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Children of the Damned
Approaches to the Definition of Humanity
In 1951 a popular science fiction writer using the pen name John
Wyndham published a book called The Midwich Cuckoos. Nine years
later a film based on his book was made in England for a small budget.
The film, Village of the Damned, was to become a sci-fi cult
classic. Its sequel, Children of the Damned, released in 1963,
is somewhat inferior in cinematic terms, but met with equal success.
Both films touched a subliminal key in the collective psyche of the
time, and the message they sent resonates strongly to this day.
Village of the Damned is a chilling tale of extra-human intrusion
in a small town in America (although the film was made in England). The
drama is intensified by the modest scale of events and the familiarity
of the setting. In the opening scene the entire populace of several
hundred souls gathers for a civic celebration, complete with home-cooked
food and local entertainment. Suddenly an odd, drilling sound hits
everyone at once. They sprawl to the ground, unconscious. Three hours
later everyone revives and looks around, dazed and baffled to have lost
time. No one seems hurt by the blackout, but a couple of people have
been killed in mishaps due to what they were doing (for example, driving
a car) at the moment of the mysterious stupefaction.
Nine months later a dozen or so children are born to women in the
village. From their first moments in the crib, the infants demontrate
extraordinary powers. They read the minds of adults and control them
by telepathic commands. As they grow to the age of walking and
speaking, these alarming abilities increase. They exhibit an
extraordinary capacity for rapid learning and retention of
information, although they are evidently lacking in certain
emotional responses typical of the human species. Their most
frightening skill is to project a burning glance that causes the
targeted individual to go insane and commit suicide. Black-and-white
images of the Children of the Damned with eyes glowing like
pale green lasers became iconic at the time the films were released.
Both films on the Damned theme exploit deep-seated fears that
parents hold toward their children, fears that are psychologically
denied and kept under tight social taboo. Evidence of such fears
can be traced back into the depths of the collective psyche through
myth and folklore. Children who rise up and slay their parents are
stock items in the "generations of Gods" found in Greek
mythology: Ouranos the celestial Father God is slain by his son,
Chronos, and Chronos is turn is overthrown by his son, Zeus. The
cycle of familial homocide in Greek myth was carried over into the
tragic dramaturgy of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Oedipus,
who kills his own father, becomes (largely through Freud) the model
of the modern self in conflict with the "family romance" from
which the self draws its identity.
The notion of the demonic child is a common theme in worldwide folklore.
Often the child is a "changeling," a "fairy child"
who has been substituted for a real human infant. The Children of
the Damned are human progeny but they have been altered (so we
gradually surmise as the film unfolds) by some "alien"
force, a force whose origins and aims are never fully specified in
the film. This is a clever variation on the changeling theme. The
fear implied here is that humanity may be capable of serving as the
instrument of powers that are not human; i.e., extraterrestrial. Or
to put it otherwise: that human beings may disguise non-human entities.
Hence the theme of substitution.
In Village of the Damned, the act of substitution is confined to
the small town setting, but other sci-fi classics of the same era
propose a sinister program of global substitution. The most famous
is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, released in 1955. It exploits
the notion that the entire human race can be replicated by alien
technology. Here aliens take over the population of the earth by
growing human doubles from gooey pods. This tactic is horrific because
it requires eliminating the original version of the pod-person. In
Invasion of the body Snatchers, substitution equates to
planet-wide genocide. Total elimination of the human species is
achieved by the replacement of each real, thinking-feeling person
by an emotionally inert replica obedient to a hive mentality.
The Damned films qualify as psychological thrillers, contrasted
to the horror genre exemplified by Invasion, because in the
former there is a struggle to maintain the human spirit against alien
influences, whereas in the latter the struggle is to save humanity from
outright physical elimination. The Children of the Damned are
human progeny, born of normal mothers, yet they represent a deviation
from what is normal for the human species. In this respect, the
Damned films present an excellent occasion for exploring the
question: What defines being human?
The term homo sapiens was devised by Swedish botanist Karl
von Linne (Linneaus) between 1737 and 1753. It belongs to a system
of naming (a taxonomy) applicable to all life-forms, conceived in a
set of eight grades. Defined in the full array of terms, human beings
belong to (1) Kingdom of Animals, (2) the Phylum of Chordata, (3) the
Class of Mammalia (including blue whales, the largest creatures that
now live, and ever lived, on earth), (4) the Order of Primates
(including our close evolutionary cousins, apes and chimipanzees),
(5) the Superfamily of Hominids (exhibiting exclusively human traits),
the (6) Family of Hominidae, (7) the Genus homo and (8) the Species
sapiens.
