First of all, happy Earth (yester)day. For all my work as an anthropologist, I’m actually terrible at remembering dates and commemorating them in some clear, recognisable way – so if you are wondering why so many very important dates came and went and we did not discuss them, that’s really that. There is no hidden reason. It has to be something I have time to remember will happen (like Christmas, or Lovers’ festivals, or Halloween) for me to successfully slot it in and write about it. Anniversaries? I’d rather not go there if it’s all the same to you. 😉
The Earth day came with a bag full of other anthropological treats, so to speak. Being an inhabitant of Earth is possibly secondary or tertiary to most people’s personal and social identity, and is only really remembered on rare occasions, when the external threat of Otherness is presented as really external… try extra-terrestrial, or as a joint fight against an internal Other – the green movement.
But despite that, it still features a lot, and that in various contexts.
Even just which name we use for ourselves as Earth inhabiting creatures has many socio-cultural connotations, and they are beautifully expressed through popular culture… strongly so though the American pop culture especially, because it influences in no small way what we read, what we watch and ultimately often the products we use. This is not, before anyone goes there (*given the EU vs America business and politics wars of the moment), a tirade against Americans. It is merely an observation of how cultures influence one another. I could, just as much, talk about the influence of Italian coffee brewing, or French pastry (croissant, anyone?) or the word danish technically standing for specific type of baking. And so on.
American culture is expressive, well connected and very capable when it comes to merchandising. It is, therefore, not odd that so many influences come from them; and this is where this debate finishes for now.
On with our current topic.
As I was saying, the very names we use for ourselves – as inhabitants of the specific planet – may have connotations to popular culture, which, in itself, shows how we relate, both to ourselves, as people, our place in our society, immediate and global, and ultimately in the scope of our planet as perceived by said society.
Difficult to keep up with?
Not if you get examples.
Earthling, for instance, is one word we can use for ourselves. It has featured in numerous sci-fi contexts since at least the 1950s (cf. here), with the sci-fi term first being applied in 1949 by Heinlein (cf. here).
To use this term becomes synonymous with numerous science fiction, but also social, traits of the time between that date and all the way to the, speculatively, early nineties via cartoons that still used that term (or the term Earth Creature). It is synonymous with the duality of good vs evil and that evil coming from space, feelings of either human supremacy or ultimate worthlessness, and the uncertainty that was, in many ways, the Cold War, which formed earlier human fears, groomed for centuries through religions, into a concrete fear of enemies without – and that without no longer representing a place of spiritual terror, but a physical space that was becoming more and more real for people as the space race began, evolved and featured as a forefront… in a time when animosity was rife among the said Earthlings. In many ways, it was, perhaps (much like with robots) easier to deal with the psychological aftermath of two devastating wars if the fear of what if and what happens next was this way externalised – not into human hands, but into the hands of something ugly, powerful, coming not even from our world but somewhere where we count for nothing, where we are not even things. The horrors of war are always difficult to deal with, and the worst thing is that all too often, they are used for propaganda afterwards, instead of letting people simply recover – and the post-WW2 international and national feelings would be fraught with that, both due to the division in the political standing (pre, during and even after the war) and due to the spy race that was still happening on regular basis. I often wonder if the post-war recovery would have been better and some bitter lessons better learnt had it not been for the massive amounts of propaganda and the Cold War later. It is not odd that so many superhero stories first appear then or are placed into the WW1 and WW2 and post-war era (cf. here)– they are the memory not only of the events, speculations of what could have been, for better or worse, but also of a deep-seated feeling of discomfort with oneself and others in the context of a potential repeat of these events.
Many superheroes don’t solely fight other humans… they fight aliens, mythical creatures, machines and supersoldiers, a combination of Otherness that is devoid of humanity.
Terran and Gaian (derived from Gaia, the Greek earth goddess) are used more often by a later sci-fi audience, and I am probably right in assuming that, with the Star Trek Discovery, Terran especially will gain (or has gained, as the Terran empire goes way back in the series, cf. here) a very specific connotation all on its own.
Gaian, on the other hand, is strongly associated with the Green movements, and with New Age; with Gaia being the representation not only of Earth, but one could safely say mother goddess (much like, for Cybele), a Gaian is associable with someone whose identity is bound strongly to the perspective of being in fact an offspring of sorts of Earth Mother, so to speak, and is less likely to be interested in the technology, sci-fi verse of the other groups (cf. here).
