Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Life, Death, and Aliens... The Arrival of Something Bigger Than Ourselves. Also, Weird Spider Monsters

Perhaps one of the oldest questions that has plagued humankind throughout the ages is the question of whether or not we have free will. Well, I guess considering the totality of human history, it might be tied with "What the hell is this thing that's killing me?!" The free will question seems tantalizing specifically because it's intangible. We may not always have known what was killing/eating us, but there was always concrete evidence of death, whether it be a plague-riddled corpse or some bones in mound of lion shit. Free will is "fun" to speculate about because, currently, there's no way to prove it either way. The significance is clear: are we free agents, forging our destiny and boldly splitting infinitives where nobody has split them before, or are our lives and the choices we make merely the end result of forces beyond our control? In our relationship with the cosmos, were we pitching or catching?

It's a tough question to square away, what with the lack of any current means of quantifying it, but it's also kind of central to our lives as sapient beings. It's also kind of a loaded question. The implication in most cases is that having free will is preferable to not having free will, and that in the demonstrable absence of free will, we would lose any sense of agency and accountability.

Arrival, the latest offering from Denis Villenueve, is a movie that focuses on humanity's first contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species. The truly impressive thing is that in a movie focusing on humanity interacting with extraterrestrials for the first time, that's not even the most pressing philosophical question. Amy Adams stars as Dr. Louise Banks, a world-renowned linguist and Isla Fisher lookalike, who is recruited by the US military to try and help them communicate with extraterrestrials from one of twelve (Suck it, Seven of Nine.) unnecessarily eerie spaceships that have mysteriously appeared at seemingly random points across the globe. It's basically an entire movie dedicated to the one part of sci-fi that is almost traditionally completely glossed over with universal translators or Babel fish or what have you. TV shows and movies will spend countless hours explaining the intricacies of how they're able to travel faster than the speed of light, scramble and reassemble their molecules across space, and engage in inter-species erotica without the likely physiological incompatibilities that would likely arise from from millennia of alternate evolutionary forces, but they seem completely uninterested in how people communicate with each other.

I don't know if you're real, but if you're up there,
Superman, humanity thanks you for this.
The intersection of questions of free will and language come from the fact that the aliens--known as heptapods--perceive time differently than humans as a result of their unique written language. As Dr. Banks begins to decode and understand the heptapod language, she begins to perceive time as they do, that is simultaneously, as opposed to sequentially as she and the rest of humanity (including Isla Fisher) normally perceive it. A huge part of Arrival is the final reveal that the flashbacks Louise seems to be having of her dead daughter are actually flash forwards that put the fourth season of Lost to shame.

In fact, time is the underlying theme that really ties the film together. And it kind of makes sense that talking about free will one must consider issues of time. It seems kind of obvious when you really stop to think about it. Like, being-slapped-in-the-face-with-an-alien-dick-hand obvious. Our notions of free will and agency are ultimately informed by our sense of time, specifically a sense of causality. We perceive time sequentially, which tends towards a cause and effect view of life, the universe, and everything. When events are situated within a linear narrative structure, it seems fairly obvious that events that happen first chronologically necessarily influence events that occur later within that same timeline. Hence the traditional sense of agency. By making a choice, we could establish a different initial condition which would, by necessity, lead to a different outcome than would have happened otherwise. A different effect leads to a different cause.

Arrival challenges notions of free will simply by having the alien visitors--and eventually Dr. Banks--perceive time simultaneously instead of sequentially. This means that they can perceive all moments of time at the same time at any point in time; essentially, they can see the future. But in a startling twist, the heptapods do not fight against notions of predestination because from their point of view predestination isn't a phenomenon. Predestination is a way for humanity to describe a mode of being that does not align with a sequential view of time. You would never have to describe to a fish what it's like to breath underwater; that kind of speculative description is only relevant to an air breather.

By the end of the film, it's made clear that Dr. Banks has not only learned the alien language to the point where she can "see the future," but that she has also come to terms with the implications that has in her life. The core of her character arc is the haunting memory of a daughter she hasn't even conceived yet, including her premature death by cancer at a very young age. In the final emotional climax of Arrival, Dr. Banks realizes not only that she will have a daughter and that her daughter's life will be cut tragically short, but that the father of the child is a mathematician, Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), who was also recruited by the US military as part of the team trying to decipher the alien language. Louise also future-remembers that after their daughter is born, she will reveal what she knows to Ian, which will result in their break-up with no hint of reconciliation. Basically, a giant shit-show all around.

It's also clear that knowing all of that, Louise also decides to live it all anyway, without trying to change anything.

And despite her decision flying in the face of everything most of us probably want to believe about free will, it's an incredibly moving moment. Honestly, the acceptance of life and being willing to pay the cost of experiencing all the horror and tragedy for the few truly beautiful, transcendent moments is a (decently) common narrative trope in both literature and cinema. The nuance comes in how we express this notion, and Arrival does it beautifully. It reminds me, as a lot of things often do, of Dr. Manhattan and his mesmerizing blue schlong from Alan Moore's seminal work, Watchmen. Dr. Manhattan, basically a pseudo-god who also has powers of perception that far exceed those of most mortal men (except for those rare specimens with iron in their thighs). Dr. Manhattan, despite having more insight into the very fabric of existence than any other human, still asserts that "We're all puppets" and that he's "just a puppet that can see the strings." This isn't necessarily as bleak as it sounds on the surface; it's merely a poetic way of expressing that there are forces at work in the universe affecting our lives that are beyond our control.
Starring: Extraterrestrial Beings That in No Way Resemble
the Terrifying Giant Spider at the End of

While it's left a little more ambiguous and open to interpretation in Arrival, the short story on which it is based, Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, actually goes into a little more detail on the philosophical implications of being able to perceive time in a non-linear way--or maybe more appropriately, an omni-linear way. In the story, Louise contemplates the implications of her new mode of perception:

"What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?"

