Musings: Benevolent Aliens, Schrondinger’s Corbynite, Socialist Common Sense

Trey Taylor
Sep 3, 2018 · 7 min read
Arrival, Dir: Denis Villeneuve — The rare sci-fi where the aliens are not horrific colonisers, but intrepid altruists

Here you will find miscellaneous arguments, exasperated complaints, and curioius observations, condensed into non-regular Musings.

Culturally, our representations of alien life are largely malevolent. From War of the Worlds to Independence Day to Signs, extraterrestrial life is almost always bent on exterminating us and colonising our world, intent on pillaging it of its resources. Yet I highly doubt this is how any dynamic of contact would play out, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, because our presumption of malicious intent is a projection of our own cultural sensibilities, which we already know are not universal. The impulse to conquer foreign lands was not present in, say, Admiral Zheng of China’s grand armada which, in contrast to Columbus’ subjugation of natives, merely sought to establish diplomatic connections with the lands he explored. Instead of death by alien being a reflection of the violent, domineering and exploitative impulse of intelligent life, it represents the fearful expectations we hold, based on knowledge of our own brutal history.

Secondly, we know collective advancement arises from two things: intelligence, and cooperation. Given that the beings in question have developed technologies allowing them to contact us, we can assume they are both very intelligent, and very effective cooperators.

As an aside, this suggests that the ubiquitous motive of resource extraction is absurd. If they’re intelligent enough to travel to earth, why couldn’t they mine asteroids, or construct a Dyson sphere, crack nuclear fusion, target planets that didn’t have life on them, etc? If we take the Kardashev scale as a guide here, these aliens are at least a Type 2 civilisation, so it’s safe to assume they would have figured out renewable resources.

Thirdly, from our own experience, we recognise that from the interplay of intelligence and cooperation arises an expansion of morality. Empathy, as the capacity to put ourselves in another’s shoes, is both a rational and emotional exercise, requiring the ability to extrapolate from one’s own experience to others, and a connection to/understanding of the object of your empathy.

Fourthly, the direction of human civilisation is of expanding moral obligations. With the ease of communication the internet’s provides, cultural and geographical boundaries are being overcome, and the ever increasing popularity of vegetarianism/veganism is proof of concern for cross-species well-being.

Thus, we can assume that an alien race with immense knowledge, too has immense concern with well-being. The most likely reason for their arrival wouldn’t be hatred or desperation, but curiosity or altruism. Perhaps their understanding of the importance of cooperation will impel them to dart around the universe, assisting various civilisations in their march of progress.

Therefore, I contend that we have little to worry from extraterrestrial contact. Hollywood has been misleading us for years over the truth of their hypothetical benevolence.


Throughout social media, leftists have noted a particularly pernicious rendition of Schrodinger’s Cat — the Austrian physicists mind-bending thought experiment articulating the paradoxical implications of quantum mechanics Copenhagen equation, also known as ‘superposition’, in which an unfortunate, or fortunate, (or both?) cat is at once dead or alive — existing within the minds of right-wing commentators. Schrodinger’s Immigrant simultaneously operates by taking the rightful work of labourers born and bred in Britain, driving down wages and exacerbating unemployment, whilst being uniquely lazy, soaking up the hard earned cash of British taxpayers as they lounge languidly on generous benefit payments. The contradiction of the work-shy yet hard-working European migrant, conjured up to justify nationalist invocations of the supreme importance of tougher border control, exposes the absurd irrationality of the xenophobia which is so often at the core of nativist proclamations of the danger of multiculturalism.

Not one to change their tune, the British media have unwittingly coughed up another superbly illogical rendition of the thought-experiment, this time finding superposition in the demographics of Corbyn’s voter base. Cast your mind back to Glastonbury 2017, a realm of muddy boots, pills and, this time around, politics. Corbyn took to the Pyramid Stage to perform a speech for many of his adoring fans, enthused as they were with his message of modern socialism. And before the last tents had been burned and gazebos nicked, media types flooded the airwaves with the observation that Corbyn’s politics has alienated the parties traditional base, appealing only to the cosmopolitan sensibilities of the children of the metropolitan petty-bourgeois. This socialism thing only appeals to hip-young urbanites, they suggested, as far as you can get from Labour’s traditional working-class heartlands. When will Labour stop it’s flirt with the fantasies of Che t-shirt donning teenagers and reconnect with those it exists to serve?

