Freedom Is Endangered But Not Extinct

In the last post I talked about the sci-fi series Extinct, created by Orson  Scott Card for BYU TV. There’s another theme I’d like to look at from that series—about freedom, or free will.

There are, among the few people who have been brought back to life 400 years after the extinction of humans, who are different from the handful who are the protagonists. This other group is called skin riders. There is a parasite, appearing as a glowing lump on the back of the neck, that joins with the human body. Ezra’s brother (from earlier earth days) is one of them; in fact, Silas is their leader.

The skin riders search out the humans, capture them, and try to make them join up.

In episode 2, Ezra has evaded the larger group of skin riders, and ambushes Silas alone. He overpowers Silas, and checks the glowing thing on the back of his neck. Here’s their first conversation [Ep2 40:58]:

Ezra tries to find out what has happened to his brother.
Screen shot from Season 1 Episode 2

Ezra: What is that?

Silas: Don’t hurt it. I’ll die if you do.

Ezra: What have they done to you?

Silas: Opened my mind. [others arrive] Don’t kill him!

Jaz: I won’t. [strikes Ezra, scene goes black. Ezra wakes at night near a campfire.]

Silas: If you try to run, I’ll call the others. You wouldn’t get far. I sent Jax to find your friend. (Ezra checks his own neck) We haven’t injected you. Jax wanted to, but…  I think it’s best if you choose to join us.

Ezra: I’ll pass.

Silas: Four hundred years and you haven’t changed. Nobody can teach you anything.

Ezra: Did the Sparks remake you?

Silas: The Sparks? Fascinating, aren’t they? How they can make anything—humans, clothing, a bologna sandwich, albeit a soggy one.

Ezra: That thing on the back of your neck—It’s alive, isn’t it?

Silas: A companion. It teaches me, comforts me, connects me to my brothers and sisters.

Ezra: I’m your brother, Silas.

Silas: You were. Join us and you will be again.

Ezra: It controls you.

Silas: Does knowledge control you? That’s what the companion provides. If I need to know how to start a fire, it shows me. It’s a gift!

Ezra: Can you remove it?

Silas: Why would I want to?

Ezra: Because it’s turned you into someone else.

Silas: Someone better, yes. What was I to you before, other than a disappointment? Now look at me. A leader. A spiritual advisor. I’m worth something now.

[flashback scene]

Ezra: You weren’t a disappointment, Silas.

Silas: Bankrupt at 20?

Ezra: Because you hired all those people, and you didn’t have the heart to let ‘em go when you should have. It makes you a bad businessman, not a bad person.

Silas: Doesn’t matter. I’m the person I want to be now.

Ezra: A slave?

Silas: A servant.

Ezra: Let me take you to the Sparks. They can heal you.

Silas: And go back to what I was?

Ezra: What you were was a better man, Silas.

Silas: My companion is very tired. (signals for Ezra to escape)

It appears, in a moment of weakness, the real Silas was able to come through, and that’s why he lets Ezra escape.

In Episode 4, Ezra’s wife, Lynn, is reconstituted (brought back to life as a human), but is quickly taken captive by the skin riders. She escapes but is eventually retaken. Somewhere in the sequence, one of the skin riders was killed by one of the other humans. At the moment Lynn is brought to Silas, he is going through a ritual about the dead man, removing his parasite (crystal in his neck), so his memories can be preserved. Anyway, Silas gives us this description of what that “Companion” does for them:

Silas: The humans kill our brother with one touch of their weapon. We offer them a companion to choose for them, to remove from them the burden of discipline and self-mastery, guilt, and shame. We offer them guaranteed joy, and they give us this.

He’s not, apparently, interested in the life and memories of the human, but of the parasite that inhabited him.

In episode 5, Silas is trying to persuade Lynn to voluntarily become injected with the parasite/companion. He starts out gently telling her how normal and improved they are. But when she asks what happens if she refuses to join them, the answer is pretty threatening.

Later he brings in a red drone, and produces a hologram of Lynn and Ezra’s daughter, but the hologram quickly disappears [Ep 5 12:38]:

Lynn: Is this what you’ve become? Cruel?

Silas: Death is cruel, Lynn. It rips us from those we care about, and buries them away forever. But what if I told you there was a way to connect with the dead? To see and feel their memories and knowledge whenever you needed them? Not with a machine, but with your mind?

Lynn: The crystal in your neck—

Silas: Always so smart. The crystal is the mind of an organism we call “a Companion.” It’s a friend, a counselor. But the human brain keeps getting in the way. Reactions are slower, decisions are muddled. There’s resistance.

Lynn: What do you want from me?

Silas: The drone and the Sparks wove the neural pathways in our brains. I want to block some of them, to give greater control to the Companion.

Lynn: I’m not a brain surgeon. I can’t help you.

Silas: I don’t need a surgeon, Lynn. I need a test subject. [pulls out a vial with a sharp end meant for injecting] You prick yourself. The companion does the rest. Once it’s taken root and you’re one of us, we can begin with the drone.

