3 Body Problem "Foresees" Our Future...?
Published in 2006 The 3 Body Problem Portends What We Are Experiencing Now
"Death's End" is a science fiction novel written by Chinese author Liu Cixin. It’s the third book in the “Remembrance of Earth's Past” trilogy", following "The Three-Body Problem" and "The Dark Forest". The novel was originally published in Chinese in 2006 and was later translated into English in 2016.
The novel received critical acclaim for its ambitious scope, complex characters, and thought-provoking ideas. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015, making Liu Cixin the first Asian author to win the award. Also now a TV series is coming to Netflix in March 2024. Watch the trailer.
I’ve loved Science Fiction my entire life, well since I was about 12 I guess. I greatly appreciate how the genre can usher us into pondering existential questions. From George Orwell who warned us about authoritarianism to William Gibson illustrating how advanced technology could alter us. (Which is why I’m writing a sci-fi serial here on Substack). Cixin brings up many parallels in all 3 novels in his series that delve into major issues that surfaced during our last 8 years in politics & society as well as our distant and sometimes sordid past. Cixin does seem to have a grasp of human psychology and sociology and something of a prescient mind. However, the one section that struck me in my reading yesterday is this quote.
“The era for humanity’s degenerate freedom is over”—became a common slogan, and discarded dregs from the history of ideas, including fascism, crawled out of their tombs to the surface and became mainstream. The power of religions also recovered, and people gathered into different faiths and churches. Thus, theocracy, a zombie even more ancient than totalitarianism, reanimated itself.”
Liu, Cixin. Death's End: 3 (The Three-Body Problem Series) (p. 208). Tor Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Right now, here in America even, we see fascism & theocracy on the march. “Zombie ideas from our ancient past” are rising from the grave to plague us again. As the author illustrates, because of major crises these “discarded dregs” from history can tend to come back to haunt us. It seems human societies have progressed, thrived, and then collapsed for many centuries. You may be astounded to see how many books and articles are being written about the collapse of civilization. See a taste of that in this article by author Bruce Nappi.
Boy, do we have crises! Prominent philosophers and sociologists are calling this time in history a Metacrisis or Polycrisis. Jesse Damiani does a good job of explaining this here. Because of the relative chaos and division, it’s apparent that humans haven’t learned to handle a major crisis let alone a slew of them.
Daniel Schmachtenberger is one of the deep thinkers on this subject that I respect. He talks here about the psychological drivers behind the Metacrisis. Although it is a complex issue, I’ve come to frame it in more simple terms than these scientists. To do this I use a bit of metaphor and allude to some of the basic drivers of human nature and therefore human conflict.
I think our difficulty in addressing our Metacrisis in a sane and reasoning way is because of our “lizard brains”. We often react to existential danger by circling the wagons into our safest identity-affirming tribal affiliations… and then we fight. It’s been this way since we lived in caves.
The troublemaker is the “identity-affirming” part. Our lizard brain will stop at nothing to defend our identities when they’re threatened. Our primal brains over-rule our frontal reasoning brains because we are very afraid of losing our identities. The culture wars raging across Western society are testimony to this. Ironically they used to call America the “great melting pot”, but when it gets really hot we tend to jump out of the pot into the fire.
“We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” ~Jimmy Carter
Would that this were so. Was it ever so? I think the “beautiful mosaic” is falling apart. We are failing the test. The angels of our “better nature” are being smothered by our malignant tribalism. Even those who claim to “live by the Bible” have forgotten what it means to “love one another” or “love your neighbor as yourself”.
Not only do we have crises, but we also have crisis deniers who just seem to make shit up so they can fight about it. I mean, “the heck with science, am I right?” Then there are the manipulators who use crises to take advantage of others. Selfish people who want riches and/or power. Oligarchs anyone? Others even long for crises to get worse because they think they’ll come out on top. The probable Republican nominee for president is hoping the economy crashes so he can win the 2024 election. Seems to me that resentment and hatred - lizard brain activity - are what drive that attitude. Which tribe are you in? Self-reflection time.
I like to say I’m in the Reality tribe, which when you think about it, is no tribe at all. Beyond tribalism and lizard-brain thinking. This means my understanding of what’s going on is based on substantiated facts. Not beliefs. Not conspiracy theories and not any religious faith or tribal groupthink, and especially not driven by a cultish devotion to a person or ideology. To be in the Reality “tribe”, you have to work at it every day. First, you need to tame your lizard brain so it can’t take over your reasoning mind. Then you need to deeply understand human psychology & sociology so you can’t be manipulated. Finally, it would be best if you came to a place of mature autonomy where you didn’t need a tribe to authenticate or affirm your identity. (My Emotional Integration Section is devoted to this endeavor). I spent many years working on my sanity, maturity, autonomy, and understanding, at 71 I still study voraciously as well as practicing deep self-reflection. It’s well worth it.
Our social regression into fear-based politics and tribalism is extremely saddening to me. It creates the kind of existential angst that is consuming at times. I hope that we can take these trying times and instead of reacting, we can grasp the lessons within it and rise to meet them with courage, maturity, and goodwill for our fellow humans. Embracing our challenges and crises could create a new, more conscious society. We just might make it through. We would need to give up the tribalism and fear to do it.
Barring that, maybe aliens will attack Earth at which point we will band together, maybe?