Whatever the term we use, it applies in two ways. One, it delineates history in space sagas. Whether we are somewhere relatively close by or have gone all the way past the galaxy far, far away and beyond, whether our habits and behaviours have changed or not, it is a story of inheritance, of lineage, and that in itself is personhood defining, as it enforces the perception of unity even if you, perhaps, would prefer a clean break with many aspects of Earth as a part of your (or your race’s, species’…) personal past. Similarly, on a slightly lesser but no less important note, this type of lineage and inability to break with the past is promoted in many myths, tales and stories from both our past and (especially) present. Often, heroes are people who try to reinvent themselves but only manage to fail until they give up and accept … what? Not necessarily the traumas of their past, but the pressure to yield to a social perspective of linear past that is inescapable, and therefore the mode of thinking and behaviour that cannot be dispensed with (in short, indoctrination). Villains, on the other hand, are often portrayed as having in some way succeeded with breaking with that holy past * (I use the term in my work and in my upcoming book on indoctrination), which makes them the Other even more than their actions, however horrible. Even where this duality has been somewhat dispensed with, due to the overall growing fluidity of the environment that created the story, the traces of it often remain.
Two, it defines our social personhood. As I have already pointed out, the way we apply the term is already telling, and from there, it is only a question of further behaviour and self-presentation to define just how far we are going to take that social identity. Are we a Trekkie or a Trekker? How far are we willing to go with the Green movement?
Earth is also something we continuously feel we need to save. Don’t get me wrong – there are certain aspects of pollution that are definitely a problem, either on someone’s personal level (such as animals swallowing plastic bags and trash, poisons in the environment that harm humans, fauna and flora alike, cancer causing farming poisons…) and potentially on global level… for a given amount of time. However much we boast we “understand” global warming, for instance, there is much that is still a mystery to us. Nor do we tend to remember that Earth goes through cycles of cooler and hotter periods (cf. here & here) and that it used to look much different not so long ago. Instead of comprehending that variable and including it into what we believe we are studying, we tend to either deny it completely or present it as an all-encompassing truth, neither of which is constructive, scientifically correct and conducive of social progress.
It does, however, define personhood for many. To stand with the Green movement (which is, in many ways, a form of religion, and a violent one at that, when it hits the extreme) is to be “good” – regardless of personal actions, interpersonal relations etc.. To stand against or even to express any form of scepticism towards the appalling lack of scientific approach often concurrent with the Green movement is to be the “enemy”. (To the other side, of course, it’s the other way around.)
Things are, of course, not that simple, but personhood often does not require more complex environment. If anything, maladaptive personhood building especially generally focuses on rigid environmental structure and its behavioural patterns… and this is a rigid approach. There must always be doubt, until one can be sure of all factors involved in a situation – that sorely lacks in much of the Green movement.
Another way of saving Earth is through tale. This does not mean that story-telling is somehow involved in the planet spinning and the sun coming up each morning. Rather, the feeling of preciousness of social and personal belonging to Earth as a form of home, social and personal identity, is reinforced through the action of saving it countless of times.
Superheroes die or almost die again and again in an act that is the extent of national feeling (which is why, often, we see a centre point of a story placed into a form of domestic environment… Be it a capital, an important city or a group composed predominantly of people of the same nation, consider New York, Washington DC, or Gotham, whilst fictional is also a nickname for New York).
That said, as rigidity is exchanged for fluidity, the amount of personal conflict and development becomes slowly a larger part of the story, rather than a mere background if it is at all present. Marvel, for instance, is a superhero base that has gone from more rigid into slowly more and more fluid; while it is definitely visible that the Earth saving trait remains to quite some extent, it has become accompanied by a far more developed personal struggle than it seems to have had before. Perhaps it is due to our recognising psychology as something relevant, real and no longer being ashamed of it that this change has come to pass, but it has definitely hit us by now, and it is making the odds of what might or might not happen at the end of Infinity war much more intriguing.
While heroes mostly win, because the psychology of teaching passivity and acceptance of destruction simply sucks to us (or, to put it in educated language, it is maladaptive and therefore counter our survival as subjects and species), Marvel has been promising a very different ending. How different is this ending going to be is anyone’s guess.
But it is going to be an interesting study in how our perspective on our personhood, planetary or otherwise, is changing or is expected – by one of the superhero franchise giants – to change.
As Geertz has pointed out, we often communicate through symbols. This both enables us to catch on to social meaning where it would have been lost (such as a phrase that is very context based) and makes us prone to read too much into meaning, because we are searching for something lost, hidden, that we are supposed to pick up to work within our social hierarchy. On global level, these traits can become problematic, as they hinder social progress – on personal level, they can be bewildering and frustrating.
That said, if we continue to question, discover and reinvent ourselves, chances are we are going to – like the superheroes we portray to aspire to be like – overcome the odds of misinterpretation and rigidity, and sort out not only our personal problems, but the global ones we can control and are responsible for creating.