We Do What We Must, Because We Can

Sunday Ramblings
Jul 30, 2017 · 2 min read

The credits of the popular Valve video game Portal 2 features a song titled ‘Still Alive.’ It contains the following sentence: “Aperture Science, we do what we must because we can, for the good of all of us except the ones who are dead.” The word ‘Aperture’ might just as well have been left out, as science, and particular the modern obsession with it, is precisely turning a simple can into a must, all in the name of Progress.

The fact that science isn’t done for the ones who are dead overlooks the fact that everyone will be dead one day, and any scientific advances are pointless to those who don’t live long enough to see them come to fruition. Of course the pursuit of science only makes sense for the sake of ‘all of us,’ including the ones who are dead, will be dead, or are yet to be born. It is for the sake of Mankind, the fantastical conception of humans tied together in a singular entity. Only that fantasy could ever turn science into an obligation, something that ought to be done for the advancement of Mankind, for the sake of linear Progress.

The notion that science is good for those currently alive can only spring from the notion that our good is measured by a contribution to historical progress. Science does not respect the living, it does not make their lives more enjoyable. Sure it can stave off death for a while longer, it can ease suffering, it can make goals more easily attainable. But those are only good because they already carry meaning, meaning that is entirely independent and absent from the scientific endeavour itself. What contributes to the lives of those currently ‘still alive’ is determined by meaning, which determines what is worth pursuing. Science merely pursues the objectively possible, regardless of whether it is worth pursuing or whether it is valuable to anyone.

Science carries with it a reckless disregard for meaning, it objectifies all that is analyzed and risks reducing men themselves to nothing but points of data, statistics to be analyzed, behaviourism to be controlled. It turns communities of people into historical phenomena, cultures into patterns of behaviour, and all political activity into an advancement of some indefinite progression toward a non-existent end. It desecrates and destroys individual lives, absorbs them into the grey mass of Mankind with reckless disregard for any one in particular. One death is only a tragedy to those immediately affected, for all others it is just another point on the plot of Mankind’s progression, another stat without a name.

Only for the ideal of Progress can science become a must, where all that is possible ought to be done without asking whether we should. Only by the idea of Mankind can a single life become meaningless, where any particular person’s happiness may be sacrificed for the good of all. Only by these measures can we exclaim about our own death and sacrifices: “I’m glad I got burned, think of all the things we’ve learned, for the people who are still alive.”

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