Linneaus chose the term sapiens to denote the special kind of
intelligence uniquely possessed by the human race. He did not, however,
indicate in precise and concrete terms what constitutes this
intelligence; and on one since his time has done so, either. It
happens, then, that the human race is labelled by scientific
nomenclature that has never been adequately or comprehensively
defined. (In the Lexicon, I attempt to address this problem by the
thread running through a group of definitions. See abo sapiens,
learning, sapience, primitive, and related terms.)
In the above paragraph I use the term "human race" as if
equating it with the species defined in scientific terms as homo
sapiens. But "race" is a problematic word, to say the
least. Is the human species a single, unified race, or is it a species
that consists of races? While "human race" is routinely used
to refer to the entire species, the term "race" is more often
used to make distinctions within the species. Although "race"
is not a scientifically correct term, this is the widely accepted
facon de parler, a manner of speaking. Defined by Genus and
Species, homo sapiens is an evolutionary type that breaks down
into races, sub-sets of the one species. (Sometimes we must preserve
semantic usage to get through a discussion that can lead beyond the
semantic limits imposed by that usage.)
Historians speak routinely of Oriental races, Negroid races, and so on.
The old habit of designating races by colors reinforces the assumption
that homo sapiens is a Species divided into various races, rather than
a single and inclusive race. Something more than quibbling over terms
is involved here, for the manner of speaking is massively applied:
the vast majority of people in the world define themselves first by
race, and then perhaps by vague reference to the human species
as a whole. To be Chinese, Armenian, Navajo, Jewish or Portuguese
is a primary fact of identity, for people in general do not relate in
a primary way to being a member of the human species. No language in
common use reflects such a way of relating. Appeals to "our common
humanity" are not effective, and the reason why not will become
evident as we proceed.
I say "people in general" do not express a primary sense of
being human, but there are notable exceptions. In his pathbreaking book,
In Search for the Primitive (1974), anthropologist Stanley Diamond
argues that "primitive" is the crucial term in our quest to
understand what it means to call ourselves human. He notes that so-called
primitive peoples (the politically correct term being
"indigenous") frequently call themselves by a term that
denotes being human in a non-racial, non-specific sense. In his
comments on Daimond’s work, Derrick Jensen observes that
"many indigenous cultures refer to themselves as
the people," and wonders if that implies "that
everyone else is not the people." (C 197) Putting the
question to an interlocuter (Richard Drinnon), Jensen received this
response:
The name strikes you and me as xenohobic since a cardinal principle of
our Western civilization has been what one anthropologist calls
‘the negation of the other.’ By contrast, tribal cultures
affirmed ‘the other who affirms you’ and this principle of
affirmation always carried with it the possibility of extending the
people outward, beyond family and clan and tribe to all other beings
and things in a universal embrace that would reflect the very antithesis
of xenophobia.
(Ibid.)
In other words, by calling themselves "the people," indigenous
tribes do not intend an exclusional meaning that makes everyone outside
their identified group into non-people. Diamond says that by calling
themselves the people, indigenous tribes were expressing
"recognition of their uniqueness in a state of nature" and
"the understanding of commonality in nature." (155) A stranger
who arrives is not automatically excluded from the definition of the
people, an exclusion that would amount to "the latter’s
nonexistence as a human being." The stranger only lacks social
status according to the local and specific habits of the people he
or she encounters. The sense of being "the people" allows for
social (i.e., local, tribal and ritual) distinctions, but does not
induce hostility to those whose status may be socially undetermined.
Contrary to caveman movies and evangelical hype, "savages"
more often than not "prided themselves on being hospitable to
strangers." (Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, cited
by Diamond.) This is certainly the case for the "savages" of
the New World who, with a few exceptions, received the explorers from
Europe with exemplary amity and astonishing generosity.
The reflections of Jensen, Diamond and Drinnon confirm the extensive
testimony of anthropologists on the self-naming of indigenous peoples:
The Mohawk, Hopi, Navajo, Miwok, Blood and other peoples have, within
their own languages, names that distinguish them from others. Generally
these words can be translated into English along the lines of ‘the
people,’ ‘the true people,’ ‘real
people,’ ‘the two-legged creatures,’ or ‘the people
who live in this place.’
