Bioethics Forum Essay
The Benign Zombies of Pluribus
Whatever disagreements neuroethicists have, they all presuppose the annoying multiplicity of brains that somehow generate minds. Not so in Vince Galligan’s new streaming series Pluribus.
A coded message from deep space is the trigger for turning (nearly) all human beings into segments of a “hive mind,” a global super colony that the sociobiologist E.O. Wilson would have recognized from his work on ants. And wouldn’t you know it, those nerdy scientists hanging on every radio impulse from the universe in search of intelligent life provide the gateway to a radical loss of individuality. Thus the SETI geeks enter a long tradition of fictional scientists who unleash forces that quickly run out of control.
The results are mixed: No war, no violence, no racism or sexism. Also, no personal uniqueness. Is it worth it?
Suspiciously benign messages from space are nothing new in science fiction. Aliens tried to save us from impending atomic doom in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). In one of the Twilight Zone’s most famous episodes, “To Serve Man” (1962), the friendly aliens offering free vacations on their delightful home world turn out to be interplanetary foodies in search of a new dish. Stephen Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) traded on suspicions that the abducted humans in his film were also destined for the dining room table or worse, but these musically inclined aliens turned out to have good intentions. Whew.
Hives can give you chills. In Star Trek the Borg’s goal in life is to incorporate all the intelligent creatures in the universe. Like the terrestrial zombies in Night of the Living Dead (1968), World War Z (2013), The Last of Us (2023), or the hundreds of others in the genre, the Borg are pretty scary.
Not in Pluribus, though. The former individuals are not only marvelously well-coordinated in their actions, efficiently clearing up remains of their fellows and other unpleasant organic human debris, they are also so damn nice. Because all are one, they are loathe to cause harm, even to the few who have for some reason not become part of the hive. Maybe these creatures are soulless apart from the collective self, but they are subject to shock and mass death among their members if they perceive hostility directed their way.
One suspects that Galligan is making a statement about the hive mind of the internet. Unlike the world of Pluribus, the World Wide Web is a poorly integrated space because in its anonymity the worst individual impulses can express themselves. The suffering of one is not felt by all. Some Eastern philosophies, as well as the thought of Arthur Schopenhauer, view this lack of appreciation of the reality of our oneness as a tragic delusion.
Nonetheless, the dozen or so survivors in Pluribus have quite varied reactions to their outcast state. Some, like the main character, fight against the dimming of uniqueness, while others aren’t so bothered, confusing numerical individuality with the real thing. Or maybe they’re fine with that until they realize that the hive really doesn’t care about individual survival so long as the super-colony endures. Not to mention that the bespoke hive menu is kind of repulsive; think Soylent Green (1973).
Like all such speculations Pluribus raises countless questions. How did this actually happen and why, if one member of the hive gets drunk, the whole hive doesn’t? How does the hive reproduce when old-fashioned copulation is incestuous because all one’s relatives are part of the hive? Yuk.
Such questions are well-suited for neuroethicists who take it all too seriously. Like you, and you, and you.
Unlike the hive, you know who you are.
Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD, is an emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a fellow of the Hastings Center for Bioethics.
