Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020) s01e11 Episode Script

1
TYSON: If an extraterrestrial
scouting party were to survey Earth,
what would they make of us?
Who are we?
Are we as a species capable
of fundamental change?
Or is there something in our
DNA that will determine our fate?
(groaning and moaning)
(speaking in native language)
TYSON: Do the dead hands
of forgotten ancestors impel us
in some direction
beyond our control?
Can we free our children from
the demons that torment us and
haunt our species?
Can we be trusted
with our own future?
Since the civilization
of Ancient Persia,
and probably even before,
we've wondered if there's
something about human nature that
contains the seeds of our destruction.
(theme music plays)
♪♪
♪♪
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TYSON: If there are places on
Earth that are sacred to our species,
surely this must be one of them.
The earliest site we know of where
fire was tamed for human needs.
More than a million
years ago, here,
in what is today known as
Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa,
our ancestors gathered and first
kindled the hearth of human culture.
Every human being alive
today on Earth is a member
of the species Homo sapiens.
The so-called "wise ones."
And our forbearers here
tonight are Homo Erectus,
"those who stood up."
They're not yet us, but
we carry them within us.
We don't know much about them.
We think they took care of each
other when they became old or ill.
We know they were
skilled toolmakers.
It was around fires such as this
one that we began to cook our food.
To tell each other stories.
And to create a shared
learned identity with our kin.
Had life and humans first
evolved only hundreds or even
thousands of years ago,
we might know most of what's
important about our past and
how we came to be the way we are.
But instead, our species is
hundreds of thousands of years old.
Homo Erectus, a
couple of million.
Primates, tens of millions.
Mammals, more than 200 million.
And life, about four
billion years old.
All but a few of our ancestors
are wholly unknown to us,
and we sift through the
Earth to find the bits of ash and
animal bone that are the only
surviving evidence of our humanity.
We only began living
with a future in mind,
consciously leaving a detailed
record of who we were and what
we believed around
5,000 years ago.
And yet, one thing remained
constant from Homo Erectus to
the greatness of Ancient Persia.
Our fascination with fire.
And this was true
here at Persepolis,
a magnificent complex built
by the Persian emperors of the
sixth century BCE,
when Persia was the
only superpower on Earth.
These great kings worshipped
a God named Ahura Mazda,
whose origins in
time are lost to us.
His prophet was Zoroaster.
Every Zoroastrian temple
was consecrated to fire.
It played the central role
in Zoroastrian worship,
symbolizing both the purity
of their God and the light
of the illuminated mind.
Tending an eternal flame
through the centuries was one
of the few ritual obligations
of the Zoroastrians.
They chose this first
truly human achievement,
the domestication of fire,
as the focal point
of their worship.
The God Ahura
Mazda didn't ask much.
He didn't want
your ritual sacrifices,
he didn't want your money.
All he asked of human
beings was good thoughts,
good words and good deeds.
But for some reason,
most people couldn't fulfill
these simple requests.
Often they had bad
thoughts and said evil things,
and some of them committed
crimes that were evil.
Why?
It was all because of Ahura
Mazda's polar opposite,
Angra Mainyu.
This is where the
devil was born.
From his short
horns, to his hooves,
Zoroastrianism was the
dominant religion from Greece
to India for 1,000 years.
No wonder they were so
influential on the religions
that came after.
For the Zoroastrians,
all the evil in the world,
the crimes committed by humans,
as well as the catastrophes of
natural disasters and disease,
were the results of Angra
Mainyu's unceasing mischief.
Their God, Ahura Mazda,
looked to human beings
to help him defeat the devil.
Any person by their actions
could tip the scales of the
whole future of the universe in
either the direction of good or evil.
In this pre-scientific world,
when evil reared its ugly head,
what better way to understand
it than demonic possession?
(barking)
This is not a story
of good and evil,
of the struggle between
a God and a demon.
It's actually just a story
of a predator and its prey.
In this case, the predator
is microscopic and it's been
incubating in its victim.
Diseased microbes can
be formidable predators.
