing on just one element.
It's not all elements.
This is a simplified reflection of the complexity of our world.

(04:22):
And because of that, it allows us to tease out all of these different strands and how
they relate to all these different facets of our reality, the lived in cultures we are
part of, the cultures that are in different parts of the world, and in different social
strata and different economic strata.
And thinking about the different approaches that we have when something like this occurs,

(04:43):
which removes something that we believe is fundamental to how reality must function and
presents the an argument that it doesn't have to function that way.
And that's part of what is played out in this.
A new way to conceptualize our actual reality by playing it out as if an alien came down,

(05:05):
did an interdiction, said that you are no longer allowed to do this, and we have to
rethink our paradigm, our approach to reality.
Many times in the book, people try to resort to violence until they realize they can't.
And it's interesting how it plays that the first reaction humanity has always in this
book and sometimes in reality, is always towards violence, not towards compassion.

(05:28):
There is this very interesting quote that they are talking, saying that we put up values
and prices to everything because that abstracts us from the fact that they are animals or
that they are people and it makes it easier to work on it.
The opposite of compassion, they become commodities as well.
Well, if you think even of a really common term that everyone is familiar with, if you've

(05:50):
ever worked for a company, human resources, the humanity, the people working for a company
are a resource, and how dehumanizing is that, to be turned into a fuel for the company,
a moving part for the company, that you are no longer a person with personhood, that you
are simply a resource to be used, to be used up, to be discarded, to be traded away.

(06:16):
I think one of the fascinating things that I remember having a discussion with Ericsson
about this was without removal of violence, one aspect of violence that is still allowed
under it is the ability to decide no longer to participate and to inflict violence on
the self.
That was allowed.
I remember discussing this and having a long chat with him about it because it seemed almost

(06:41):
cruel to allow that.
How can you allow free will and not allow violence in all these other circumstances,
but champion free will and violence in that one particular?
It was quite a challenging notion to come to terms with about self-determination and
affecting only the self and not other people.
Yet we know from the real world that every person is connected to others, even if we

(07:05):
may be unaware of the connection.
There was a very interesting avenue to explore when quite often with first contact novels,
with first contact stories, we are used to, particularly in Hollywood, the portrayal of
the world, they are invading, we are the valiant defenders and they are met with military might.
And yet science fiction has always looked at other ways that this sort of contact with

(07:28):
aliens could go.
But the modern notion is all of them arrived, they must be evil, they must be defended and
we must show humanity being victorious even though space-faring civilization that can
trouble the galaxy.
Their technology is going to be so far beyond anything that we could create that it's just
not realistic or even feasibly contemplative that humanity would stand any sort of chance

(07:54):
in a fight against these sorts.
But they do try, they still try.
There is plenty of elements in the book where the alien is still looked on as other and
inspired the fact that there's not much that they can be able to do because of the advanced
level of the aliens.
And I find it very interesting that the introduction against violence, it kind of interrupted what

(08:19):
millions of years of human evolution had forced us to do.
When we were just tribes, everything else was other and violence ensued because of that,
for resources, because we needed resources, one tribe needed resources, they would go

(08:39):
to the next tribe over and you take those resources or try to do some sort of trade
or what have you.
And it was always a struggle for resource and the alien intervention, introduction,
had introduced technological means to make those resources completely available.

(09:00):
And it was a humanity having to overcome that initial impulse out of over years of evolution
to not fight for those resources is quite the big ask.
And so it's a lot of exploring that needs to be done on the part of humanity in order
to take a compassion first approach to resources.

(09:22):
That was part of the fascinating stuff.
It also appears on different aspects of the plot.
For example, when the people starts being displaced, many of the governments don't even
want to help even their own citizens when resources start running out because they
lose farms and they lose everything.
And the approach is they are going to invade us.
People first, not even the walls, right?

(09:44):
They get more concerned about the imaginary frontiers and actually helping the people.
And that's also a problem regarding compassion.
At the end of the book, humanity still doesn't focus on providing for other people.
They are still relying on Adam's provision of food and supplies and everything.
Especially we see that on Carlos's story when he goes walking and everything, food just

(10:08):
appears and that's Adam.
It's not that other people are just trying to help each other.
And the way he presented violence as that identity of humanity and how everything humanity
do goes around violence and how without it, we simply don't know what to do.
It's quite telling of history.
I think that one of the interesting things is, particularly with Western history and

(10:32):
the history of Western civilization, we like to point to rationality as being at the core
of human identity.
The thing that we aspire to, we are rational creatures.
We reason, we have created ethics, we have created education.
Look at all of these things.
But that rationality sits on the human animal and the human animal has a surr instinct.

(10:55):
And when so much of our perception is based on, in our world, resources are limited.
Therefore, I must have what I need.
I must have enough for me and mine and how I extend that concept of what is mine and
the tribe I belong to or the group I belong to.

(11:15):
And then, if there's anything left over, well, I'd also like to have that as well.
And that instinct that is baked into our biology, at least in the conception envisaged by Erickson.
I don't want evolutionary psychologists coming in here and saying, that's not how any of
this works.
You can try to understand it through the lens of this novel.

(11:37):
But when that fundamental paradigm shifts, when you change the premise of the argument
and you say, right, if this has been the human experience of it, we're now going to alter
the conditions of it.
And one of the conditions we're going to alter is, there is no longer any need to compete
or basic necessary things, services and resources to sustain human life.

(11:58):
What happens when you remove that?
When we unlearn or we override those impulses?
Because from the Western perspective, this value of our rationality, oh, well, if we
have all of those things, then we no longer need to compete.
It's a very rational argument, and you would think that we would all automatically buy
into that, you know, being the rational creatures that we are.

(12:20):
And yet, I think if any of us look at the world around us, we would go, I, if this actually
happened, I don't think people would react rationally.
We would react emotionally, react with fear, we would react aggrieved and annoyed that
our rights, our will is being thwarted by something we didn't agree with.
So I think it's a fascinating argument to try and play out because it shows some of

(12:44):
the base assumptions and biases within our conception of reality.
And that's what wonderful science fiction does.
It challenges our notions, our conceptions of the world, our conceptions of ourselves.
I love the thought experiment of the novel.
The arguments presented, the way that it was written, the dialogue was, you know, amazing.

(13:06):
I was laughing at some point and nodding a lot along the way.
But my issue with it wasn't so much the loss of free will, but it was also the loss of
responsibility.
The aliens, they turned the world into this global Nannis state.
They took away, yes, our ability to fight, but also our drive to exist.

(13:30):
It's not just a human trait, it's a trait of life itself.
Other species have to fight for resources.
So we are the only ones who get greedy or one of the few that take more than they can
use.
And that is the problem.
But I don't think the solution is to prevent us from being ourselves.

(13:54):
Well, first, it would never happen, you know, resources don't just appear out of thin air,
you know, they are limited.
That's why we have to struggle for them.
So I don't know if they did, what would happen?
There would be no point in hoarding, but would still be enough for people to be content?
I don't know.
This is millions of years of evolution.

(14:17):
So the last part of the novel isn't that giving responsibility back to humans and saying, I
stopped you in your tracks.
Now let's see where you go from here.
And if you still keep up with your old habits, sorry, I'm probably going to have to shut
you down altogether and I'll just keep the rest of the biome.
So it is sort of reverting responsibility back to humans.