Jax: You should just stick her and get on with it.

Silas: You underestimate Lynn, Jax. She always makes the right choice.

But it’s not much later, a day or less, when he comes back and tries more persuasion [Ep5 23:26]:

Silas has Lynn captive.
Screen shot from Season 1 Episode 5

Silas: You still haven’t chosen to join us.

Lynn: Still weighing the pros and cons.

Silas: You haven’t changed, Lynn.

Lynn: Wish I could say the same for you.

Silas: You don’t know what you’re rejecting. You could be one with the Community.

Lynn: I’m one with my husband. That’s enough for me.

Silas: Technically, he’s no longer your husband. You were married “until death do you part,” remember?

Lynn: I remember. I remember you were his best man. And I remember the toast you gave. That you had everybody laughing one moment, and most of us crying the next. Because everyone knew you loved your brother. That’s what I remember. Do you?

Silas: I remember my knees shaking, my voice almost cracking, my heart pounding. Because I was weak and fragile. Now I’m not. I’m beginning to think you’re not going to make the right choice here, Lynn.

Lynn: I’m never going to join you, Silas. I’ll never give up who I am.

[he stabs her in the arm with the vile]

Silas: I didn’t want to have to do that. You’re angry right now, but when you have your Companion, we’ll have a good laugh about this. About how much fuss you made. Sleep well.

There’s a line in The Princess Bride where the Grandpa interrupts the story to say, “She doesn’t get eaten by eels at this time.” So, like that, I’ll say, she doesn’t become a skin rider at this time.

What I’m interested in, in these interchanges, are the enticements from the skin riders, through Silas. He offers freedom from error, freedom from weakness, freedom from “the burden of discipline and self-mastery, guilt, and shame.”

This is very much like the choice from the Council in Heaven—Lucifer’s plan. “I will take away your ability to make bad choices.” But that takes away humanness, and with it the ability to choose to be a good human being, leaving something far inferior.

Silas makes a show of offering a “choice,” but the choice isn’t really there; give in to having your self taken, or your self will be taken.

So, I was thinking of this “choice,” when I read an opinion piece from the New York Times called “WhyAre Millennials Wary of Freedom?” by Clay Routledge.

There are some disturbing statistics from the World Values Survey, the Pew Research Center, and other surveys:

·         Only 30% of Americans born after 1980 believe democracy (rule by the people) is essential, compared to 72% of older Americans.

·         In 2011 24% of young adults think democracy is a bad idea; they would prefer to be ruled over.

·         40% of millennials believe government should control speech they find offensive (not profanity, but rather ideas they disagree with).

·         20% or more of students of either party believed it was acceptable for student groups to use violence to prevent speech on a college campus that they disapprove of.

Routledge offers an explanation for why young adults have so little respect for freedom: “I propose that the answer is fear—the ultimate enemy of freedom.”

The Spherical Model can give us some perspective here. People who have not been brought up to understand the blessings of freedom live in the southern hemisphere, oscillating between chaotic tyranny and statist tyranny, unaware of the entire northern hemisphere of freedom. Those who seek power create, or at least point out, the chaos, accentuate its danger, and then promise to make everything calm. “Allow us to rule over you, and we’ll make what you’re scared of go away. But, if you don’t choose to be ruled by us, we’ll force you to.” That last part gets left unsaid, but it’s there in every tyranny.

As Reagan once said,

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

Freedom isn’t extinct yet, here in our world. But if those statistics are an indicator, it’s on the endangered list.

If you have any influence over a young person, let them know that real freedom is not freedom from financial concerns, interpersonal challenges, or “the burden of discipline and self-mastery, guilt, and shame.” Let them know what real freedom is for: to thrive, grow, and live a fully human, happy and sometimes painful but meaningful life.

Agency

There’s a word you might not be in the habit of using, at least in this particular way—that will help in understanding direction, either up toward civilization or down toward savagery.

Agency, sometimes combined with the word free, as in free agency, is our word for the day. You’ve probably encountered it when sports professionals leave a team and become free agents, open to a contract with another team. That might be the limit of how you've used it. Unless you’re Mormon. We talk about the word a lot, to mean “the ability and privilege God gives us to choose and ‘to act for [ourselves] and not to be acted upon.’”[i]

There’s a story—the oldest story—behind the concept of agency, from before the world was made. It’s the story John Milton refers to in Paradise Lost. It’s in the Bible, in Jude; Revelation 12; Job 38; Isaiah 14; as well as some additional Mormon scripture: Doctrine and Covenants 29 and 76; Pearl of Great Price books of Moses and Abraham.

Satan, banished from Heaven, to the earth
Paradise Lost illustration by Gustave Dore

That is to say, I am not coming up with this out of whole cloth. With that prelude, here’s my retelling.