(Peat, 19)
The Zuni of the American southwest call themselves A shivi,
"the flesh," "Zuni" being a Spanish corruption of
this word. Is this their way of expressing a sense of identity that is
"generically" human? Certainly, there is no indication that
they and other indigenous groups who follow the same mode of self-naming
would deny humanity to other tribal groups. Tribal identity is
place-oriented and particular to inherited rites and customs, but the
identity so defined stands against the background of a universal feeling,
a generic sense of humanity. Primitive self-naming indicates empathy for
the human species in its entirely, but it also suggests that
identification with the species is the primary requisite for such
empathy. As such, primitive empathy is the exact opposite of (and
perhaps the antidote to) the race card. It is also worth noting that those
indigeous people who name themselves in this way invariably display an
attitude that embraces all non-human creatures as part of a single,
inter-dependent community.
It appears that indigenous people may have an edge over modern, civilized
people in grounding their identity in what I will henceforth call a
generic sense of being human. In racial self-naming, the race you
belong to defines your identity as a human being but excludes the more
direct identification with humanity exemplified in primitive empathy.
Ideally, "homo sapiens" ought to indicate the generic sense,
but it does not because the definition of sapience has not been supplied.
Consequently, the race card always trumps the generic sense. (This may
go a ways to explain why racist, imperialistic cultures can and do overrun
and decimate peoples whose identity is grounded in a generic humanness.)
People stubbornly insist that they are British or Bolivian or whatever,
before they give a thought to being human. The connotations of racial
self-naming are dense and complex: attachment to tradition, beliefs,
dietary and dress codes, familial lineages, heroic and symbolic figures,
ties to blood and land, etc. All these factors congeal into a complex
that easily overwhelms the generic sense of being human.
The difficulty of achieving a generic sense of humanity consists only
in part in the lack of clear standards or criteria for defining homo
sapiens. It also consists in the deceptive twist peculiar to the
operative term, "humanity." This word poses a difficulty
that recalls the mind-bending effect of the word "Jew." A
Jew is someone who belongs to a race, the Jewish or Hebrew or Semitic
race. Merely to propose this definition is to play the race card, but
Jew also denotes a religion, the belief-system of the ancient Hebrews
that has been preserved for centuries by people of Jewish descent. To
be a Jew means, confusingly, to belong to a race and to subscribe to a
religion. Why is this confusing? Because common usage suggests that
membership in a race is not something anyone can control: it is given
in one’s biological and hereditary makeup. Belonging to a religion
is, presumably, a matter of choice. Even though the vast majority of
adherents to the six world-scale religions (Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism) do not choose these
religions, they are theoretically free to choose them or to reject
them, if they wish to do so. Your belief-system is (or ideally may be)
optional, your biology certainly is not. Yet "Jew" denotes
an identity that includes both racial determination and religious
persuasion as simultaneously given, interrelated factors.
(NOTE: I am well aware of the objection that could be raised here:
namely, to be born a Jew, biologically, is not necessarily to
practice Jewish religion. Many people of Jewish descent do not
practice Judaism or hold stock in the traditional beliefs of
the ancient Hebrews. Clearly, someone born a Jew does not automatically
subscribe to Jewish religion but must embrace and practice it by
choice, or by default, the lack of choosing otherwise. In the strict
sense, this is true, of course. But it does not invalidate the argument
I am developing about the confusing connotations of the word
"Jew".)
Like "Jew," the term "humanity" refers to two things
at once, and yet these two things do not automatically belong together.
The term confounds two different senses. In the first sense, humanity
is the common term used by members of the human species for self-naming
in a collective or universal manner. It is the term in use to affirm
that we belong to the species, sapiens, and the genus, homo.
Humanity = homo sapiens = the human species = the "human
race" in the generic sense. This equation is standard and
consistent with the routine use of the term "humanity" in
the biological and evolutionary sense.
But something else is denoted by the term "humanity." It means
a lot more than biological identity, defined according to the taxonomy of
Linneaus. It also indicates a unique quality, or set of qualities, that
we believe distinguish us from other animals. To "show
humanity" does not mean to flash a copper badge with HOMO
SAPIENS engraved on it. It means to express and demonstrate certain
traits, such as compassion and caring, fairness, or the concern for
equality and justice. Humanity is a set of moral qualities
possessed by humanity and only by humanity, by the human species.
