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Alien Hour
#323: Link read Truth of the Divine, a book about the ramifications of first contact. They and the GT crew chat about aliens as metaphors for immigrants and various “othered” groups and how these media reflect the historical and current patterns of human behaviors between social groups.
Transcript
Josué Cardona 0:11
Welcome to GT radio on the Geek Therapy network. Here at Geek Therapy, we believe that the best way to understand each other and ourselves is through the media we care about. My name is Josué Cardona. I’m joined today by Marc Cuiriz.
Marc Cuiriz 0:22
Hello,
Josué Cardona 0:24
Lara Taylor.
Lara Taylor 0:25
Hey,
Josué Cardona 0:26
and Link Keller.
Link Keller 0:27
Hiiii
Josué Cardona 0:29
Link. What are we what are we talking about today?
Link Keller 0:31
we are talking about aliens in general, but more specifically, I just finished reading a book called Truth of the Divine by Lindsay Ellis, which is the second book in the Noumena series that she is writing. And it was real good. And I thought it had a lot of cool things that we could touch on and talk about aliens in general. But yeah,
Link Keller 0:57
just aliens?
Link Keller 0:58
aliens!
Josué Cardona 0:58
Yeah, not what was what was it specifically about? Like, what’s playing out in that story that that like resonated with you and thought it would be a good conversation starter.
Link Keller 1:09
So a main plot point in the second book is talking about how the US government is responding to aliens being a thing and also being in America. And trying to argue whether or not aliens should get human rights if human rights should apply to them. Or if they should create a separate status for them which in the book, they refer to it as the third option, which is giving them some human rights. And that leads to a philosophical debate about personhood
Lara Taylor 1:54
about inalienable human rights?
Link Keller 1:57
Yes. Alien, right in the word. And basically talking about how a majority of the people who are arguing that aliens shouldn’t just get human rights are using arguments that are frequently used by fascists to dehumanize certain groups of people. And our main character Cora is deeply connected with one of the aliens that is there. The aliens name is ampersand. Through most of the series, he’s got a couple of different names, but ampersand is what she calls him. And they have a special alien connection that allows them to feel each other’s feelings to a certain extent. Not mind reading, but more empathy connection. And they are both traumatized people. And their trauma impacts each other and they care deeply about each other. But also sometimes they harm each other because it’s very difficult to deal with trauma and how it affects you emotionally and physically and having that relationship play out while they are also being sort of representative of the whole concept of how aliens should be treated by Americans. American government, humans in general. It’s a It’s It’s good stuff. It’s good stuff it The book takes place in 2007 2008. Which is actually it’s very funny in axioms and the first book george bush gets impeached because he hid he hid the existence of aliens from people. It’s it’s just that part made me laugh a lot. I thought that was very funny is like, what a fun little alternate history.
Josué Cardona 4:04
it’s too much. You hid too much.
Link Keller 4:07
Basically, it was like, a final straw.
Josué Cardona 4:10
you lied. This is this. You went too far.
Link Keller 4:12
you keep getting caught in lying to people
Josué Cardona 4:15
fool me once fool me….
Link Keller 4:17
Yes, yeah. But yeah, I think I think it’s a really timely conversation to have. It takes place in 2007 2008. But it feels very modern in that the way that we apply labels to groups of people and give them certain access to certain rights, and how those things are changing. Like the rules are made up we make them up and so we, how we apply them and then how we rationalize how we apply those rights to people is very interesting. I think it’s important conversation. In general, but especially in the past couple of years with Black Lives Matter, and immigration, and the way our government treated COVID and people with disabilities or previous existing illnesses, and how our government is very quick to just feel like you’re a person, except that you’re not like a full person who deserves all of the rights. And using aliens as a way to have those kinds of conversations, I think, is a nice Geek Therapy way of doing an uncomfortable thing. But in a fun, fictional way.