Long ago, before the world was, God the Father met in heaven with his spirit children to present His plan. He would create a world for His children, where they could receive a body, learn to choose right from wrong, and progress as His children. The plan included choosing to go to the earth, which would be separated from God’s presence, where the children would be tested and tried. And because they would make errors, and be no longer perfectly clean, they would need a way back, so there would be a Savior provided, who would live a perfect life and then suffer for the sins of the world, overcoming death and opening the way for all who repented to return to heaven, to their Father.

Father asked who would be willing to become our Savior. There were two responses.

One was from the spirit brother we called Lucifer, who said, “Send me. I will make sure no children are lost. I will take from them their agency—their free will—so they will make no mistakes and can all return unchanged. But I insist that, for my success, I be given all the glory.”

Another said, “Send me. I will follow Thy plan, and the glory be Thine.” This was the spirit brother we call Jesus Christ. The Father chose the Son who would follow His plan. It was essential to His plan that His children be given their agency, so that they would learn to choose good over evil. That is the only way they could become more than they were in the beginning. God would force no one back to Heaven.

Lucifer was angry that Father did not forego His original plan and go with Lucifer’s pointless, no-growth plan. And Lucifer rebelled against the Father. It may be that, because he was unwilling to suffer for the sins of others, he assumed no one would do such a thing—so the only workable way was to take away free will, to coerce. Or it may be simply that he was looking for a way to gain glory without sacrifice—the first con, trying to get something for nothing.[ii]

He used his persuasion to gain many followers—one third of the hosts of heaven. These chose never to be born to the earth, and to rebel against God. For this they were cast out of heaven. They are the cause of evil we face on this earth—trying to make us miserable like unto themselves. Their leader, Lucifer, is called Satan here. He continues to try to take away our agency—convincing us we have no control over our passions, no control over any good coming in our lives, no control over addictive substances and behaviors.

He is subtle and cunning. But he can only gain our free agency if we give it up to him.

So, how does this relate to the Spherical Model? Coercion is a southern hemisphere quality. You can’t use coercion to get to the northern hemisphere. Coercion is used by people who either aren’t aware there is a northern hemisphere, and think the only options are between chaotic tyranny and statist tyranny; or who crave to be the controllers and therefore want to stay in the southern hemisphere of tyranny, widespread poverty (except for the elite controllers), and savagery.

For the northern hemisphere, where you find prosperity and civilization, people have to choose to rule themselves. Never in history has a nonreligious or anti-religious people succeeded in self-rule. Individuals, a critical mass of them, have to choose to govern themselves. Government that is granted only limited powers—to protect the God-given rights of the self-governing people—is useful. But, as with fire, requires careful control.

Freedom is required in order to choose goodness. Chosen goodness is required for prosperity to spread and grow. Chosen goodness is required for civilization to develop and spread.

Where there is coercion, there is savagery. No religion or government that coerces adherence can be God’s way; that is Satan’s way. Existence of coercion is a way to tell whether a way of thinking fits in the southern or northern hemisphere.

The most powerful disciplinary tool of a religion should be excommunication, so that the religion can determine its consistent doctrines. But a religion shouldn’t have the right to inflict physical punishment or imprisonment, and certainly not death.

So, the Inquisition, as far as we can tell from history, which used torture to coerce adherence, was savage. Enslaving the nonbelievers in ancient Egypt was savage. Burning nonbelievers to death, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in ancient Babylon, is proof of wrongness.[iii] Throwing Daniel in the lion’s den for his difference in belief is an example of savagery. The Extermination Order allowing for the murder of Mormons in Missouri in the mid-1800s was savage.

Beheading nonbelievers in Iraq is proof that ISIS is savage. It’s ironic that the people trying to coerce the world into thinking as they do call us the Great Satan, while using Satan’s plan to accomplish their savage ends. This is not simply a difference of belief that we should respect; this is an attack upon our agency—a continuation of the War in Heaven, between Lucifer’s plan to gain power and control over us for his personal glory, and Heavenly Father’s plan for our happiness through allowing us to choose good.

Choosing Satan’s way always leads to the misery of coercion, poverty, savagery—and ultimate death. Choosing Father’s way always leads to the happiness of freedom, prosperity, civilization—and ultimate eternal life.

I choose happiness and life.

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[i] This definition comes from Robert D. Hales, “Agency: Essential to the Plan of Life,” speech at LDS General Conference, October 2010. He is quoting from the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 2:26.

[ii] I first heard the “something for nothing” version of this story from David A. Bednar in a conference in Houston in 2010. A similar talk was given by Robert D. Hales in the worldwide General Conference of October of that year (linked in footnote i). I found that the concept of agency is something of a theme for Elder Hales; he has been speaking on that subject for decades.

[iii] The account of the three brothers thrown in the fiery furnace, and saved by angelic help, is found in Daniel 3. Besides various historical evidences of this practice, such as the Salem witch trials, or Joan of Arc, additional incidents of mass execution for difference of belief are recorded in the Book of Mormon: Alma 14; 3 Nephi 1.