(14:38):
I think this was sort of a firefighting situation.
That's what I like to think of the rest of the novel, that you do something so that you
stop things in their tracks and then make people rethink what they've been doing.
And I think the media tycoon, I love to hate him throughout this book, but he was happy

(14:59):
to say, oh, I'm going to keep up with my old habits.
So what if things go poorly, I'm going to die anyway.
But there are others who are willing to change and they notice the change in themselves when
they weren't allowed to lose themselves in intoxication or keep doing what they would
by default if they didn't want made to stop and think.
So it's more of a gap where you're given the chance to think, but now you have it from

(15:24):
here with some modifications, perhaps.
I like to think that Adam wouldn't be around forever with the nonviolent prohibitions that
eventually we'd either get to a point where that's not needed anymore or that, okay, sorry,
you messed up.
You're done.
And I think your point, Susanna, is right in the title that loss of responsibility is

(15:51):
the knife to the heart right there.
You had to rejoice, okay, there's no more violence, but then you get the other side
of it.
And I think you pointed that out.
And I think that's considered in a novel's complex enough to think about that and those

(16:11):
considerations.
To some extent, we could say that the novel starts presenting that everything has happened
because humanity has not been responsible.
We have not been responsible towards the world and towards the resources it has in that greed
or never ending greed that Susanna mentioned.
And we have not been responsible towards the others.
There is a quote that he says that humanity is heartless because it has the ability and

(16:36):
the capability of helping others that are less capable and it doesn't do it, humanity
as a whole.
We should be responsible, we are not being responsible, then we get, I think that it's
actually quite an important topic within the storyline.
I think it's really interesting that for the position of these aliens, Adam is a representative

(16:58):
AI for these aliens, they are kind of looking at us the way that we look at children or
look at animals going, we can help you manage things a bit better.
If anyone has a pet like a cat and you put out like a whole load of food in front of
the cat, all of its favorite food, it's the cat going to go, you know what, I'm going
to responsibly portion this so that it'll last a long time or is it going to just stuff

(17:21):
its face down and eat as much as it possibly can and it'll gorge itself.
Maybe some people have better trained cats than the ones I'm used to.
But from the alien and AI perspective, looking at humanity, here we have this beautiful rich
world and yet we're destroying it.
We're destroying the thing that is keeping us alive and that is irresponsible behavior.

(17:42):
And even within our culture, people say, we need to do better things like that and see
of this biome that we are on because it is how we continue to exist and we are acting
in a way that is going to destroy ourselves.
And we don't listen to those voices because it's inconvenient.
It's not what we want to do or it's going to be a bit difficult or we'd have to make

(18:03):
sacrifices.
And so there's this tension between, again, the individual desire and what is best in
a more general sense, a utilitarian argument.
But from the perspective of the aliens, they're looking at this, but we like the planet.
There aren't that many of these sorts of planets around.
So we're going to protect the planet.
The choice is up to you now.

(18:23):
Are you going to play nice and learn from your mistakes and learn how to coexist with
the biome in which you inhabit coexist with it?
You don't have to stop everything, but you have to learn to coexist.
Or are you going to continue to wrap all of the resources of this world because we won't
stand for that and we are in a position where we know better than you.

(18:46):
And that is really difficult for us to accept because how dare you say that you know better
than us?
Admittedly, you have this technology that can race across the galaxy and hundreds of
thousands of years of things that you've thought about and explored and you have all of this
knowledge that we don't have.
How dare you tell us what to do?
We're grown-ups, we're adults, and yet from their perspective, we're not.
And again, it challenges our perception of superiority within the natural order of things.

(19:12):
And again, I think it's something that is interesting.
And certainly, capitalism is not all bad.
It's better than a lot of alternatives.
But just because it's better than the alternatives doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't
an even better alternative out there that we have yet to discover.
And that's the whole purpose of human learning and evolution over time that we learn and

(19:35):
we find new ways to do things.
And I think with the interdiction in place and forcing us to rethink our habits, then
a new paradigm might evolve where what we create, art and story and thought experiments
and music that there could be a shift to aestheticism of this worship of the creation of beauty

(19:57):
as the new norm.
And therefore, it would change the priorities and values within the system.
But again, it's fascinating to try and tease all of these things out because even if we
end up disagreeing with the conclusion to the argument that Erickson makes, because
we've been arguing with it all the way through.
And when every time I read this, I argue with him every step of the way because he's challenging

(20:21):
notions that are so deeply ingrained in how I see the world.
And I don't necessarily agree with every single argument made, but it helps me see my own
position better and understand my own.
And that, I think, is a wonderful thing for a novel to provide.
It definitely makes you think about things.

(20:42):
I love the beginning.
If it had just stopped around the time where they were just protecting the planet and just
let humanity sort themselves out, I think that would be an interesting novel, interesting
how would that turn out?
At least for a while, just people try.
And if it didn't work, then OK, then we'll stop the violence.
Because the moment you take away agency, we're talking about creation, but production is

(21:09):
part of creation.
If there's no need to produce anything, to work for anything, if you have all the resources
you're going to have, then you also lose that drive to create.
I think they are related.
And I didn't get why you'd have to take away drugs or just the ability to be intoxicated.
Again, how dull it would be if you can't have that distraction.

(21:35):
I guess you wouldn't need it because you don't have any problems anymore.
I don't know.
It felt at some point I was taking away humanity that at a certain point, we were no longer
humans, we're just pets for the aliens and maybe their soldiers, their army to go and
fight the grays and all that.
On the other hand, yes, you would take an extraterrestrial power to unite the entire

(22:00):
world against anything.
So I'm all for protecting the planet 100%.
If we could create those shields, I would be so up for it.
But after that, I think people still need to fight for what they believe and survive
because that's how we got here from single cell organism to Meebus and so on.

(22:22):
We had to fight.
We had to eat each other.
It's ugly, it's messy, but it's life.
But is life solely the struggle and solely our vices solely what makes us human?
Because that would be when we consider the enlightenment and there was no rationality
in all of these things, even if we go back to the inter-greek philosophers about the

(22:46):
different aspects of what makes us human.
And we're not just robots, we still have passions, we still have things that can be explored.
So the creation of art, if we think even during COVID, oh, no one could do anything.
And yet people started blogs, people started baking, people started writing, people made
YouTube channels.
There was a need for creative expression and that creative expression wasn't based on

(23:10):
a need to compete for resources or a form of aggression.
It was a way to express and do something productive, creative.
And yes, creation and destruction are two halves of the same coin.
But at the same time, creation in and of itself, there are people out there who want to write
novels, not because they need the money that the potential novel could bring in, but because

(23:34):
they want to create something beautiful or they want to tell a story.
And that, I think, is still part of being human.
And in this story, nothing with what Adam does prevents those acts, those aspects of
humanity, appealing to our better angels, appealing to our better natures and encouraging
growth in that direction from the more self-destructive direction, say that Adam believes that we're

(23:57):
heading in.
Is it paternalistic?
Yeah, it is.
But what do we do?
How do we act when we see someone doing so self-destructive?
Do we go, well, I have to respect their agency and autonomy and I have to let them destroy
themselves and everyone around them?
Or do we stage an intervention?
And even within our own societies, even within our own family unit, the concept of staging

(24:18):
an intervention on behalf of someone else to go, your behavior is out of control.
You need to rein it in.
This is what you're doing wrong and trying to force them to change their ways.
We do that.
And we do that as part of caring for someone.
And so in looking at this, I don't think it's necessarily removing all free will and all

(24:39):
agency, but prohibiting those things that have been deemed bad, admittedly by someone
else and saying, right, but you have all of these other avenues still open to you that
are allowed.
And again, we react really badly to someone doing this, to saying, you're not allowed
to pursue those things.
Well, those are the very things that I want to pursue.
How can you say that I'm not allowed to do it?