Things get a little paradoxy at this point, but there's a certain symbiotic view of causality represented here: knowing the future, theoretically, would give a person the chance to change it, but if you changed the future then you wouldn't know the future:

"For the heptapods, all language was performative. Instead of using language to inform, they used language to actualize. Sure, heptapods already knew what would be said in and conversation; but in order for their knowledge to be true, the conversation would have to take place."

Also, like the average steroid content of your average sports hero's physiology, all this talk of different perceptions of time is highly speculative. We don't know what it would be like to perceive time only in this way. But, somehow, Chiang's view of things probably seems counter-intuitive to a lot of us on a fundamental level. We don't like being told we're not in control. That we're not masters of our own destinies, swabbers of our own poop decks, if you will.

I think the real reason that this potential lack of control makes us uncomfortable stems from our equating free will with agency. And Arrival does a pretty nice job of untangling those two metaphysical concepts.

The reason that Louise's decision at the end of the film to walk down the path set before her is such a touching moment to most people with a heart is precisely because that even though she has, in a sense, forfeited free will, she still has agency. She is still able to choose. It is simply that the evaluative framework in which she makes her choices has fundamentally changed. Consider the following passage from Story of Your Life:

"The heptapods are neither free nor bound as we understand those concepts; they don't act according to their will, nor are they helpless automatons. What distinguishes the heptapods' mode of awareness is not just that their actions coincide with history's events; it is also that their motives coincide with history's purposes. They act to create the future, to enact chronology.

Freedom isn't an illusion; it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it's simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other...

Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future..."

The heptapods are guided not only by acting in a way that is consistent not only with history's event but also its purposes. Chiang makes a point to emphasize that the heptapods are not "helpless automatons," mindlessly going back to that great, cosmic buffet again, and again, powerless under it's MSG-infused sway. Working in concert with "history's purposes," put more simply, is a way of saying that the hetapods live their lives with the understanding that they are part of something larger than themselves.

No, I don't see anal in our future, and no, it doesn't get any
funnier the more times you say it.
And the thing is, the heptapods' mode of perception isn't entirely out of reach. As Arrival makes clear, we already live our lives knowing the future; parents know from the day that their children are born that they are also going to die some day: they simply lack the particulars. It's one of the few certainties in life, aside from taxes and shitty Adam Sandler movies on Netflix. But, even knowing this future, and further, knowing that Life is just as likely (if not more so) to fuck you over as it is to shower you with consequence-free happiness, parents still decide to have and raise children.

In fact, a great deal of our lives are scripted to a higher degree than most of us feel comfortable thinking too deeply about. A lot of the things that we say and do more or less follow the social scripts that have been ingrained in us from our peer groups, authority figures, and the colourful cast of characters on your favourite movies and TV shows (though hopefully not Game of Thrones, because clinically speaking, you would most likely be a power hungry sociopath (either that or some kind of undead snow zombie)). But just because you drive a Honda Civic doesn't make you some pawn in a metaphysical chess game played by some formless energies pulsing in the undertow of an unseen universal tide.

Perhaps the most telling passage from Story of Your Life that helps clarify the distinction between agency and free will that both Chiang's story and Arrival make is the following revelation by Louise:

"I suddenly remembered that a morphological relative of 'performative' was 'performance,' which could describe the sensation of conversing when you knew what would be said: it was like performing in a play."

"If I could have described to someone who didn't already know, she might ask, if the heptapods already knew everything that they would ever say or hear, what was the point of their using language at all? A reasonable question. But language wasn't only for communication: it was also a form of action. According to speech act theory, statements like 'You're under arrest,' 'I christen this vessel,' or 'I promise' were all performative: a speaker could perform the action only by uttering the words. For such acts, knowing what would be said didn't change anything. Everyone at a wedding anticipated the words 'I now pronounce you husband and wife,' but until the minister actually said them, the ceremony didn't count. With performative language, saying equaled doing."

From this point of view, a lack of free will as we typically understand it isn't necessarily as limiting as it first seems: we may be simply reciting lines in a cosmic play, but it is also a play that is written by us.

I admit that it's difficult to consider both the universe and my life in these terms, especially once I follow that particular rabbit all the way down that particular hole. There's something disheartening about thinking that you're not in complete control of your own life. But, as with all things in life, what we want to believe has absolutely no bearing on what is actually true.

Arrival tells a story not of a loss of agency, but of a shift in perspective. The nuance lay in the difference between determinism and fatalism; it's the difference between our decisions being another link in the chain of causality and being preordained regardless of what we might say or do. The more I think about it, the less I am able to come up with any viable rebuttals to determinism, whether it be biological, social, cosmological, political, or Chuck Norris-ical.

We are undoubtedly subject to a whole host of forces beyond our control, but that doesn't make our decisions any less meaningful. In Louise's epiphianic monologue at the end of the movie, she says that "We're so bound by time, by its order. But now I am not so sure I believe in beginnings and endings." In this viewpoint of what might be considered a sort of neo-determinism, our decisions are effects of previous causes, but they are also, in turn, causes themselves producing further effects, and so on and so forth, down through the ages. Arrival shows us that even though we might not be completely in control, that's not a bad thing. What matters more is that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

Letting go of our notions of free will is a small price to pay if it means being able to better embrace the moment and come to a fuller appreciation of life in all of its terror and glory.


I've made no secret of my enjoyment of Denis Villenueve's work, and Arrival is no different. It's a masterful examination of the human condition, and one of the most significant works of science fiction in the last decade, and probably more. I give Arrival a 9.5/10 = One Alien Head Sacrificing Itself


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