“This creates the series of questions Pluribus forces us to confront in every episode: Is our freedom—our autonomy—really too high a price to pay in exchange for global happiness and organized, respectful survival on our planet? If we accept the implied thesis that a free human will inevitably destroy the planet and themselves, is the alternative we observe in the series really so evil? Who is, truly, the villain in the world described in Pluribus?” –Carlo Affatigato

“What does it take to say with assurance that the will is free?  Let us first make an important distinction between a free‑will and a free act. The necessary conditions for a free‑will are internal. We can almost always observe human actions, but we cannot observe the will. A free‑will must stem from an originative power within us, i.e., a power that is truly our own. […] Actions, on the other hand, are externally observable and the conditions for a free act are two: (1) open alternatives from which we can decide, choose, and act; and (2) an absence of external constraints or barriers in the acting out of a choice. It is clear then that a person can have free‑will and yet be prevented from acting freely.  A person chained from head to foot may have the originative power necessary for a free act, but obviously is prevented from using that power by external constraints.”  –Nick Gier 

“The metaphysical doctrine here expounded finds the foundation of the world in the aesthetic experience. . . . All order is therefore aesthetic order, and the moral order is merely certain aspects of the aesthetic order, and the aesthetic order is derived from the immanence of God (1960, p. 116).” –Whitehead, Religion in the Making

Over the holidays I’ve been keeping myself busy thinking about how all of the various outstanding lures to feeling I’ve been experiencing can be arranged in a pleasing way; here are the main topics I’ll be attempting to bring to the foreground and line-up nicely in this post: The Apple TV show Pluribus (two thumbs up), freedom, AI and digital privacy/security, anti-circumvention laws (with regard to technology), persuasive love, aesthetics, morality, and the radical reformers. Seatbelts should be buckled by now, lap bars down, here we go!

The Pluribus Peace: A Beautifully Controlled World
One of the perks of being a father to a 14 yr. old is that I not only get to enjoy introducing good art to my son that I’ve already had the pleasure of encountering before in my life (and, therefore, get to enjoy the extra pleasure of experiencing it again with new eyes and new relations), but I also get to enjoy new art with them as it is secreted/produced; in this case I’m referring to the Apple TV show Pluribus, a show that my son and I had both heard about because of the involvement of Vince Gilligan, the writer and creator of Breaking Bad, another show we had watched and discussed together. Other than familiar face, Rhea Seehorn, playing the main character (Seehorn also shows up as Kim Wexler in the Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul ((also a very good show!))) Pluribus more or less makes a clean cut from the Breaking Bad-averse.

To briefly sum up the show, an alien virus called the “Joining” transforms almost all of humanity into a single, peaceful, and content hive mind known as “the Others.” The story follows Carol Sturka (Seehorn), a novelist who is one of only thirteen people immune to the virus. While the hive mind accommodates her every wish, it admits its ultimate goal is to assimilate her. The show centers on Carol’s lonely resistance as she searches for a way to reverse the Joining and reclaim a world of individual freedom.

The show is great for so many reasons but I’ll name just a few, starting with Seehorn’s performance; her character’s frantic tough-ass attitude rooted in despair and misery immediately stands out as very impactful. The bleak setting, Albuquerque, New Mexico, is maybe the other main throughline from Giligan’s previous shows and, although I have zero desire to visit this place, it works perfectly for this show which I suggest is about a beautifully controlled and desolate world. Philosophically and aesthetically, I really like the extreme contrast being presented here by the writers and, although I’ve read a few think pieces already about Pluribus (Kotsko’s piece is worth reading!), I largely agree with Affatigatto (quoted above) when they write that one “compelling way to analyze Pluribus is through the lens of this existential conflict: the battle between individual freedom (which brings chaos and self-destruction) and a controlled, efficient happiness (which inevitably requires a form of slavery and the surrender of free will).”

I like where Affatigatto goes in their piece referencing Dostoevsky’s poem, The Grand Inquisitor, connecting the alien Hive Mind with the Inquisitor, and Carol (a prisoner of this new alien Earth) with Jesus as she goes about from episode to episode determined to cary the burden of freedom. In the poem, Dostoevsky suggests via the Grand Inquisiter that humanity is incapable of managing its own freedom. By surrendering any relevant choices to an undisputed authority (like the Church for instance) humans can enjoy, as Affatigatto points out, “a ‘happiness organized by others,’ exempting them from making complex decisions and relieving them of the moral burden of being free and righteous.” Indeed, Pluribus does show us a world where “moral order” is perfectly maintained, but at the absolute cost of freedom, spontaneity, and genuine relationship. I would also like to suggest another parallel here: we are currently living in a world being coded for a Pluribus-like control system.

Roblox Face Scans & Felony Contempt of Business Model
For those who don’t have intermediate and middle school aged humans living with them you may not be aware of the online gaming platform called Roblox. Despite resisting this digital world for quite some time I inevitably have become interested in it via my children. Roblox hosts millions of user-created games (all using a dialect of the programming language Lua for those who care), which are officially referred to as “experiences” (and non-officially referred to by me as ‘actual occasions of experience’ ((lol! That’s a Whitehead joke, you’re welcome))). Recently, due to an incredible escalation in popularity from all ages, and in an effort to keep it’s youngest users safe, Roblox has announced that they will be using AI-assisted facial recognition scans to verify age. This has obviously generated some mixed reactions and Scott Detrow, in their recent NPR interview, sums up well the attitude of many parents:

“I mean, so much of this feels like lose, lose, lose for parents, right? I’ve got kids who are not quite Roblox age, but the idea of facial scanning makes me uncomfortable. Obviously, the idea of being in a place where there are bad actors makes me uncomfortable. And the idea of saying, no, you can’t use this platform that so many other kids are using also feels like not the right move.”