(25:01):
And again, it's what I find so fascinating about all of this, because again, I argued
with Eric that I thought it was making me think about even, even when we think about
free speech and censorship of literature.
And I think most people are pretty much anti censorship as a general statement.
But when it comes to specific censorship, we think, well, there are certain circumstances

(25:23):
in which say language needs to be sent because it's inappropriate for children to be exposed
to a whole load of racial epithets used in a highly emotive way, without the context
to understand not to do that, that sometimes yelling fire in a crowded theatre, we want
to discourage that because it's behavior that can get people killed.

(25:43):
And therefore, we limit speech in that sense and say that, no, we've criminalized reckless
speech that can endanger lives.
Broadcasting certain words at certain times during the day.
And all of these, they are never simple, easy, it's always right or it's always wrong.
It's a very gray area and a line that we're constantly moving and shifting and adjusting

(26:07):
to try and find the balance between giving agency and power to individuals and preventing
abuse of that power by others.
And it's not an easy, straightforward, oh, well, it's very simple, we just do this.
Nothing should be censored ever.
Well, what about defamation?
Oh, well, you can take that up in the courts, but if defamation is allowed, if people are

(26:28):
allowed to say whatever they want, then there is no recourse to the courts.
And we struggle with that because censorship is by its nature abhorrent because it's a
limitation.
And yet at the same time, it's necessary for the social function of living in a society
in which we have moved away from might making right and the strong enforcing their will

(26:49):
on the weak.
And there has to be a balance and it's, I don't think we're ever going to get it exactly
right.
We're always going to teeter one way or the other and move backwards and forwards between
these points.
But I think it's a fascinating area of investigation for fiction to try and help us refine or pinpoint
where are we on this scale?
How much more freedom do we think people should have?

(27:12):
And what is the potential cost?
Is that cost worth paying?
How much do we want to prevent that cost?
And it's the cost then is going to be elements of our agency and free will and the balance
and everyone is going to have an individual calculation.
I think that this case is kind of like a hyper-realized what if scenario where you put that big wall

(27:33):
in there and say, okay, boom, this is what it's going to be like, you know, stop everything
and reevaluate.
This doesn't happen in real life in that sense because most of the time the reevaluations
are usually in humanity are usually triggered by events.
And, you know, for instance, like a 9-11 or a drought or something like that, the events

(27:59):
are things that trigger reevaluations and bringing policies and bringing new laws or
striking out of old laws and what have you.
And that's just part of the evolution of governments and self-government of peoples.
And so this novel just brings a scenario, a what if scenario that says something else

(28:22):
is going to reevaluate where humanity as a whole is not just one nation or one tribe.
And it's just an exploration of what the reactions of humanity as a whole would be to that scenario
and all the questions that it brings up with it.
Well, as I was saying, like, Jared, you brought up like a really excellent point there.

(28:42):
The shift in the paradigm is not necessarily that the introduction field.
The shift in the paradigm is the shift from how we consider what is ours and our tribe,
considering humanity as ours and our tribe, presenting an existential threat that unites
humanity and places humanity as a tribe within the greater galactic sort of situation of

(29:04):
alien species of which we are one.
So emphasising the commonality between all of us and casting our gaze outward to see
that it's no longer about infighting and therefore seeing our connectivity to each other.
And we can still have contrast.
We can still see ourselves as different, but the difference is now being projected externally
to the Greys, other aliens, these other races in the planet, these other planets.

(29:28):
That shift from family, nationhood, state, religion or whatever way that we are grouping
ourselves internally, but to realise that there is a new way to perceive our relationship
to others, which is we are one tribe.
We are humanity.
And that tribe is in competition with the rest of the universe.

(29:51):
So don't don't mess up your home base.
Go and mess up someone else's.
And we could go and kick down their door.
And I but again, I think it's how we draw those boundaries between who we see ourselves
as who we see connected to us, who we see as different to that once we're presented
with alternate views, then it makes us, I think or not makes us, it shows us different

(30:14):
ways that we can approach that question and different answers that we can arrive at.
And it's not enforcing them.
But if aliens arrive, we know that like in the film Independence Day, where at the end,
you see all of the people celebrating all around the world, because when there is an
external threat, that's when we solidify.
When we're abroad in another country and we meet one of our fellow people from where

(30:36):
we're from, we're like, oh, it's so great to see you.
Whereas, you know, if we'd met back where we were from, it would be, oh, but you're
one of those people.
And suddenly there's the distinction, but you meet them in a place where you are isolated.
And therefore it is you are now part of my tribe in contrast to where we are situated.
So there are all of these fascinating group dynamics and perceptions of identity and the

(30:58):
groups that we belong to.
And I think that that is a really interesting aspect of what you brought up there.
Thanks.
That's going to say the one way I like to think of through the book was what if you took the
alien out?
It's a first contact novel, but what if we got to the point that alien brought us by ourselves?
I like what would the world look like then without maybe maybe that's what one of the

(31:21):
messages is or what I, one of the takeaways I got from it, like how do we get to this
point without the alien intervention?
And I think it did that by drawing attention to, I guess, the author's opinion of what
is the worst of humanity, right?
The violence, the need for secrecy everywhere and letting our identity play over compassion,

(31:42):
what you said at the beginning, Livia.
And I did have a question to the group.
I was, I know you said that the novel treats a little bit like violence is part of humanity's
identity.
Is it actually the other way around?
Is it all the things that we define as our identity that lead to violence or lack of
compassion in various interactions with humans?

(32:03):
For instance, when in the very beginning, when the wall comes up and the alien needs
to intervene and give food to the people because people like their national boundaries too
much or the business tycoons like their money too much.
So they're willing to let whatever propaganda they like to keep up do that over maybe not

(32:27):
letting people suffer.
So is it the identity, whatever you relate to that leads to violence or is it the need
for violence that makes you want to keep your identity?
Good question.
I'm just going to point something out.
No one knew what was going on.
If the alien had given a heads up, maybe people would have started helping each other if they

(32:51):
realized what happened and what was going to happen that whatever they had had no value.
So you might as well just help others, give it away because you'll be fine.
But they didn't know.
They didn't know what was going to happen.
When you are in a situation when you feel threatened and you can't even defend yourself
because violence is not just aggression, it's also defense.

(33:13):
And you don't know you're going to.
The instinct is to hold on to what you have, the people you love and the few things that
you have, you know, a group up your head or whatever.
Your first instinct when there's danger, it's not, oh, come on over.
I'm here.
You know, it's safe here.
Come on.
No, you stay quiet.
So maybe a heads up would have led to a different outcome.