To combine the two senses: humanity in the biological sense is
the Species that displays humanity in the moral sense. The
circularity of the definition should be a warning that something in it
has not been adequately specified. A semantic double-bind fuses
biological and moral-ethical factors in the same word. Our definition of
humanity contains a perplexing twist because it assumes what is to be
demonstrated: QED, quod erat demonstratum. And what in this case
is the QED, that which is to be demonstrated, or proven? What is to be
proven is: how the biological Species, homo sapiens, can be uniquely
and exclusively endowed with the moral and ethical qualities attributed
to humanity.
To simplify this conundrum, I propose a change of terminology.
Let’s call the ensemble of moral qualities that singles out
humanity as such by the Latin term inherited by Renaissance humanism
from Pagan philosophy: humanitas. In routine use, humanity is
a term applied both to our species-specific biological makeup and to
our presumed ethical endowment. The problem with the double connotation
is that it makes us assume that the biological component somehow
supports or produces the ethical component — an assumption that
may be gravely misleading. On the face of it, it is doubtful that the
fact that we are biologically human will insure that we act ethically,
in a just and caring way, as humanity is presumed able to act. In fact,
the history of our species demonstrates a pattern of behaviour markedly
biassed to the contrary. For a hige period of time, perhaps since
around 4000 BCE, the human species (or a dominant portion of it) has
consistently and persistently acted in ways that are inhumane, i.e.,
harmful and inethical, if not downright murderous and insane. If
humanity has humanitas, a special endowment to act in a fair-minded
and caring way, it has consistently betrayed its own nature.
Humanitas is what distinguishes the human species as human in the moral
sense. As members of the Species, we can each be said to show humanitas
when we act in a caring and conscientious way, an ethical way, a humane
way. This last word is a helpful addition to our discussion at this
point. Everything the human species does is human, by definition, but
not everything it does is humane. It is widely argued (and it is likely
to be true, I reckon) that in the 20th century humanity
exhibited a massive display of inhumane behavior, previously
unprecedented in scale and intensity. The evidence of experience seems
to be saying that humanitas is an option, but not the dominant option,
in human behavior. To refine the question: it could be argued that
humanitas is the dominant option in human behavior, but not the
dominant expression of behavior in whole societies. I shall have to
reserve discussion of this nuance for another essay.
Here let’s assume that humanitas can be defined by certain
behavioral traits. Neither Linnaeus nor anyone else has named the
specific marks of homo sapiens that would define humanity, but this
is not exactly so. Evolutionary science defines homo sapiens by specific
features such as upright posture, bipedal motion, the opposable thumb,
the capacity for communication through linguistic and symbolic systems,
and most importantly, a three-stage brain that allows for feats of
abstract thinking to an extent not evident in other species. These
are marks of the species in biological terms. Defining humanity in
ethical terms is another matter. It presents a wholly different kind
of challenge. Here is where the notion of humanitas comes decisively
into play.
And here, also, is where belief in humanity comes into play. The
biological features of homo sapiens are not a matter of belief: they are
evidential and can be detected consistently in the behavior of the
species over time and through all manner of cultural and racial
variations. The marks of humanitas are of a different order. They must
be defined, not along biological and anthropological lines, but
according to human convictions. The marks of humanitas are conceived
according to whatever one believes is essential to being human. It is
an act of faith even to believe that humanity, the biological species,
can display humanitas in some unique and exclusive manner.
Belief in the humane marks of the human species is commonly divided into
two distinct views: the radical view expressed in the belief that
humanity possesses unique and exclusive moral traits, and the
relativist view expressed in the belief that humanity shares
moral traits with other species. The radical version of belief in
humanitas is closely aligned to religion and especially to fundamentalist
religious doctrines. It requires a high level of belief — of
"faith" -- to adhere to this view, but the view is prevalent
in human affairs because the assumption that the human species is good
and intelligent, or "blessed" with special traits and
capacities, in ways that other species are not, possesses an atavistic
appeal to human egotism. In short, it proposes the moral superiority of
homo sapiens. According to this view, the human species alone is made in
"the image of the Creator." Despite our notorious violations
of human rights, we enjoy the status of "most favored species."
As such, we are endowed by the Creator with both the power and the right to
dominate and exploit all other species.