Not only attacking
and eventually killing,
but also taking
over their hosts.
Changing their behavior to spread
their microorganisms to other hosts.
We're in the
bloodstream of that poor,
unlucky dog, who,
through no fault of his own,
just because of a chance
encounter with a rabid bat,
now finds himself the main
character in a zombie horror story.
Those bullets are
the rabies virus.
On being injected into the
bloodstream of this placid,
people-loving dog, they
head to the dog's brain,
right to the limbic system,
where the control
buttons for rage reside.
By attacking the nerve cells,
the rabies virus is
converting the poor animal
into a marauding, snarling,
vicious predator without
loyalties or love for anyone.
(baby crying)
Rabid animals can be fearless.
Now that the limbic
system has been conquered,
another detachment of rabies
viruses are dispatched to the
saliva manufacturing
machinery in the dog's throat.
Their assignment is
to put it into overdrive,
while paralyzing the
nerves for swallowing.
This maximizes the
chances for the infected saliva
to leave the dog and
invade the next target.
But how is such a degree
of tactical coordination
possible by a virus?
How can a virus know which
part of another creature's
brain is the seat of anger?
We ourselves didn't figure
that out until very recently.
This is the power of
evolution by natural selection.
Given enough time,
a random mutation,
no matter how
highly specialized
Say, a virus' ability to
paralyze a victim's throat,
will take hold.
If it enhances the
virus' chance of survival,
it will be passed on.
All it needs in every
generation is a victim to
carry the disease.
Keeping that wicked flame alive.
The transformation from
the family guardian to the
ferocious wild-eyed
demon is complete.
The dog is furious,
although he has no idea why.
(speaking in native language)
A helpless pawn of
the viruses within him,
he can't resist the
impulse to attack.
If the attack is successful,
the viruses in the
dog's saliva will enter the
bloodstream of the victim
through the lesion or laceration.
And then, they'll set about
taking over this new victim.
The rabies virus is a
brilliant manipulator.
It knows its victims and
how to pull their strings.
It coordinates its attack,
circumventing defenses,
infiltrating, outflanking,
accomplishing a coup d'état
within its prey and turning
the most gentle among us into
the most violent.
We are at the mercy
of unseen forces.
Viruses, microbes,
hormones, our very own DNA.
Where does the programming
end and free will begin
(buzz)
If it ever does at all?
TYSON: Do honeybees
have free will?
When a honeybee dies, it
releases a special chemical.
It's a death pheromone
that has a characteristic odor,
signaling its fellow bees
to remove it from the hive.
The death pheromone
is oleic acid.
What happens if a perfectly
healthy bee is dabbed with a
drop of oleic acid?
Then, no matter how
hearty it might be,
it's carried, kicking
and screaming,
out of the hive by
oblivious pallbearers.
Do the bees understand the
danger of infection from corpses
decomposing in the hive?
Are they aware of the connection
between death and oleic acid?
Do they have any
idea what death is?
Do we?
In the tens of millions
of years of collective bee
experience, there's never
been a way that a bee could give
off oleic acid
other than by dying.
So, for bees, there's
no ambiguity here.
Scent of oleic acid
always means dead bee.
There's been no reason for
evolution to develop a greater
sense of nuance about it.
Elaborate, contemplative
machinery is unnecessary to
assess the situation.
Bee perceptions are
adequate for bee needs.
Something similar
is true for moths.
This poor guy has no
idea what the problem is.
There have been moths
for 190 million years,
and clear glass windows
for only about 1,000.
No wonder there isn't a voice
in the moth's brain that tells it:
if you keep bumping
into something,
even if you can't see it,
you should try to fly around it.
Until very recently
on nature's time scale,
there were no penalties for
moths without any such inner voice.
Moths evolved in a world
without glass windows.
What then are we to
conclude when we find similar,
very simple behavioral
programs unsupervised by any
apparent central executive
control in so-called
"higher animals"?