Not to mention the obvious issue with generalising the entire Glastonbury market as upper middle-class, ignoring the graft of those on low incomes who save for months on end for a ticket, this hot take sits uncomfortably with some of the other main criticisms levelled at JC and his platform — namely that Corbyn’s emphasis on material issues and his resurrection of class analysis risks alienating that very demographic — the metropolitan, professional class — which are simultaneously posited as comprising the majority of his appeal. So, Corbyn is both the political representative of an immiserated radical working class, unable to capture the faith of those middle-class voters who have been more comfortable with the tepid liberalism of Blair, and dispensing with the anxieties and worries of Labour’s blue-collar base in favour of the contented majority of urban professionals. Schrodinger’s Corbynite is thus at once both metropolitan and ex-industrial, the son of a teacher and the son of a miner, frequents bourgeois music venues and naff local pubs, a champagne socialist and an envious lefty.

Perhaps it’s easier to reduce the complexities of why Corbyn’s message is so potent across demographic divides to contradictory red-alert opinion pieces than to truly engage with why a profound realignment of British politics is occurring. All I know is that the more time the media class spend caricaturing the diversity of Labour’s electoral tent, a tent that stretches across the heads of 40% of the British public, the more we will see their predictions become inverted by reality. And for that, I’ll be at the front of the queue.


In conversations with friends and family, usually relatively inebriated ones, I’ve noticed how often socialist arguments are tacitly articulated; how, far from the impossible task of dismantling what late cultural theorist Mark Fisher termed ‘capitalist realism’ — the panglossian resignation that there is no alternative — persuading people of the fundamental inequities and injustices which exist at the core of the capitalist system is more a matter of integration than convincing. What I mean by this is that, divorced from the oftentimes impenetrably dense theorising of socialist thought, most people wholeheartedly concur with many of our basic contentions.

In my experience, many recognise the injustice of capitalisms internal hierarchies, notionally aware of the ineffectuality of their useless bosses imposition on their life. They too are sympathetic to the basic contention of economic democracy — that they, and indeed the enterprise, would benefit from an extension of their autonomy and decision making power. They recognise, often with great anger, that economic rewards don’t appear equivalent to hard work, or social value, and are patently aware of the obscenity of the vast wealth possessed by a minority of the population. Marx’s desire that the ideal society is one which “makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.” is too shared by many non-socialists, including the observation that the capitalist division of labour — complete with its monopolisation of our time and condescending specialisation — prevents the fulfilment of our holistic pursuits and passions. On the issue of work, we also broadly understand how dissatisfying and counter-productive its “assorted indignities” are, “the surveillance, rotework, imposed work tempos, production quotas, punching -in and -out, etc” in the words of anarchist Bob Black. Moreover, as I note in The Greater ‘Good’, we are entirely cognisant of the vacuity of excessive material consumption; the consumerist impulse which is intrinsic to the capitalist mode of production. We also note, as we journey through our lives, that the existence of obscene wealth at a time of deep poverty is a tragedy; that no-one should be sleeping on the street; that all should have access to the necessities of life from which to be the best they can be.

These lived experiences serve as basic normative observations, from which the left should attempt to integrate these grains of common sense into a theoretical framework. This is no advocacy for a paternalist ‘piggy-bank’ pedagogy — to use Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s term — in which the all-knowing Party disciples dispense infallible knowledge, but the living product of a dynamic discourse, where the agents are cooperators, explorers, discoverers of critical analysis. Here, the role is not only to provide the tools for deep social examination, but too point in the direction of an alternative in order to, first and foremost, rebuke the resignation the individual may have in the face of a momentous and seemingly inescapable system: that ‘this is the just the way it is’.

In doing so, we can generate a systemic critique of the way things are. And then, using this critical theory, point to the fact that this is not how things must be, thereby creating the space in the imaginary for the option of how things could be.

And it is here, when reality clashes with possibility, that the real work begins; the work of collectively deciding on the structures, conventions, practises, expectations, parameters, and above all, joys, that will define the future — not as a utopia that could never arise, but as a tangible destination, just around the corner.


(Idea for this is a shameless rip-off of Current Affairs Magazine’s Stray Thoughts column, so give that the love it’s due)

Trey Taylor

Written by

19, studying Human, Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University

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