(33:34):
I'm not saying that everyone would be like, oh yes, we're totally up for helping.
But you know, everyone was in the dark for a very long time.
That was a bit mean.
But at the same time, one day find out it's not like people is welcoming of the idea.
There are a lot of there are a lot of powers in there that are actually opposing of that

(33:54):
because it challenges the status quo.
Humanity is, I think, at the core root unable to change unless it takes a lot of time or
it takes violent to change a system or a conflict to change something that exists.
We can see even at the end of the book that there are still groups of people that don't
want what is happening, even when they have evidence that is actually good for humanity,

(34:18):
they understand to some extent what is happening.
And the only way of actually controlling that idea of violence as the identity is basically
redirecting it towards the grace and other people and other beings.
It's not like we can cure ourselves or feed.
It just gets redirected and I think that speaks volumes of how humanity will likely behave.

(34:41):
Almost as if competition and conflict are so ingrained in our way of behaving that we
move back to the what the book I think is actually positive that it's not one system
or the other.
It's something new.
We don't have the answer and the book doesn't give us the answer because it's a thought
experiment.
Yeah.
One of the lines at the very end is he's like, think of your world, your own personal

(35:04):
world.
How does it look to you?
Is it green and blue with white clouds or is it red and sparse and barren and almost
lifeless?
And that's like a question at the very end.
What is your world?
At the end, the aliens have left it up to us to determine what is our world.
So that's the question left.
Yeah.

(35:25):
I think that was one of the things that I sort of wanted to argue against the book,
the need to redirect and channel our need for violence against the grace.
So it's because the final solution, it seems like isn't really let's get rid of the baser
instincts you have.
It's just let channel them somewhere, stop doing this to each other, do it to somewhere

(35:45):
that's like the justification for that, that the grace aren't, aren't a species that listen
to reason feels a bit too much like what we use for killing animals or like destroying
ecosystems.
Like, yeah, they, they don't feel they're not sent to like, who are they?
Or sapient like we are.
So it's fine that we destroy our environment.
So the argument for killing the grace, like, or at least maybe not killing, maybe it's

(36:08):
just, you know, getting rid of them from the other systems like Adam did on this system.
Maybe that's what it is.
But I don't think that's super clear.
And also I think it's, it's still a re-channeling of all your need for aggression that, that
feels insufficient to me.
I get that maybe it's an intermediate stage, but I feel like we need better solutions than

(36:32):
that.
Something that I think is really interesting is obviously not every single human on the
planet is going to need an aggressive outlet.
Like, oh, well, I want to go into space and become a space warrior.
There may be a whole bunch of people go, oh, well, this is a lot better.
Now I can concentrate on my writing and my art and I can now read all of the books that
I want to read or I don't have to slave away doing this thing in order to afford four days

(36:56):
somewhere nice every once in a while.
There'd be, I think there'd be a lot of humanity that this, this is the opportunity to evolve
in a different direction where we're not being forced to evolve in a competitive that is
constantly rewarding that behavior that it's, well, there's another way that you can evolve
as a species.
And the fact that part of what we rail against is we want this right to assert violence.

(37:21):
We want this right to do all of these things, to assert our dominance, to have this level
of violence.
And if we extend that as, well, that is something that we should have.
That is a right that we should have.
You're okay.
Well, the aliens have just asserted that right and they asserted it over the planet.
What are we going to do about it?
That if it's okay for us to do, then it's okay for the aliens to do it.

(37:42):
So the aliens do it and stop us doing it.
So we would have to defend their right to do it because that's the thing that we say
that we want.
And that is, you know, a fascinating paradox that the book create if we say that, oh, we
should evolve differently.
And then we can criticize how the aliens place this introduction on the planet saying, well,
you should have done it differently.

(38:02):
But if they hadn't done that, then we would never have evolved to the position where we
could want to evolve differently.
And again, the paradox is created.
So it's, it's this fascinating thing that, again, it's not necessarily a circular argument,
but it's pointing to these contradictions within our thinking.
And the way that we are so anthropocentric, we focus on humanity, humanity's needs.

(38:25):
And even in this discussion, it's so difficult to understand a position outside our own, because
this is our position.
This is how we see the world.
And that's one of the things that I love about this book is it challenges some of our deeply
held notion.
And admittedly, it's limited.
It's not a fully realized, in-depth look at the complexity of what the human experience

(38:49):
is.
It's a thought experiment looking at a couple of key premises.
I'm changing some of those to see and extrapolate the thing.
And we look at it and go, yeah, but I wouldn't agree to all of these things.
Or I would do it differently.
Yeah.
But now we're thinking about it.
Now we're talking about it.
Now we're actually investigating it.
And that, well, it's one of the purposes that literature can serve.

(39:12):
And that's why I don't look at it as a fully formed argument saying, this is what we must
do.
I look at it as doing the thing that a thought experiment does, which is make me rethink some
of the very basic assumptions I make about the world around me and how we function.
And whether or not our aggression, let's say that is innate to who we are, because we

(39:33):
evolved with finite resources.
We had to struggle to survive and that biology ever be changed.
Can we evolve past that?
Because if we change that condition, then evolution is not going to reward that behavior
and we could evolve in a different direction.
And the future of humanity would look very differently.
Or if we continue to evolve in directions that this aggression and competitiveness is constantly

(39:55):
emphasized, does that ultimately lead to self-annihilation?
The world's come very close to it a couple of times with our need to evolve greater and
more powerful weapons and creating war on a scale that previous eras of humanity just
couldn't even think of as a nightmare scenario.

(40:16):
We've gone way past that.
And it's fascinating to think about, well, do we rationalize it and say, well, it's natural
to do this.
It's OK.
And if we change that condition, that's no longer natural.
It would be unnatural to continue to do this when that part of the puzzle has been changed
in a way.
We would have to do something different.
So what is essential to human nature?

(40:39):
Are we the same beings thinking the same way, feeling the same way, having the same needs,
desires and approaches to the world that our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago
had?
So is there a direct line that is continuous through humanity from those very beginnings?
Or has it altered and been shaped over time?

(41:01):
And if it is altered and shaped over time, then what is human?
Alters and shapes is reshaped over time.
We are mutable.
The human condition is mutable.
And again, you're faced with these existential questions about the nature of who we are and
what we want and why are we like this?
And this book lived rent free in my mind for about six months after I read it because of

(41:26):
this stuff.
I wanted to pick up on what you say regarding humans and how human centric the position
of humanity is towards the universe.
And it's also presented quite often how unable we are to think out of a box in terms of governing
ourselves in a different way or conducting ourselves in a different way.
But the book, he posted the idea that the only people that can actually think outside

(41:50):
of the box in the way that humanity needs to move forward are writers.
Because in particular, speculative writers, because they are already trying to think of
a different universe.
And there is this whole, I would say, push between science fiction writers that write
more militaristic sci-fi and writers that do more of a social sci-fi, trying to speculate

(42:14):
on society.
At the end, it's basically them who end up being called out to try to explain what's
happening in a way that, I don't know, news people or the politicians can't.
And it goes back to the idea of we are so focused on centric, on what we see right now
on the status quo, that we are unable to think in a different way.

(42:36):
We are unable to challenge ourselves.
And I think it's a bit bittersweet in the real world because it goes back to saying
like we can't help ourselves.
We really need that caring intervention to actually get us out of our toxic behavior.
When I say our, I mean humanity as a whole.
I think that there would be a lot more suicides in that scenario and likely not amongst the

(43:01):
religious people.
Because what the aliens did was the old do what I say, don't do what I do.
I think that they would be okay with that.
I'm going back to the human nature.
Once you can't fight for the things, even if they are there, if you don't feel like
you earn them, when you lose that drive, you can't fight when you can defend yourself.