Justin Patchin, criminal justice professor at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, responds to Detrow in the NPR interview in what I think is a smart and interesting way:

“It’s true, it does seem like a big challenge for parents. It is a popular place. And to be honest, the vast majority of the games and experiences are perfectly fine. The vast majority of kids who use Roblox do just fine and aren’t targeted by predators. And I think as a parent, we just need to be aware of these issues, certainly when our kids are first exploring Roblox or any social media platform, gaming platform. We need to be a part of that experience. We need to go on the app with them. We need to better understand what your kids are doing, who they’re interacting with.”

We’ll come back to this difficult idea that Patchin brings up, this insane notion that parents should be relating and participating in their children’s lives in order to better understand them, but first consider the connection between this current event we’ve been discussing and another technologically related topic currently in the news: anti-circumvention laws. According to journalist, Corey Doctorow (whose speech recently given in Germany is absolutely worth listening to):

 “Anticircumvention law originates in the USA: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 establishes a felony punishable by a five year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense for bypassing an “access control” for a copyrighted work.”

Oftentimes Doctorow humorously and rightly references Jay Freeman’s phrase “Felony Contempt of Business Model” when discussing anti-circumvention laws since “any manufacturer can trivially turn their product into a no-go zone, criminalizing the act of investigating its defects, criminalizing the act of reporting on its defects, and criminalizing the act of remediating its defects.” Very simply, people who buy John Deer tractors today should be able to learn how to fix their own tractors and then be able to do so themselves without worrying that their tractor will get bricked for bypassing some nonsensical digital lock system. Same goes for Apple iphones or the automobiles we all drive around today where “everything’s computer” and merely renting an accelerator pedal feels like the next logical step for those obsessed with the capitalist number go up game.

On the surface anti-circumvention law and the Roblox AI assisted biometric data capture seem unrelated but upon closer examination we might not be blamed for viewing both of these things as magically turning ‘consent’ into coercion. I mean if access to social participation (in this case kids on Roblox) requires face scans and bypassing that scan is legally risky or outright illegal, then “consent” becomes consent under threat of exclusion, backed by law. In other words, my point here is that anti-circumvention law helps make things like Roblox’s biometric capture the only viable path forward.

Freedom, Aesthetic Order, and Persuasive Love
So here we are, caught between two visions of a secured world. In one, a benevolent alien hive mind offers perfect peace at the cost of assimilation; in ours, platforms like Roblox propose AI-mediated safety at the cost of a biometric scan, while laws like the DMCA make it a felony to peek behind the digital curtain. Both visions, however fictional or legal, operate on the same inverted logic. They attempt to guarantee a “moral order”—of safety, harmony, or copyright compliance—by imposing external constraints that systematically eliminate what philosopher, Nick Gier, above calls “open alternatives.” This is the manufacture of a world without free acts, where the living process of choice is preempted by a controlled outcome.

This brings me to Quakerism and Anabaptism. One of the things that I truly love about these two radical traditions (both of which I claim ((I attended a Quaker pre-school as a child and was re-baptized in a Mennonite church here in Pennsylvania))) is their insistence that one must, of their own free will, consciously choose the Christian faith, leading Anabaptists specifically to only practice believer’s baptism. This put Anabaptists directly at odds with both the Catholic and Protestant state churches of the 16th-century, where baptism functioned as a type of compulsory civic membership (the AI face scan of the day if you will lol). Because they denied the state’s authority to enforce belief, Mennonites were severely persecuted which only ended up reinforcing their commitment to voluntary discipleship, freedom of conscience, nonviolence, and non-coercion.

Radical reformers know that morality, security, and community are not finished products to be installed by law or code; they are living patterns that must emerge from the ground up, through the relational concern that each occasion has for the universe. This is why Justin Patchin’s suggestion above, which I sarcastically called “insane,” is in fact the only sane response in a world hurtling toward Pluribus: a parent must relate to their child, must participate in the ambiguous, open-ended “experience” of their world. Sadly, one cannot algorithmically scan a child into safety any more than one can legislate a soul into love. Security and morality grow from the inside out, through the persuasive, empathetic lure of relationship—the very antithesis of coercive control. This is the persuasive love at the heart of Whitehead’s metaphysics, and it is the practiced, voluntary discipleship at the core of the Anabaptist and Quaker traditions.

Now if we take Whitehead seriously and assume for just one moment that we live in a creality not a reality, and that life is art and art is life (i.e. “All order is therefore aesthetic order, and the moral order is merely certain aspects of the aesthetic order”) made up of the dynamic, creative relating of “actual occasions of experience” then in every moment WE ARE the artists before the canvas making a creative decision about what to bring into focus and what to leave blurry and nondescript. Eventually our “styles” will shine through and become apparent to all. Some, like experimental psychologist, Richard Beck, will consciously ask themselves what their aesthetic is and strive to live a beautiful life, but sadly many will not. It is my hope, however, that we will all begin to critically ask ourselves if our ideal of beauty entails things like the dismal and controlled peace of the Pluribus hive, or the more and more prevalent AI face scans and collection of biometric data (potentially leading to omnipresent government AND corporate surveillance), or even the very real possibility of having to rent accelerator pedals. Perhaps, alternatively, we can envision an egalitarian ideal of beauty that entails the intense, harmonious, and freely chosen pattern of relations that can only emerge when we protect the open alternatives, remove the external chains, and dare to freely and transparently participate in the risky, creative, collaborative, and loving work of becoming, together. May it be so.

Tags:aestheticsanabaptismanti-circumvention lawDostoevskyfree willfreedommoralitynonviolencephilosophyPluribusprocess philosophyQuakerismRichard Beckwhitehead