The musical group, R.E.M.’s
most popular song is arguably “Losing My Religion.” The first two lines of the
lyrics are, “Life, it’s bigger; It’s bigger than you.” It’s bigger even than
our homo sapiens species. I sing that song periodically in karaoke, though as too
many people in charge of karaoke are corrupt in that they slide in their
friends, new arrivals, and even regulars into rather than at the end of the
line, I go less and less often. To an ethicist, corruption even on that small
level is intolerable, as indeed the mentality of such a DJ is culpable. It is
easy to commit the fallacy of anthropomorphizing unethical, sordid intent onto
other species, especially with regard to their biological need to feed in order
to survive. In the film, Life
(2017), astronauts, a physician, and a scientist on board a space-station
orbiting Earth wisely avoid precisely that fallacy even though a species from
Mars being cultivated by Hugh Derry, the scientist, feeds on all but one of the
six humans on board.
At one point, Hugh tells the
others regarding the animal, “Calvin doesn’t hate us, but he has to kill us to
survive.” That is to say, the organism’s apparently aggressive actions against
the humans are sourced in biological necessity rather than hatred. Like Krishna’s
line in the Hindu myth, The Bhagavad-Gita, “I am time; I am the destroyer
of worlds,” so there’s no need to have ethical scruples about fighting against
relatives and former teachers in a civil war because from the deity’s perspective
those who are fated to die are already dead, destruction is part of the essence
of life, at least in the animal kingdom.
The Martian organism is very
unusual from the standpoint of biology as we know it. As he is cultivating the
nascent, very small organism, Hugh is astonished because every cell is muscle
and “eye.” What he does not yet realize is that every cell contains high
intelligence. Not that each cell is “a brain,” for even though the organism is highly
intelligent, it does not have cellular complexity, as in having specialized
organs. Being an “advanced” organism and yet with basically undifferentiated
cells goes against biological principles here on Earth. The rapid increase in
the organism’s size each time it feeds on first a rat and then the crew is also
something unexplainable to the crew on board. That the creature is a danger not
only to the humans on board, but also to our species should it land on our
planet is, however, something that the crew grasps early on when the creature
crushes one of Hugh’s hands/forearms. Even so, Hugh emphasizes that the
creature is not maliciously trying to destroy the crew; the intent is merely to
survive, biologically. This lesson has implications in how we interpret attacks
by animals such as grizzly bears and sharks.
Since the film, Jaws (1975), it has been
easy to assume that great white sharks are violent, aggressive animals that
attack humans with malicious intent. After all, the shark attacks Quint’s boat.
“We’re going to need a bigger boat” is one of the most iconic lines in movie
history. The shark even “climbs” onto the tilting boat to kill Quint as if the
two were antagonists. In the end, Brody, Amityville’s sheriff who is on board, blows
the shark to smithereens. The enemy is finally defeated. But in real life,
sharks do not view us enemies; rather, shark bites, which are rare, are the
result of sharks mistaking us for something like seals, which are in a shark’s
diet. This is part of the oceanic food-chain, rather than an instance of two
antagonists facing off in a dual, or an aggressor maliciously trying to kill humans.
In June, 2024, the first fatal
shark attack off the island of Oahu in Hawaii in two decades took the life of a
popular lifeguard. More typically, tiger sharks attack off Maui. On December
30, 2023, for instance, Jason Carter was surfing when a tiger shark “suddenly
attacked. The shark just started biting him and pull him down . . .,” a witness
said.[1]
This description, especially the use of the words, “suddenly,” “just started,”
and “pull him down” may connote a malicious intent rather than the shark simply
beginning to eat what it took to be food. Whereas implying unethical intent may
make for titillating news reporting for marketing purposes, the unintended
byproduct may be that people blame sharks as if that species were out to exterminate
our species.
So it is notable that in the film, even as the Martian animal is seeking out humans on board to feed, and thus to survive biologically, the crew does not lapse into assuming that the organism is trying to exterminate the crew out of sheer aggressiveness. If anything, it is our species that kills out of spite, and for other sordid reasons; we even hunt for sport, as if killing were fun. No shark bites off a human arm or leg because doing so is fun. On August 14, 2013, “20-year-old Jana Lutteropp was snorkling at White Rock Beach in Makena when a shark bit off her arm . . . 50 yards off shore. Pat Briney, 57, was in a kayak fishing between Maui and Molokini on Dec. 2, 2013, when a shark bit his right leg as it dangled over the edge. . . . Briney died as a tour boat operator brought him to shore.”[2] Those sharks were no doubt hungry, rather than biting human limbs for sport or out of a sense that we are a danger to sharks.
Life has a habit of instinctually going on living, and thus doing what is necessary to survive. Life will find a way, and the Martian animal in the film is so intelligent that it not only survives, but quite intelligently gets to Earth by overcoming the physician, David Jordon, who gets the creature into a rescue vehicle in order to take the organism deep into space rather than to Earth. In the film at least, we are not the wisest species.
2. Ibid.