(43:23):
It turns inwards and then you take away the ability to even get high or drunk.
And point is the suicides that happened a lot in the books people just couldn't deal
with.
And I'm just saying that a lot more people would eventually kill themselves because they
would lose that drive to live as it often does in situations of abuse or people are trapped.

(43:45):
They start to self mutilate.
So there was an aspect that wasn't explored too much.
Everyone was generally relieved or just sad because it couldn't be mean anymore.
I think there would be a lot more anger and anger turned inwards if we couldn't latch
out.
Maybe the problem would solve itself out because most psyches wouldn't be able to cope.

(44:08):
Because obviously there were a lot of suicides in it and people who couldn't cope with it.
But even when we think of how do we channel aggression if we can't be violent to someone
else?
Well, punching bags still exist.
Sport still exists where you can compete, you can strive, you can channel physical aggression
into competition that doesn't result in harming another.
There are still physical outlets for a lot of these things that don't require harm.

(44:32):
And when we think of like painters who, you know, creating violent arts, throwing the
paint to try and evoke an emotion, that there's an emotional outlet.
Even the writing of a screed can be a way that we vent emotions.
And ultimately, if we can find more or sorry, if we can find less self destructive methods

(45:00):
of handling our emotions rather than numbing them with narcotics, which is solution open
to us at the present, or through aggression and violence toward others, which is something
open to us at the minute, that just taking those two things away doesn't prevent all
of the other things still being.
And there are all things generally that we sort of go, yeah, it probably would be better

(45:21):
for me if I exercised more and I practiced these things and I learned more and I did
this.
And I think you're absolutely right that there will always be a certain percentage of us
that reject that.
But when we look at E&M Banks books and the culture series, and that is a post scarcity
world, and people still find different pursuits that their humanity would evolve, we are adaptable,

(45:47):
we survive and have survived in a variety of different circumstances and climates and
conditions.
I like to think potentially, well, perhaps too optimistically, that we can learn and evolve
and change and get better and be less self destructive.
Self destructive should be something that we shouldn't do evolutionary and biologically.

(46:10):
Being self destructive is bad for us by definition.
And it's a symptom of something that it's very wrong.
So finding a way to prevent humanity being self destructive and allow outlets or expression
and aggression in different ways could channel that behavior into something more positive,

(46:32):
something more constructive.
And these are things that, again, the novel posits, the novel questions, and I don't think
we're ever given a definitive answer about what would happen.
But banks is post scarcity world where some people decide they want to go on tour, they
go to the galaxy in these sentient AI ships and go and have adventures.

(46:53):
That's what they wanted to do.
But other people didn't have to do that.
Other people stayed home to create art.
They created facsimiles of flesh in order to cook that growing meat, which is something
is being developed today that you could still practice the culinary arts and chop up that
that growing meat very violently on the thing just to get rid of the reeds that you felt

(47:17):
one day about someone snubbing you.
We change our behavior that when we think back to there was an apocryphal story, whether
or not it's true about Roman law, that one of the senators, there was a law called Dama
Minuria Datum, which was an offences against the person act.
And because it was inscribed in stone quite literally and the penalty was fixed because

(47:41):
of inflation, the penalty was the equivalent of a couple of dollars.
It wasn't expensive, a couple of dollars in today's money.
And so he walked through the forum, he walked through the city and he would walk up to someone
and slap them in the face.
And his slave walking behind him would throw the penalty at the person's feet because he
committed the offense, he has paid the crime, he can now go off.

(48:02):
And we would look at that behavior and go, don't think we want to encourage that.
We would need some sort of creative outlet for it.
And that's what I find fascinating because if someone did that today, we would change
the laws to reflect that.
We would try to alter society to encourage behaviors we like and discourage behaviors
we don't.

(48:22):
The fact that someone else is doing that for us in this book is I think one of the things
that just initially rubs us the wrong way, that we don't look at it conceptually, we
look at it as that, but who are you to tell me what to do?
And it's what we feel when government does something we don't like, it's what we feel
when our parents told us to do something we didn't like, it's what we felt when our teachers

(48:44):
told us to do something that we didn't like, unwanted to enforce that behavior.
But and again, I don't think there's a definitive answer.
I just think they are fascinating questions.
In general, the book doesn't give us the answer to any of the questions that it poses.
It's just saying, if this has problems, that has problems, everything has problems.

(49:06):
Think of something different and it keeps posting the good and the bad side of every
argument it visits and ends up in a very open ending.
Right?
It's full of possibility, contrary to how you could say grim, to some extent the outlook
on humanity is throughout the book.
And we get that idea of, yeah, we can do, we can be so much more, we can find so much

(49:28):
more towards the end, but there is still, we don't find out what happens with those
people that want to maintain their studies to.
We are given hope, we're given a way out, perhaps, but it's up to humanity at the
side and especially given how they behaved, we can see that those outlets of competition

(49:49):
and so on has been redirected.
For example, we get Adam building those space centers and then there are countries that
are left out and it sparks a competition of they also want there.
And first of all, because they can't get the space center, there is a threat of violence
and they can't get on with that.
And finally, they have stopped the competition in the side of let's build something bigger,

(50:13):
faster, fancier.
Again, it's not like they can, they try to help each other and any point, any country
says, okay, let's team up, let's help each other and go, oh no, they keep going on their
own isolated ways.
Again, speculating on moving the violence of the competition away from each other towards

(50:34):
something else, because always it's just, it maybe shows too early for humanity in the
book to actually be capable of something else.
I would have thought it would be too rushed if humanity adapted so easily and lost the
violence, the need for violence so easily.
Because the thing is, one size doesn't fit all, we are all humans, we have the same nature,

(50:57):
but the nurture is completely different.
Our cultures are completely different the way we are raised, our experiences.
So what is acceptable or good for one person, it's not going to be the same for other.
And while reading the book, I don't consider myself greedy, I always work to afford the
things I have and I don't harm anyone.

(51:19):
I'm against violence, I don't think that's, that's the last resort completely, but it
is a resort, it has to be there.
And I was like, well, if this happened, I would be very upset because I've done nothing
to deserve this.
Why everyone now is being punished?
It's not fair.

(51:40):
So the aliens, so powerful, couldn't judge a pin point where the problems were and how
wouldn't get us in the right direction.
Because even that was taken away.
There's a lot of people that, yeah, there was an example, I'm terrible with names because
I don't take notes of that family that was trying to do everything, raising the cattle

(52:01):
and all that.
And they were ruined what we did do to deserve this.
And many other cases like that, you can't compare that family to the soldier in Congo,
wherever it was, they had completely different lives, completely different objectives in
life, completely different upbringings.
Yeah.

(52:21):
Or with the super rich guy in these yachts, everyone's life experience is different.
Everyone's damage to the planet is different.
Everyone's greed, needs are different.
Just making the same, leveling the same for everyone.
It's not fair and it's never a solution because it will not remain the same.

(52:45):
None of everyone would ever agree.
Even with another planet to go to, that was another thing.
I loved the terraforming of Venus.
It's like, yeah, if only, that would be great.
You know when foot and mouth disease started to appear in a couple of different places,
this was about 15 years ago, there was a big foot and mouth disease outbreak in cattle.