When a goose egg
rolls out of the nest,
does the mother goose who
has been incubating her eggs
for weeks understand the importance
of retrieving one that has rolled away?
Can she tell if one is missing?
In fact, she will retrieve almost
anything placed near the nest.
Including ping pong
balls and beer bottles.
The value of this behavior
for goose genes is clear.
She understands something,
but by our standards,
not very much.
Does a beetle have any emotions?
Any consciousness?
Or is it only a subtle robot
made of organic matter?
A carbon-based automaton
packed with sensors and actuators,
programs and subroutines,
all ultimately manufactured
according to its
DNA instructions?
We might be willing to grant
the proposition that insects
or even geese are
mindless machines.
But what about us?
What, if anything, do
the other animals think?
What might they have to say to
us if we could only communicate?
When we observe them carefully,
don't we find evidence of
spontaneous decision-making?
When we consider the genetic
kinship of all life on Earth,
is it plausible that humans
have immortal souls and all
other animals do not?
In nature, the goose's egg
retrieval program is adequate.
But when the goslings hatch,
and especially just before
they're ready to leave the nest,
the mother is delicately
attuned to the nuances of
their sounds, looks and smells.
She has learned
about her chicks.
Now she knows her own
very well and would not confuse
them with an alien object, or
even someone else's goslings,
however similar they may
seem to a human observer.
Consider our friend
the beetle again.
It can see, walk,
run, smell, taste,
fly, mate, eat,
excrete and lay eggs.
It has internal programs for
accomplishing these functions
contained in a brain with
a mass of only a milligram,
and specialized,
dedicated organs for
carrying the programs out.
But is that all?
Is there anyone in charge?
Anyone inside?
Anyone controlling
all these functions?
And what do we
mean, by "anyone"?
Or is the beetle just the sum
of its functions and nothing else,
with no executive
authority, no insect soul?
A stowaway.
See how it's
triangulating on me,
trying to get a sense
of this immense,
looming three-dimensional
monster before it?
The fly strides
along, unconcernedly,
until you lift a rolled newspaper
and it quickly buzzes off.
We know this behavior is
wired into the fly's neurons.
(buzz)
Some scientists get
nervous if you ask about the
consciousness of a housefly.
On the inside,
within its tiny brain,
does it have no perception
of making choices?
No awareness of
its own existence?
Not a milligram's worth
of self-consciousness?
Not a hint of hope
for the future?
Not even a little satisfaction
at a day's work well done?
If its brain is one
millionth the mass of ours,
shall we deny it one
millionth of our feelings
and our thoughts?
And if, after carefully
weighing such matters,
we insist it is
still only a robot,
how sure are we that this
judgment doesn't apply to us as well?
What is distinctly human?
Is there anything
that's ours alone?
TYSON: Would our imaginary
extraterrestrial observer
think that there's anything we
do that distinguishes us from
every other living
thing on Earth?
Something that all
or almost all of us,
of every culture
throughout history,
have done and still do?
Something that no
other animal does?
Plato was one of the earliest
commentators to define
what is human.
He declared, "Man is
a featherless biped."
When news of Plato's definition
reached the philosopher Diogenes,
he brought a plucked
chicken to Plato's academy,
asking the assembled
scholars to salute Plato's man.
(laughter)
Plato's protégé, Aristotle,
took another crack at it.
He said, "Man
is a social animal.
Man is a political animal."
But ants,
bees and termites
have much better organized and much
more stable social structures than we have.
The 16th century French
philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote,
"As to fidelity, there is no animal in
the world so treacherous as man."
But he never dated a firefly.
You know how fireflies blink
on and off to attract a female?
Well, some males sabotage
their fellow fireflies come-on
by adding their own blinks.
It's like hacking a friend's
romantic message to his
girlfriend and turning
it into an insult.
The female gets turned off
and the saboteur now has his
chance with her.
Man, that's cold.
Adam Smith, the 18th
century Scottish philosopher,
wrote in his classic
justification of free
enterprise capitalism that
the propensity to barter,
to exchange one
thing for another,
is to be found in no
other race of animals.