This blatant appeal to human megalomania is invariably linked to a
religious narrative in which the creator god dictates the laws of
human behavior; e.g., the Ten Commandments. The humanitas of the species
is insured by following the prescribed moral commandments coming from
above, from beyond the human realm. Behavioral desiderata are
assigned to the human species by dictation, as the species is not
believed to be endowed with these moral imperatives. Humanitas is not
given in the innate potential of the species, so it has to be inculcated
from without. Fundamentalist belief-systems assume that humanity is
sinful by nature and needs to follow the commandments of God to act in
a way that is truly human and humane.
By contrast, the relativist view of what constitutes humanitas is
aligned to a belief in the kinship of all species. Those who hold this
view see in the human species, biologically, just another variant among
the myriad animal creatures inhabiting the earth. The behavioral
ensemble that might uniquely be attributed to homo sapiens —
consisting of fairness, caring, conscience, even forgiveness — is
widely demonstrated in other animals and cannot be assigned exclusively
to humanity, nor can it be taken as the unique signature of human
superiority. There is plenty of direct evidence to support this view
in the behaviour of animals, birds and insects, and so it demands a
lesser degree of pure belief (i.e., credence without rational or
evidential support).
Although the human species may be biologically distinct in certain ways,
"man" is not morally distinct from other animals in kind, but
only in degree. Nor can communication skills be viewed as the distinctive
factor for humanitas. All manner of creatures, from microscopic amoebae
to enormous whales, communicate, and in some rather marvellous ways. Many
non-human species have systems of communication superior to those of
human beings: for instance, flocks of migrating birds collectively use
the magnetic field of the earth in ways that still challenge scientific
understanding. Photosynthesis is an act of communication (information
exchange) between plants and the atmosphere that cannot be duplicated by
human science.
Although language and social organization are brought to a high level of
complexity in the human species, all the rudiments of social exchange
are present in the animal kingdoms, and some animals possess systems of
communication that rival our own. Moreover, no animal species engages in
full-scale warfare on its own kind, or other kinds. No animal species
engages in the equivalent of slavery or economic exploitation of its
fellows. In the relativist view, humanitas is denoted by a set of
behavioral traits that we, the human species, demonstrate in a particular
way, with special nuances and vast extension, but not in any way that
would allow us to claim unique possession of those traits.
Neither view, the radical or the relativist, presents a definition of
humanitas through which we can understand what makes the human truly
human. This is the QED, what is to be demonstrated. Where can we look
for such a demonstration?
Let’s consider again the Children of the Damned, this time
with the possibility in mind of mirroring ourselves in the mutant
progeny of the sci-fi narrative.
The Children are of human biological origin, yet they exhibit certain
alarming traits of behavior, capacities that may be due to meddling by
alien powers. In fact, this theme is nothing new. The notion that the
human species has been mysteriously altered by a more highly evolved
species ( i.e., alien or extraterrestrial entities) is one of the oldest
motifs in world mythology. Clay tablets from Assyria and Babylon, dated
to 1600 BCE, record legends carried down from the Sumerian culture of
an even earlier time. According to the interpretation of Zecharia Sitchin
and others, the tablets contain textual evidence of how the
Annunaki, god-like visitors from outer space, grafted their genes
upon the indigenous human population, called "blackheads."
The result is the lulu, "servant," so-called because
the motive of the gods in genetically upgrading the human species was
to produce a slave race to serve them by menial labor.
According to Joseph Campbell, the notion that humanity is enslaved to
the will of the Creator is particular to Levantine mythology: i.e., the
lore of the Middle East, including Palestine. The slave motif is
incorporated into Judeo-Christian religion, although the idea is often
softened by the interpretation that humanity is intended to be the
"caretaker" in the world provided by the Creator God. The
message carried in this mythological complex is ambigous because the
slave-status involves crossbreeding with a super-evolved or god-like
species. Hence we are children of the Gods, engineered genetically in
accord with the divine image, yet we are damned to live out the inferior
role of slaves. (As I write these words, French geneticist Brigitte
Boissellier is in nearby Brussels to represent the Raelian movement,
a UFO cult founded on the belief that the Elohim of the Old Testament
were Extraterrestrials who genetically seeded the human race on earth.
The Raelians claim to have achieved the first feat of human cloning.)
Genetic modification of the human species does not, apparently, support
humanitas. It seems rather to produce a different set of traits (or
capacities), what might be called the marks of mutant morality. These
are evident in the behavior and attitude of the Children, and they are
also evident in human behavior as we ordinarily know it and exhibit it.