(53:06):
We of course considered each coy individually.
It didn't just go, you know what, it was just cull the entire herd because we took that
position of we know what's best and what's best for us.
So we're just going to do it.
And that's what the aliens just did, that they're not treating us individually.
They went, no, you are a species.
This is a disease that you have.

(53:26):
So we're, this is the treatment.
We are treating you and it's being applied to everyone.
And when we look at that ranching family, yeah, so what's the disease?
Well, you're raising these beings, these living beings, you're raising them for food, slaughtering
them when you don't have to.
Here's the thing that's going to create the food.
You don't need that.
So the basic need is met, but that's ruined us.

(53:47):
Ruined us high financially within the capitalist system that is being changed by the new paradigm
that is being insisted upon by the aliens.
And we can't, we can't wrap our head around because, Susan, you're exactly right.
We look at that and go, but that person is different to that person.
We're inside.
We see those differences.
But from the alien perspective, they go, yeah, but you're all human.
That's a point he makes quite often that all of those divisions and man may or humanity

(54:11):
may and they are not real.
At the end of the day, we end up being just a single group of people, humans, and the
seed that's a baseline they use.
If I may divert a bit, when you say that some people are guilty, but others not, I see it
in a different way.
If you look at political philosophy, one of the ideas some authors often post it is that

(54:34):
what we do or what we don't do as a population basically supports what the people in leadership
do.
And if we don't complain, therefore they have our support.
It's an idea that they become legitimate simply because we are not doing anything to
oppose them.
If you move that towards a book, you could say that all of us, regardless of what we

(54:57):
are doing, individually support the current status quo of a way of being by not doing
anything.
Granted, at some scale, you will need a large group of people for it to actually be meaningful
because if you have a single one person complaining, it's just them.
So perhaps you could say that to some extent, what Rejoice is trying to tell us is that

(55:19):
the individual people who are trying to do right are guilty of not raising their voices
now they're not teaming up to do something better or bigger, greater, whatever applies
to that case.
I do think that throughout the book, you also are getting Samantha making the arguments
against Adam the whole time.

(55:43):
She's making a lot of arguments, which is a big crux of the book is her character and
her natural questioning of things.
I like that a lot.
Yeah, against the AI and explaining to Adam.
The AI, of course, is supposed to be this construct that the AI is appearing as human,

(56:08):
but it's not.
So it's going to have a completely alien outlook to what humanity is.
And it's up to Samantha to try to explain humanity in a way that, and she's doing it
in a great way that's not, she's trying to be as objective as possible, but she's also

(56:28):
arguing against Adam a lot for some of the things that he is assuming about humanity.
And so I think that the arguments for some of the individuals are there in the arguments
that Samantha puts forth.
And I think the AI eventually comes around to certain viewpoints that is not strictly

(56:54):
where we're more powerful, you're going to do it our way.
And I think that's part of the point that's made this for humanity.
Well, in many cases, she even sounds reasonable only because she shares our point of view,
while trying to follow Adam's point of view is very difficult because we could say that

(57:16):
his ethics or his moral parameters are so alien to us that we can't really get around
the argument he's making following on what you say, Gerald, very early at the start when
he puts up the barriers, Samantha immediately counters argues that by saying, OK, but doing
this, yes, you're helping the environment, but you are being detrimental to this group

(57:37):
of people.
She is immediately saying like, there is no perfect solution.
It's either one or the other.
I like that the book presents so many different viewpoints.
And I think back to what some of you were saying earlier about how this helps us think
that I was disagreeing with Samantha a lot and maybe agreeing with Adam a lot.
So I think it tells us what our beliefs are too.

(58:01):
Like what is it that I believe in that I'm agreeing or disagreeing with this person or
like the media tycoon who I love to hate throughout the book.
I wrote so many angry notes in the columns against everything that he was saying.
Yeah, I think it really helped me figure out what it is that I agree with and what I don't

(58:21):
and maybe question some of the things that I believe and readjust to say, OK, maybe I
need to rethink my position on that.
So I really appreciated the book for that.
Yes.
She was a great character.
And the perfect choice to argue for humanity, definitely.
I think one of the things that this book does, which I read the white trilogy a long

(58:43):
time ago, Peter Hamilton.
And without one of the things that it concludes on is that if a society is satisfied and happy
in itself, it might die out.
And I think we're sort of seeing the beginning of that change in this society and we're given
a few options to not die out.

(59:04):
But I think I was unhappy about what that book did because I wanted more exploration of
that.
It was just a passing statement in conclusion to explain what happened to a particular group
of people.
But I think this exploration of what happens if everybody's given the chance to be happy,
like not have to struggle with their demons on a daily basis.
I think I was really pleased with that.

(59:26):
There's still the question of what will the society look like, I don't know, a thousand
years from now if it survives that long, will it die out for not having anything to fight
for or will it continue to be a stable, peaceful society?
I think that question is there.
But I love to see this transition in this book.

(59:47):
One thing I liked in particular was also, I think it was just a little thing, but one
of the kids was being bullied at school and he no longer was because his father was, because
the bully no longer felt the need to take out his aggression because his parents don't
get to be abusive towards him anymore.
So he no longer has an outlet for anger.
Yes, like maybe humanity needs outlets for anger and their struggle for whatever expression

(01:00:12):
we need and we need ways to like paint angrily or go boxing and whatnot.
But maybe in many instances, we don't need that outlet anymore because things are going
better, like with even the abusive father that we saw who's just like sad about everything
that he did so far in life.
And yeah, I think I really appreciated that thread with the kid who no longer bullies.

(01:00:36):
Like it wasn't, it was just one paragraph that I thought was really made a wonderful
point.
I was just gonna say he really can make wonderful characters in such a short time.
I really, I've always admired that about his writing.
And yeah, I was going to say exactly that, that we have so many points of views and so
many people going around with the same idea.
And I agree with Varsha, perhaps a more implicit point that this work makes is that violence

(01:01:02):
is a circle, right?
So somebody starts it and then somebody else needs a violent outlet and so on.
And when you take the route, what happens?
Nobody else needs that, right?
So it's like, if you take the route of a problem, it doesn't vanish as immediately, but it may
go away.
It may change into something else.

(01:01:23):
And we can see a lot of characters that actually change quite a lot like Colo at the start.
It's a completely different person that when he ends, he's arguing that basically violence
is the only way that he can move on because the world has been violent to him.
And because of the setting in which he is, he has no hope.
And he says, I learned many years ago to hate that word.

(01:01:45):
Hope is an enemy to truth, an enemy to the world how it is.
And that's because we generally have that cycle of violence that takes hope away from
other people.
The moment you remove the source of violence, you give hope simply because it can be better.
I think that's a really interesting point about generational trauma and the generational

(01:02:07):
violence that when we are part of it, when we are subject to it, when it is part and
parcel of the very reality that we inhabit, it is almost inconceivable to consider a world
where it doesn't exist, that the traumas of the past continue to haunt us.
They have an impact.
They impacted our parents.
That impact on our parents has then been transferred in some way, in some form, us.