Josué Cardona 5:42
It sure is. So I just had a very intense conversation related to this on on conspiracy of light, which is another one of our podcasts, that’s that one’s less accessible than this one. That’s a deep dive into Babylon 5, a 25 year old Sci Fi series. But the thing that we talked about specifically was that there are we’re talking about right now we’re talking about the context of and I mean, in this conversation from, from the book is like the dehumanization, but it’s also about separation. And, and I love the idea that there’s only two like one representative from the side that can really understand each other to that point, so I have questions about how different the aliens are from us, that I want to get to in a second. But I want to I want to say that the conversation that I had with Woody on conspiracy of late, was about a point in Babylon five, where there are groupings of races of aliens. And it’s like, We are the bottom rung in terms of how long we’ve been in the universe. And then there’s others that have been like that are that are way older than us, and they’ve evolved so differently, and just view us very differently. And then there’s a whole other group beyond that, who were there before, even them? And they’re almost incomprehensible to us. Right. And I and I think it’s a, it’s a metaphor about how a lot of this stuff happens, right? It’s like, all these differences come up, and then you just, I think some of it, a lot of it is malicious. But a lot of it happens in a way that it’s, it’s hard to understand each other, right? Like, I mean, that’s, that’s allowed what I love to do, that we do here, right that we we talk about things that are popular, because all sorts of different people enjoy, you know, sci fi, and can get into a conversation about this and maybe find some common ground and understanding just the fact that we both liked the same thing, or enjoyed a thing, or felt a certain way about a thing allows us to connect in a way that is sometimes really, really hard. And it can even help overcome, you know, the different types of language barriers and experiences. So I’m curious, how different are the aliens in this saga, this this trilogy from humans.
Link Keller 8:27
So a lot of that aspect is talked about in the first book. They are what what the what the aliens referred to as as post organic, they have an organic like brain and brainstem, but they exist inside of it’ss not, like robot but like robot bodies, basically. They are often described as being sort of like Velociraptor shaped, they are bigger than humans, they are because of this non organic form, they are stronger and able to withstand, you know, more. They don’t have soft squishy human bodies, like we do. But it is revealed through conversations between Cora and ampersand that they have, you know, they have language, they have social structures, they have a hierarchy of you know, th...
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By Geek Therapy Network#323: Link read Truth of the Divine, a book about the ramifications of first contact. They and the GT crew chat about aliens as metaphors for immigrants and various “othered” groups and how these media reflect the historical and current patterns of human behaviors between social groups.
Transcript
Josué Cardona 0:11
Welcome to GT radio on the Geek Therapy network. Here at Geek Therapy, we believe that the best way to understand each other and ourselves is through the media we care about. My name is Josué Cardona. I’m joined today by Marc Cuiriz.
Marc Cuiriz 0:22
Hello,
Josué Cardona 0:24
Lara Taylor.
Lara Taylor 0:25
Hey,
Josué Cardona 0:26
and Link Keller.
Link Keller 0:27
Hiiii
Josué Cardona 0:29
Link. What are we what are we talking about today?
Link Keller 0:31
we are talking about aliens in general, but more specifically, I just finished reading a book called Truth of the Divine by Lindsay Ellis, which is the second book in the Noumena series that she is writing. And it was real good. And I thought it had a lot of cool things that we could touch on and talk about aliens in general. But yeah,
Link Keller 0:57
just aliens?
Link Keller 0:58
aliens!
Josué Cardona 0:58
Yeah, not what was what was it specifically about? Like, what’s playing out in that story that that like resonated with you and thought it would be a good conversation starter.
Link Keller 1:09
So a main plot point in the second book is talking about how the US government is responding to aliens being a thing and also being in America. And trying to argue whether or not aliens should get human rights if human rights should apply to them. Or if they should create a separate status for them which in the book, they refer to it as the third option, which is giving them some human rights. And that leads to a philosophical debate about personhood
Lara Taylor 1:54
about inalienable human rights?