Consider each of the factors in "mutant morality" and note how
we, the human species, clearly exhibit these mutated traits, perhaps even
more strongly and consistently than we exhibit the much-touted humane
marks of humanitas:
Superlearning. The Children learn with astonishing ease and they
absorb vast amounts of information rapidly. Due to our forebrain
circuits, we also learn in ways that extend beyond the instinctual
programming of other species. Compared to other animals, we are indeed
superlearners, especially in two features: our capacity to embrace
novelty, and our capacity to absorb and store vast amounts of
information. Since the dawn of the Electronic Age, wehave been pushing
these capacities to another level by inventing devices called computer
that mimic our learning and information-processing capacities —
and, seemingly, surpass them. On the intellectual level, we exhibit the
mutant traits of the Children to an extreme degree.
Telepathy, mind control. Although person-to-person acts of
mind-reading are rare, mass-mind control and telepathic programming
through the media is the norm for the human species and has been since
Marconi tuned the first radio. Advertising is mind control that uses
telepathic methods. The news media and the entertainment media alike are
instruments of telepathic suggestion and control. Like the Children, we
are deep into the games of behavior modification, so deep that it is
impossible to tell those who are controlling behavior from those who
are being controlled. The Children in the films control their environment
with Nazi-like efficiency, but they are also controlled by the alien
mind-set for which they are instrumental adjuncts.
The power to induce insanity, carried to the point of provoking
suicide. This is the most terrifying power exhibited by the Children.
It is also a power routinely exhibited by the human species, both in
individual cases and on the mass scale. Anyone who have ever been close
to another human being in domestic and familial complicity knows the fear
of being driven insane by this proximity and the demands it carries. In
the behavioral syndrome called "codependency," people routinely
adopt insane behaviour as a way of adapting to each other. Human contact
may produce insanity unless strong antidotes (contact with pet animals,
escape to nature) are applied. We are uniquely the species that commits
suicide (with the exception of lemmings), and whose members drive others
to kill themselves. In any given year, in civilized societies all around
the world, an impressive number of people kill themselves. In the few
remaining indigenous societies, like those found in the Amazon Basin,
native people contronted with the option to become civilized are killing
themselves at an unprecedented rate. Suicide appears in indigenous
societies where it was practically unknown before contact with
colonialist settlers and corporate agents. Indigenous peoples like the
Native Americans were widely reported as saying that the European
settlers who came and decimated them looked and acted insane.
The white man is known for his lies, and lying is known to be an
effective way to drive people to insanity. The Children of the Damned
have nothing over us on this account.
Lack of emotional affect. The zombie-like emotionlessness of the
Children can be observed on any shopping day in any shopping mall
anywhere in the world, or on the streets of any big city such as London.
It is now widely understood that the lack of affect in children and
adults is due to overstimulation by the media. Apparently a positive
feedback loop operates here: the more stimulation applied, the more
stimulation it takes to raise a response. Affect-block has been a
standing joke in therapy circles for over half a century. (The man in
the shrink’s office looks down blankly at the crocodile biting his
leg. The caption says: "Golly, Doctor, it’s really a miracle.
I can feel again.") The lack of affect in the Children is merely a
parody of its human counterpart. If the Children are mutated by an alien
influence, humanity has been mutated by alienation from itself and from
the root of its own feeling-nature.
Regimentation, hive mentality. Since the dawn of the Industrial
Revolution almost three hundred years ago, human populations have become
intensely concentrated in urban areas and the pattern is still increasing
at a geometric rate. News, entertainment and advertising all foster and
enforce a hive mentality in which everyone wants what everyone else wants
(this syndrome has been named "mimetic desire" by anthropologist
Rene Girard). Under the illusion of complete individual freedom, people
are driven into mindless rote and behavioral regimentation. The hive
mentality is exhibited in countless ways. One notable example: the use of
cell-phones by everyone from the age of eight to eighty, the frantic
exchange of "text messages" and, with the next generation of
mobile phone technology, snapshots sent and received by the handset, etc.
Of course, the Children rely on telepathy without electronic gear to
support it. This will apply for humanity as well, as soon as the
technocrats work out how to wire everyone into the system with cybernetic
implants and computer networks that operate on circuits printed in
carbon (the stardust of which human flesh is made) rather than in silicon
(presumably the flesh of alien bodies).