(01:02:31):
And we then transfer it in some way, in some form, onto our children.
This passage of this trauma through time.
But if that trauma could be healed, what would humanity become?
And there have been great utopian fictions written in the past, but it's far easier to
write a dystopia.
Why is that?
Why is it so impossible to think of a better place, a good place, a place that satisfies

(01:02:54):
who we are as people?
Why is it so difficult to conceive of that?
But it is relatively easy to conceive of hell, of a hellish place, a bad place, a place
where there are abuses.
It's something that we're so much more familiar with.
And we see political abuses.
We see ideological abuses.

(01:03:14):
We see violence.
We see this in every aspect of the world around us, beamed into our homes, on our phones,
on our laptops, in our TVs, that we're constantly told day in, day out about the horror of what
humanity is.
But what if we didn't have to live that way?

(01:03:35):
What if that abuse was stopped?
What if it couldn't perpetuate?
What great and glorious creation could humanity become if we weren't burdened with
the scars of this generational trauma?
And I think that's a, again, it's an interesting question.
The novel doesn't try to answer it.
I think it poses the question.

(01:03:57):
It poses the question.
Why is it so much easier to write a dystopia, to create a dystopia than it is to imagine
any sort of utopia?
Because dystopia, it can always be improved.
Again, people always try to fix.
There's still hope, there's a drive to make it better, either to bring it back to how

(01:04:19):
it was before, or to try to move forward and rebuild.
Utopias, they are stagnant.
They don't evolve, live no options.
What are we without the struggles of our ancestors?
There's no more struggle.
We kind of invalidate everything that came before, everything that we learned.
And then, yeah, I don't know.
Because it's just me, but they kind of freak me out.

(01:04:42):
This is precisely what I meant.
We can't even conceive of it.
We can't even conceive of a society where exploration and learning is a continual and
evolving process.
And therefore, it's not stagnant.
Individuals are not stagnant.
They learn, they explore, they refine, they grow as people.
That is the mutability of humankind.
It doesn't matter if the buildings are the same.

(01:05:04):
Buildings are not the topic conditioned for humanity.
But we find even that frightening, the idea that we would be free to pursue our individual
pursuits, our individual desires and dreams, that we would be free and able to do that
without a traumatic condition being imposed on it as the cost, because something that
we got for free is in value.

(01:05:26):
And how much of that is true?
How much is it conditioning from the world and society that we live in?
And the idea that, oh, well, if people were left with their own devices, we'd just sit
at home, we'd become couch potatoes, we'd become, and we see that in the animated film
WALL-E.
That's what happened to humanity.
When all their whims were catered to, they all decided to sit around on a couch.

(01:05:50):
Why is that the natural conclusion of where we're going?
When it could be something more like Star Trek and the Federation and the concept that
we still live, we still have the matter converters that can create whatever it is that we desire.
But there's still a drive to learn.
There's still a drive to explore.
There's still a drive to find and do fascinating things where we evolve as people.

(01:06:16):
And I slightly disagree with the idea that a utopia must be static, because if the condition
of utopic living is actually about immutability and learning, and that is a constantly evolving
process, then by definition, it's not static.
Even if the structure behind it is not doing anything particularly fancy, it is so difficult
to conceive of that.
For example, kind of a bit of a tangent into fantasy, but Tolkien's elves, I'm thinking

(01:06:43):
Rivendell, their society evolved to a point to a pinnacle.
They learn pretty much everything.
They live in harmony.
They live for thousands of years.
They keep learning, etc.
But they reach the point where they have nowhere to go except the West.
And even that, they still get involved in the world's struggles.
They don't have to.

(01:07:04):
But they still have that need to get involved, to fight for something, even if not for themselves.
They always need to have that drive to help to do something, to change something, even
if it's not for yourself, if it's for someone you love, for your children, for another...
But that can be your utopia, is that?
You can instill in your utopia that lack of stagnation and that need to strive for something

(01:07:29):
else that doesn't have to be traumatic in nature, I guess.
But with Tolkien's elves, you have both the entropy of their civilization.
The fact that they're fleeing to the East was flawed from the beginning and it was from
a birthplace of trauma.
And they've been living with that generational trauma ever since, particularly a lot of them
that were still around and remembered what went down and the kinslaying in the West.

(01:07:55):
It's not a perfect utopia.
Again, it's a flawed construction.
And with Tolkien's setup, again, we have an existential threat to the world and to creation.
And look, the orcs are different.
Soron is different.
And the world of elves, men and humans, we share more in common than the opposition.

(01:08:16):
And so again, it's the focal point externally to go.
There's an external threat.
Therefore, internally, we will redefine who we are as people and find commonalities.
We see that in the relationship between Legolas and Gimli, initially antagonistic and hate
each other because there's a racial hit.
And through that exploration and that camaraderie, they find commonality and they build friendship.

(01:08:38):
And it's one of the key themes of what Tolkien was exploring in it, that we can find these
moments of similarity even between apparently disparate people because there's a commonality,
there's a shared love.
And all it takes is an existential threat to the world.
But sorry, just my thoughts on that.

(01:08:59):
Let me move to another genre.
There are a lot of writers of green, dark or dark fantasy and a lot of readers and an
argument they make for it is that it feels realistic, like the struggle feels realistic,
the lack of hope feels realistic.
If you go to Goodreads and read comments on the utopias, some of the negative arguments
of a one-star or two-star review sees that it's not realistic.

(01:09:22):
Humanity wouldn't behave in that way.
That's the whole point, the whole point is you actually show something different, right?
Something we can aspire to, something we can grow towards, something we can work at changing
who we are now in order to achieve something amazing and great as opposed to, well, you
know, we're all awful, terrible human beings, we're flawed, we're terrible to each other,

(01:09:44):
it's horrible.
Let's just wallow in the dystopian hellscape we've created and never once attempt to improve
it.
The only way we can improve it is to imagine something and then test it and then work for
warden and deal with new problems as they arise.
I don't think there is ever going to be a perfect, but there may be a development of

(01:10:04):
avenues of growth that are not self-destructive.
Having an avenue for growth and exploration and a new way to conceive, a new value system
for what human output is.
We can't think of it because we are so ingrained in the world in which we live, which is a
very natural position to have.

(01:10:26):
Science fiction and fantasy, even horror, these are different approaches to examine
who we are, why we are, what we want, what we don't want.
Alistair explores this and this novel wasn't trying to give us the answer, but again, was
asking these questions that other novels have asked in the past and explored in different

(01:10:48):
ways, explored different facets, but this is a novel of its time, of its place, asking
the questions of its reader.
We'll get to different answers than say someone reading Heinlein, back when Heinlein was published,
someone reading Alistair Reynolds.
They're all different ways of approaching it because every author is unique, every book
is unique, every reader is unique.

(01:11:11):
How we respond to it, what it makes us think of, what it makes us think of, that is something
that no one can ever take away from.
It was very successful in that regard, endless discussions, lots to think about.
I'm curious about what we are all kind of writers or we read a lot.