Is this true?
Chimpanzees are fond of trade
and understand the idea very well.
Food for sex, a
back rub for sex,
betrayal of the leader for sex,
"spare my baby's life" for sex.
Virtually anything for sex.
Okay, but we're the only
species that makes art, right?
Except this work of art
was created by a bowerbird.
As was this one.
And this one.
We're the only species that
parents their young through
adolescence into adulthood.
Wrong again.
The elephants parent
at least as long as we do.
All right, well, we're the only
species that enslaves and
exploits other animals,
keeping them in captivity.
Tell that to this poor cockroach
of the African savanna.
An emerald wasp is
stalking it to drug and enslave
it in its basement.
The wasp administers a venom
which robs the cockroach of
its will to escape.
Turn on the lights, and
this is one roach that
won't scurry away.
Now the wasp drags
the roach to her lair,
depositing a single egg
on the roach's body
before boarding up the entrance
with rocks and pieces of wood.
The idea is to keep the roach
alive as long as possible so
that its organs
will remain fresh.
The wasp's offspring will
bore into the roach's body and
feast upon it.
When it's full grown,
it will tunnel out of
the roach's grave.
Yeah, but what about
using tools, technology?
Kissing?
♪♪
Could it be that after all,
our species' only real distinction
is our neurotic need to feel special?
Remember this place?
It's the memorial to the broken
branches of the tree of life.
It's mostly filled with the
casualties of environmental
catastrophe and competition that
happened long before we ever got here,
but there is a corridor
that we built ourselves.
What lies beyond are all
those species we ourselves
have rendered extinct.
Could there be some connection
to that widespread delusion of
our separateness
from the rest of nature?
A sharp distinction between
humans and animals is
essential if we are to
bend them to our will,
make them work
for us, wear them,
eat them, experiment on them,
wipe them out entirely without
any disquieting
tinges of guilt or regret.
(thunder)
But we all know that this
carelessness is starting to
catch up with us.
Are we automata, robots,
our destiny written in our
DNA with no
possibility of escape?
Is DNA destiny?
And if it is, does it
have the power to
write epic tales of
heroism and saintliness?
♪♪
TYSON: Okay, just
for argument's sake,
suppose we're nothing
more than the sum total
of our genetic inheritance.
That's not as bad as it sounds.
There are passages in
our DNA that are every bit
as heroic as anything ever
written in any epic saga.
(growl)
The mother is stotting,
deliberately putting her own
life in danger to alert the
herd and buy time for them
so that her offspring and the
rest of the herd can get away.
If this isn't heroism, what is?
And yet, this act of valor is encoded in
the Thomson's gazelle's programming.
Does that make
it any less brave?
She risks being eaten
in order to save her kin.
And that's the key.
Kin selection is that genetic
impulse for self-sacrifice
prevalent throughout the
kingdoms of life, even us.
Skeptical?
Then do this thought
experiment with me.
Imagine trying to
sleep soundly at night,
knowing that your
children are starving,
homeless or gravely ill.
For almost all of us,
this would be unthinkable,
but 16,000 children die
each day of easily preventable
hunger, neglect, or disease.
Children continue to die as we
sleep well and watch this show.
They're far away.
They're not directly
related to us.
Now tell me you don't
believe in the reality
of kin selection.
We will die to protect the
carriers of our DNA and
turn away from the
suffering of those who don't.
Kin selection can inspire
us to die saving a brother,
but it's also the drive
exploited by the demagogue
and the supremacist.
The "us" against "them."
Another thought experiment:
Imagine you're making
the first approach to a
newly discovered planet.
You've used various techniques
to ascertain that this world
supports an astonishing
variety of life-forms.
You want to make contact,
but not with their version of a
scorpion, cobra,
or great white shark.
You want to find the life-form
that's most likely to respond gently,
with empathy and intelligence.
These macaque monkeys
are members of what might
be the most compassionate
species on earth.
This was demonstrated in a
ghastly series of experiments
conducted in the 1960s.