Link Keller 1:57
Yes. Alien, right in the word. And basically talking about how a majority of the people who are arguing that aliens shouldn’t just get human rights are using arguments that are frequently used by fascists to dehumanize certain groups of people. And our main character Cora is deeply connected with one of the aliens that is there. The aliens name is ampersand. Through most of the series, he’s got a couple of different names, but ampersand is what she calls him. And they have a special alien connection that allows them to feel each other’s feelings to a certain extent. Not mind reading, but more empathy connection. And they are both traumatized people. And their trauma impacts each other and they care deeply about each other. But also sometimes they harm each other because it’s very difficult to deal with trauma and how it affects you emotionally and physically and having that relationship play out while they are also being sort of representative of the whole concept of how aliens should be treated by Americans. American government, humans in general. It’s a It’s It’s good stuff. It’s good stuff it The book takes place in 2007 2008. Which is actually it’s very funny in axioms and the first book george bush gets impeached because he hid he hid the existence of aliens from people. It’s it’s just that part made me laugh a lot. I thought that was very funny is like, what a fun little alternate history.
Josué Cardona 4:04
it’s too much. You hid too much.
Link Keller 4:07
Basically, it was like, a final straw.
Josué Cardona 4:10
you lied. This is this. You went too far.
Link Keller 4:12
you keep getting caught in lying to people
Josué Cardona 4:15
fool me once fool me….
Link Keller 4:17
Yes, yeah. But yeah, I think I think it’s a really timely conversation to have. It takes place in 2007 2008. But it feels very modern in that the way that we apply labels to groups of people and give them certain access to certain rights, and how those things are changing. Like the rules are made up we make them up and so we, how we apply them and then how we rationalize how we apply those rights to people is very interesting. I think it’s important conversation. In general, but especially in the past couple of years with Black Lives Matter, and immigration, and the way our government treated COVID and people with disabilities or previous existing illnesses, and how our government is very quick to just feel like you’re a person, except that you’re not like a full person who deserves all of the rights. And using aliens as a way to have those kinds of conversations, I think, is a nice Geek Therapy way of doing an uncomfortable thing. But in a fun, fictional way.
Josué Cardona 5:42
It sure is. So I just had a very intense conversation related to this on on conspiracy of light, which is another one of our podcasts, that’s that one’s less accessible than this one. That’s a deep dive into Babylon 5, a 25 year old Sci Fi series. But the thing that we talked about specifically was that there are we’re talking about right now we’re talking about the context of and I mean, in this conversation from, from the book is like the dehumanization, but it’s also about separation. And, and I love the idea that there’s only two like one representative from the side that can really understand each other to that point, so I have questions about how different the aliens are from us, that I want to get to in a second. But I want to I want to say that the conversation that I had with Woody on conspiracy of late, was about a point in Babylon five, where there are groupings of races of aliens. And it’s like, We are the bottom rung in terms of how long we’ve been in the universe. And then there’s others that have been like that are that are way older than us, and they’ve evolved so differently, and just view us very differently. And then there’s a whole other group beyond that, who were there before, even them? And they’re almost incomprehensible to us. Right. And I and I think it’s a, it’s a metaphor about how a lot of this stuff happens, right? It’s like, all these differences come up, and then you just, I think some of it, a lot of it is malicious. But a lot of it happens in a way that it’s, it’s hard to understand each other, right? Like, I mean, that’s, that’s allowed what I love to do, that we do here, right that we we talk about things that are popular, because all sorts of different people enjoy, you know, sci fi, and can get into a conversation about this and maybe find some common ground and understanding just the fact that we both liked the same thing, or enjoyed a thing, or felt a certain way about a thing allows us to connect in a way that is sometimes really, really hard. And it can even help overcome, you know, the different types of language barriers and experiences. So I’m curious, how different are the aliens in this saga, this this trilogy from humans.
Link Keller 8:27
So a lot of that aspect is talked about in the first book. They are what what the what the aliens referred to as as post organic, they have an organic like brain and brainstem, but they exist inside of it’ss not, like robot but like robot bodies, basically. They are often described as being sort of like Velociraptor shaped, they are bigger than humans, they are because of this non organic form, they are stronger and able to withstand, you know, more. They don’t have soft squishy human bodies, like we do. But it is revealed through conversations between Cora and ampersand that they have, you know, they have language, they have social structures, they have a hierarchy of you know, th...