(01:11:32):
What would be the ending because the book is open-ended, we don't know exactly what
happened, how would you envision the ending or a sequel, what you think would happen from
there?
I actually liked the open-ending quite a lot because it...
Just leave it there.
Just leave it there because it felt full of possibilities.
The hope that you lack throughout the book at the end is presented as, okay, humanity

(01:11:54):
has a chance to redefine themselves, but the whole story is, I don't want to say that
that Adam is a narrator, but he's certainly directing the story and it reaches that point
and that's it, it's up to humanity.
We become the narrators or the directors of our story, so it will be from that point of

(01:12:15):
view.
To me, it left it so open that it was the possibility of what we can do, yeah, we can go back to
our roots, violent roots, or we can just try to do something, something that is different.
That said, I really wanted a sequel.
Next question that Samantha actually brings up is how far are you willing to take a thought

(01:12:36):
experiment?
I agree with Livia that open-ending of it sits well with me.
But there was the thing with the voices on Mars.
There was one other element of mystery that we could potentially explore without necessarily
focusing on what human society happened here, like there are other threads that could fan

(01:12:57):
out in theory.
I find it very difficult to imagine the next 120-year human society on Earth from this
because I think it would end up being a cycle of, A, a particular group trying to find ways
around the introduction, find ways around to break the system, constantly poking because
they want to return to the natural order.

(01:13:17):
A new generation would grow up having accepted this as normal way that society is going to
go and that they'd be part of developing that.
Then there would be an element of them that goes, oh, no, but I want to go back to this
topic and it would go on until basically the entirety of humanity had become so used to
it for so long that in essence they just accept it.
I think it would be a cycle, a perennial cycle of fighting against and repeating the same

(01:13:42):
arguments, same attempts over and over again.
It would be 100, 200 years before humanity could move beyond the generational trauma that
we have suffered to try and grow in a different direction.
There would be some progress made, some regression, some progress, some regression and it would
constantly go over again and again.

(01:14:03):
In the meantime, if there were sequels, there's the rest of the universe to exist.
There's the different alien worlds, different fights, a galactic, not necessarily empire,
but a galactic community that exists.
There are mysteries on Mars and what happened to Mars.
Those would be, if you're going to try and pick the novel up 10 years after this, that

(01:14:26):
would be where I think the focus, hesitate to use it, should be because I don't think
there's a lot of usefulness in remining and re-exploring the fact that humanity still
won't accept that it has changed.
It's too short a time frame for that level of change to work its way into our nature.

(01:14:48):
Yet there would be some people who would adapt very quickly.
But like all these things, I think you would still have that constant backwards and forwards
that they could not accept at the world.
And that would continue to go on until they all died out.
Then there would always be some bright spark jumping up and going, remember the good old
days and painting this rose-tinted picture of what life used to be like in the past.

(01:15:12):
You do realize it was all horrible and all of these things happened.
So don't forget about that.
It's going to be the good things from the past, but not the bad things that I went
through.
Which those are the arguments we hear today where people go, do you remember in the past
when this, well, that wasn't exactly the experience for people like me?
Oh, no, but I'm not talking about that aspect of the past.
I'm talking about the aspect of the past where people like me were awesome.

(01:15:34):
Well, that's why you wanted it.
But you know, I wouldn't because, you know, I wouldn't be allowed to get an education.
The epigraphs, Samantha's epigraphs, I love them.
By the way, I made me want to read something by her.
And she kept bringing up this question of mechanistic universe that it's not all there
is to what the universe is like exploring that idea.

(01:15:56):
I did wonder what that was about, why they got such a center stage in this story because
we didn't explore the question of consciousness.
Maybe those were added as to show that Samantha, in her imagining, basically thought of things
like Adam with this distributed consciousness and that she's able to speculate that kind

(01:16:17):
of future.
Is that the purpose or do you think there's more to it than that?
We still can't pin down exactly what consciousness is.
Where does consciousness reside?
Where are we situated?
Who are we?
Do we have souls?
What are the souls?
What happens to us?
What do we just simply see?
These are questions we don't have.
And there are greater things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by our philosophy.

(01:16:41):
There's so much more to the universe than our limited perception of the universe can
pick up and understand.
And that's what the pursuit of science is.
But we also have a spiritual pursuit.
We have not necessarily tied to religion, but about understanding who we are, how we
communicate with each other.
And there's an element of connection.
And what if that is the missing part?

(01:17:02):
We've been focused so much on the material that we forgot to focus on spiritual or more
enlightened aspect of consciousness that that's the missing piece of this puzzle.
And it's not about, oh, this deity has the answer.
Follow these rules and you will go to heaven.
It's bigger than that.
It's about understanding the potentiality of consciousness and what that means, what

(01:17:24):
this gift is that we think.
There are people out there arguing that we don't have free will.
And they present these models that suggest that we have no free will.
I don't know.
It's not my area of research.
And I find that idea frightening.
And maybe that's why I inherently reject it.
But the idea that maybe there's something that we have not yet tapped into.

(01:17:45):
And what we call it might be spirituality, but it's simply a concept that we don't have
a proper way of exploring yet.
And it's not just the material.
It's not just the, this is how you calculate an orbit and everything can be reduced down
to mathematics.
That there is an unquantifiable, irrational element to the universe.

(01:18:07):
And if that element is kind of more like what we understand the spirituality or some aspect
of being, that would be a fascinating area.
I guess it also adds to the point in the book that all the things that we identify ourselves
with, they're all mechanistic and physical, but maybe you can find fulfillment in this

(01:18:30):
other area that we don't know much about yet.
I like that.
That was honestly a mind blowing discussion.
Thank you so much everyone from being here.
And we do a round of outflow so that the listener can find you.
Well, thank you very much for inviting me.
And one thing I will say before my outro is I don't know about this stuff.
I'm just as in the dark as everyone else.

(01:18:51):
And all I can do is talk about the things that I felt and I thought about.
It's not necessarily that I am right or I have all of the answers because the challenge
to preconceptions that I had, the challenge to the biases that I have when I read, this
is incredibly valuable.
That's why discussions like this are so important.
Because if everyone went, oh yeah, it just means this, not much of a discussion there

(01:19:12):
is it.
It doesn't reveal anything.
So thank you very much, Livia, for hosting this, for inviting us all together.
I greatly appreciate it.
And if anyone's interested, my YouTube channel is a critical part.
Thank you again.
Thank you so much for having me.
I just want to say this book sounds like it was a very fun book to work with.

(01:19:33):
I would love to be present in those discussions.
I can imagine some of the discussions.
It's amazing how it got done.
I don't know why you're still not discussing it.
Yeah, and this discussion was very fun as well.
Thank you so much for inviting me.
You can find me on Access Chronodendron, Den of the Weird, and you can find my books
pretty much everywhere.

(01:19:54):
Time-Listened, First Book is Weird Gods.
So this discussion was all my fault.
It was.
Because I had to invite...
You have your sense of blame instead of me.
You recommend the book.
Yes, I had to invite AP on to talk about it, and I made Livia buy it.
So it's all my fault.

(01:20:16):
No, this was great.
I had a great time, and it was always fascinating to talk about this stuff.
So you can find me at the Fantasy Thinker YouTube channel.
Various other discussion places as well.
Yeah, you can find me on my YouTube channel, Reading by the Rainy Mountain, and the About
Page has links to some podcasts if you're interested.

(01:20:38):
Yeah, and thank you for having me.
This book was my treat for when I finished the Malazan Book of the Fall, and I loved
it so much.
Yeah, it was really good to have the opportunity to discuss it.
Thank you, everyone.
I'm honestly honored to have you all here, and it was an amazing discussion.
So you will find the links to their channels and spaces in the episode's description.

(01:21:00):
And if you like the episode, please subscribe and like the video and leave a comment if
you want.
I will try to answer.
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So thank you for listening, and happy reading.