From Sagan to The Jacksons Debate

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The words above are from Carl Sagan’s The Pale Blue Dot, and it is, for sure, the main inspiration for the whole thing going on around here.

I was fascinated with scientific questions, more precisely, with applying a scientific approach to the challenges that arise in life. This meant being skeptical, relying on evidence to form my views, while also remaining flexible enough to let better evidence reshape my assumptions.

That might be the biggest lesson I took from The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan, a book I carry with me in everything I do. Around the same time, I read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, which felt like an applied case study of the scientific method Sagan described. This got me thinking that ultimately, all species, all living beings, are doing the same thing. Looked at from a distance, there is no fundamental difference between them. It is all life trying to survive, each species using its own method, including humans.

The Jacksons Debate grew organically, as many things come to be in the real world - without an initial plan or purpose. It began as a simple concept: what if aliens existed who had complete dominion over us on Earth, much like humans currently have over most other species? What would that experience be like?

The exploration evolved from examining what those aliens might be like to contemplating how humans would feel being subject to their discretion. The Jacksons consider themselves ethical, compassionate beings, but does that prevent them from committing acts we might consider horrendous? Some would argue it wouldn't.

Consider this parallel: most people don't think twice about killing a fly that's buzzing around while they work. If someone routinely kills flies while otherwise living a charitable, kind existence - helping people and some animals, being pleasant throughout - society generally considers them ethical, and they likely view themselves the same way. Yet from the flies' perspective, this person is a monster. Future human morality might even condemn such casual killing.

This is the central question: what is the objective reality? What would evidence and reason tell us about such a person's morality?

The Jacksons Debate explores precisely this question, only with humans in the position of the flies. Investigating objective reality connects morality, philosophy, and science in complex ways. Different readers will naturally form their own interpretations of the story, and I'm enjoying seeing these diverse perspectives emerge. If you'd like to join this conversation with your own view, you can find it on the Goodreads page:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228994545-the-jacksons-debate#