The lethal glaring eyes. Like the stare of the Children, the
human gaze may in some bizarre and extreme manner be fatal to what it
beholds. This is a frightening prospect, but the evidence is ample that
almost everything subject to human attention is also a target for human
consumption. Land, water, air — as soon as it is seen, surveyed,
measured, it is ready to be consumed and exploited. This trait in homo
sapiens, so aptly symbolized by the lethal gaze of the Children, may
belie the inability of our species to set limits for itself. Eyes that
do not recognize the natural boundaries of things and processes are
certainly "alien" eyes, because all other creatures in the
natural habitat do recognize and observe the given boundaries that
Sacred Nature has so carefully and variously inscribed. The pale green
laser eyes of the Children may indeed be a haunting reflection of the
unique capacity of human being to exceed their limits and destroy their
own life-giving habitat.
We are the Children of the Damned. In modern times the human
species exhibits traits of a mutated behavior more clearly and
consistently that it exhibits the behavioral ensemble that might
define humanitas. Children of the Damned presents a frightening
reflection of the human condition, but the story has a happy ending.
Well, sort of.
The female protagonist in Village of the Damned is the teacher
in the small town elementary school. Her son is one of the mutants. As
a mother and a woman dedicated to educating youngsters, she is especially
attentive to the behavior of the Children. She notices that her son
displays some traits of kindness and caring, although only in a fleeting
way. In one instance, he relents and shows humane concern while the rest
of the Children stay cruelly bent on doing harm. A conflict arises with
the man who presents the "love interest" for the teacher, for
he is convinced that the mutants cannot be converted to humane behavior
and so must be destroyed. At the end of the film, the man destroys
himself and the classroom of mutants, but the woman escapes with her
son. The last scene shows them driving away from the town in her car.
Crucial is the mother’s role as a teacher. Upon glimpsing some
evidence of humane concern in her son, she discerns a paramount
possibility: humanity can be taught to the Children. This plot-factor
in the sci-fi narrative redeems it from total horror and leaves the
story-line open for a sequel. It also suggests what might be the sequal
of our story, the human adventure recorded in history extending over
some six thousands years.
The sequel for us might consist in this: upon waking up in the
21st century we discover that we exhibit the mutated behavior
on a mass scale. We are shocked into the realization that humanitas is
not only achievable, but must be achieved, if our species is to
survive.
If this is the prospective moral of the sc-fi story, it is a pretty good
one, a sober and inspiring one. How the moral might be applied depends
on the belief of the woman protagonist that humanity can be
taught. I would propose that these four words present the basis
for a definition of humanity that we have not so far formualted, either
in radical or relativist terms.
"Humanity can be taught" is a trick phrase that includes both
the biological and the moral aspects of the word "humanity,"
but does not confound them. These four words can be read in two distinct
ways. In the first way, the phrase asserts that the biological species,
homo sapiens, can be taught. Hence humanitas consists, at the biological
level, in the teachability of our species, its unique capacity to learn.
In the second way, the phrase indicates what the species can be
taught: how to act in a humane manner. To expand the phrase to its full
significance: homo sapiens is the species that can be taught
humanity. This might serve for the definition of humanity strictly
and exclusively on human terms. What makes us homo sapiens in the moral
sense, and what defines humane behavior, is the ability to teach and
learn humanitas. The endowment that distinguishes the human species is
not an innate potential to behave morally, but a potential to learn
moral (i.e., sane, kind, wise, self-regulated) behavior.
There is an ethos peculiar to our species, but is not given potentially
in our genetic makeup: only the capacity to formulate the ethos and
transmit it through teaching is given. This is a crucial distinction
and a most liberating one. Why? Because it gets us off the hook of the
old dilemma about whether or not "human nature" is innately
disposed to good behavior. To assert that humanity can be taught to act
for the good does not require that we believe in innate goodness, or
disbelieve in it, either. If acting for the good can be learned,
it does not have to reside in us as an inborn capacity as such, but in
the capacity to learn. This is the crucial and capital distinction.
So we, the human species, are damned (prone to deviation) and we
are exceptionally gifted, because we can learn from our deviation
and find the true course of evolution for our species.
The definition of humanity I am here proposing does not confine us
exclusively to learning from, or because of, our deviation. In
the broad sense, humanitas is the capacity to teach and learn over a wide
and ever-changing range of experiences. It does seem, however, that we
have an exceptional opportunity to learn humanitas from the ways we
can deviate from it. If the deviations do not go unnoticed and
uncorrected, that is.
One of the key principles of Gnostic philosophy
was self-correction. This principle applies beautifully to the situation
facing us, the Children of the Damned.
jll: January 2003 |
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