We Are Not The Enemy
This is the story of a film I made during the tumult of 2020. It’s now an official music video for myself and my friends’ band Prisoners of Neptune. What follows is my interpretation of its meaning.
The idea that humans, and human activity is somehow separate from nature has bothered me since I was a child. Indisputably, we are made of — and by — nature. Everything we have done to advance ourselves, and/or diminish the planet, nature has done, through us. Any destruction we have wrought is not of our own separate domain, somehow divorced from the rest of reality.
We are no saints, and neither is she. She certainly masquerades a sense of harmony from time to time, gently building more and more complexity, as species, ecosystem and life — us — arise. Always seemingly so well-balanced, the work of a master. Then suddenly, more cruelly perhaps than the most heinous of our warmongers, she will conjure a cataclysm of planetary proportions — an asteroid, a rogue planet, the death of a star — wiping out all she has carefully built for millions of years, in moments. Leaving any life remaining to suffer, rebuild again, or perish. She has done this many times, and will continue to do so, possibly forever. Nature herself — our mother — gave us life and yet is also capable of worse atrocities than any enemy we have created, let alone might imagine. We must accept this, and keep it in the forefront of our minds, if we are to survive.
Were nature conscious of her actions, we might even think of her as holding ill-intent. Certainly, our ancestors did at times. But it would appear her only chance at gaining enough consciousness to harness and manage her powers, has arisen through us. Through this apparently rare opportunity, we become her eyes, her ears, her thinking mind. Ultimately, her morals and intent. Before us, she was blind, deaf, unconscious. Yet moving, growing, building, destroying—apparently all innocently. A machine, ploughing through existence, bound by the natural forces, bound by nothing else. Cold and emotionless, bursting with inevitability. Unchallenged. To this end, we are the only ones who can be responsible here. Responsible not only for our actions, but for hers. For our united fates, together.
Is the overwhelming magnitude of this, why we sometimes — like an echo of the past — cower beneath her? Even now, some of us — pretending she has no dark side — imagine ourselves as unworthy, contaminating, a blight upon her perfection. And yet simultaneously, so much more enlightened than her that we could believe ourselves legitimate to cast such a judgement.
But we cannot escape this responsibility consciousness has burdened us with. That is a path leading only to destruction, not only of our life, but of every life we know, as assuredly as we all sit here together, unprepared for the next planetary cataclysm. In this sense we are superior. We have the ability to think and reason, to hold awareness of our choices, to weigh them against each other, to examine, explore, communicate our findings, to create and build with purpose, to discover the limits of which nature is capable, and as a result, guide and shape her future. Shape the future. Many other forms of life on this planet have some of these abilities in varying quantities. But, only we humans seem to have enough of them in sufficient amounts, to stand any real chance of wrangling our shared destiny from this fatally-negligent parent.
However, what we may have to build to fully realise this has its own dangers.
Our conscious progress has reached a surely inevitable point, where it becomes apparent that the survival of present life on this planet not only depends upon our consciousness, but upon what some of us have thus far deemed — derogatorily — “unnatural”. Our complex, intricate arrangements of sand and earth, our computers, our machines — and us, together — are the greatest ongoing hope any planetary life has of being saved from extinction. Of shielding our world and its myriad splendours— somehow — from natures next inevitable onslaught.
But these machines, as a fundamental aspect of their evolution, are coalescing to the point they are becoming massively more capable than we are, and possibly without our billions of years —an evolutions-worth — of innate lessons and hesitancies. More powerful, yet somehow ignorant. Massive, but heartless. Superhuman; inhuman. The prospect is frightening. Will these machines overcome us? Will they, as would nature in her unyielding machinations, bring us the same destruction we sought to avoid? We ask an age-old question of futurism now tangibly: can a machine, built by a human, ever be truly conscious?
I posit: yes, it can. It is by definition of our consciousness. There is nothing about our arrangement of elements and natural reactions that separates us from the rest of reality. In as much as nature is, we are already machines. Everything must be considered — perhaps, inconveniently — as holding the same potential for consciousness as us, for it would deeply appear that we, and everything, is made of the same parts, bound within the same forces.
There is of course the idea that there is more to us, that we are more special than “just” riding the peak of the wave of billions of years of evolution. That there might also be some ineffable “spirit”, and who knows? Maybe there is. It would seem impossible to prove, for as soon as it were to be done, the goal would surely be moved higher, to yet another layer of the undetectable, revealing the purpose of the idea: fostering “faith”. But, how useful has a terminally-elusive promise of faith actually been to us? It may be comforting at times, but it has also been tremendously, destructively divisive. More so perhaps than any other single idea. Has it done more good, or more harm? The answer may be as obvious as it is difficult to accept. Let us set this idea aside for a moment. Let us focus on what we know.
We know that we are built from the same substances we build our machines from. Further, there is only one source of all material available to build anything from, and so it may be said that there is only one fundamental, tangible material in this universe: the eternal dust of the stars.
Ultimately, we — and any mechanisms we build — are crafted by leading hands; the same that have built all of existence. These are the natural forces. From everything we have been able to ascertain — from our great multi-millennial legacy of exploration — all existence has arisen from only these two aspects: stardust, and its laws. The magic they conjure surrounds us. Is us.
I made this film as an exploration of this, an affirmation of what I have long felt — that we are not separate, nor above, nor below nature. That all we create, is natural. Whether what we create is useful, sustainable, or advisable is a separate issue. Let us not conflate them, for in so doing we divide ourselves from truth, and elevate nature higher than her demonstrable level of consciousness thus far may deserve. Therein lies a grave danger, that we squander our chance to guide her, seduced by the fantasy some mystical superior being will do it for us. But for all our apparent mistakes, we are as close as anything appears to have come to a being this superior. For all her apparent perfection, nature is incomplete. Only we can see where she cannot, and only she can teach what we do not know. In our successes or failures, we are inseparable, bonded forever. Together; we are the one thing there is. We are bound within, supported by, beholden to, and finally — simply — of; nature.
We are two aspects of the same mirror. Reflection, gazing upon itself.
Even divided so, we are one.
We are not the enemy.
Music
Prisoners of Neptune
Writer / Director
Anthony Milas
AI-Generated Faces
https://thispersondoesnotexist.com
Thanks
Jonathan Dower, Masud Milas, Hamdani Milas, Amy Nguyen
Albums
1. Prisoners of Neptune (2019) — contains the track from this video*
2. Mirror World (2020)
* There are two Mirror World’s. One is a track from Prisoners of Neptune’s self-titled first album. The other is the title of Prisoners of Neptune’s second album.
Band Links
Official Website
Apple Music
Spotify
Fair Use Notice
All video footage is either licensed, believed to be public domain, or original (and released without limitation). This video is intended as a work of documentary. Fair use applies.