15 macaques were fed only
if they were willing to pull a
chain and electrically shock
an unrelated macaque whose
agony was in plain view
through a one-way mirror.
If they refused to shock
another macaque, they starved.
After learning the ropes,
the monkeys frequently
refused to pull the chain.
In one experiment, only a
small percentage would do so,
while more than two-thirds
preferred to go hungry.
One macaque went without
food for nearly two weeks
rather than hurt its fellows.
Here's the part
that really gets me.
Macaques who had themselves
been shocked in previous
experiments were even
less willing to pull the chain.
The relative social status or
gender of the macaques had
little bearing on their
reluctance to hurt others.
These experiments permit
us to glimpse in non-humans a
saintly willingness to make
sacrifices in order to save others,
even those who
are not close kin.
The heartless selfishness
of the rabies virus,
and the transcendent
empathy of the macaques,
are the extreme
ends of a continuum,
one that we, ourselves, are on.
It was the evolution of
successively larger brains
through the generations of
our ancestors that transformed
human childbirth into an
excruciating experience.
(speaking in native language)
TYSON: Feeling,
in mammals at least,
is mainly controlled by lower,
more ancient
parts of the brain
And thinking, by the higher,
more recently
evolved outer layers.
A rudimentary ability to
think was superimposed on
the preexisting
programmed behaviors.
This is the evolutionary
baggage we carry with us into
the schoolyard,
into the marriage,
into the voting booth,
into the lynch mob,
and onto the battlefield.
So, what does that
tell us about our future?
Will it be nothing more than
a series of dreary repetitions,
with no escape for our children?
I know a story
that gives me hope.
It's the saga of a life that
means we can change.
From this distance in time,
it's hard to know
how much of it is true.
It happened a couple
of thousand years ago,
which is a long time to us,
but only about five seconds
ago on the Cosmic Calendar.
The Cosmic Calendar
compresses all of
time into a single year.
I know no better way of
wrapping our heads around the
fact that we are
still very young,
very new to the universe.
January first is the big bang,
and midnight on December 31 on
our cosmic year is this very second.
All of cosmic evolution,
nearly 14 billion years,
compressed into
a single earth year.
Only five Cosmic
Calendar seconds ago,
which represents
about 2,200 years,
much of the world was in
the grip of absolute rulers.
Their armies rampaged
across the planet, bringing
torture, rape, murder,
and mass enslavement
wherever they went.
A young man came out of an obscure
backwater called Macedonia and,
in less than a decade,
carved out an empire that
stretched from the Adriatic to
beyond the Indus river in India.
Along the way, Alexander
the Great crushed
the implacable Persian army.
And at about the same time,
King Chandragupta
conquered all of northern India.
His son, Bindusara, assumed
the throne after his death.
As Bindusara's own
death approached,
he intended to bequeath
his empire to a favored heir.
And legend has
it that another son,
one who had been
rejected by Bindusara,
was so ruthless in his quest
for power that he murdered
every one of his
99 half-brothers.
(screaming)
Dressed in the finery that only
an emperor was entitled to wear,
the hated son stood before his dying
father and declared contemptuously,
"I am your successor now!"
This was Ashoka
And he was just getting started.
TYSON: In the 2nd century
BCE, the Indian emperor Ashoka
initiated a reign of terror known for
its new heights of sadism and cruelty.
When Ashoka's ministers balked
at his command to cut down all
the fruit trees
surrounding his palace,
Ashoka said, "Fine, we'll
cut off your heads instead."
(screaming)
His fiendishness knew no bounds.
Ashoka built a magnificent
palace for his unsuspecting victims.
They did not know until it
was too late that deep inside the
palace were torture rooms
designed to inflict the five
most painful ways to die.
It came to be known
as Ashoka's Hell.
But that was not
Ashoka's greatest atrocity.
He now set out to complete
the conquest of India that his
grandfather had begun.
The nation of
Kalinga, to the south,
knew no peace could be
made with such a madman.
They courageously stood
their ground as Ashoka's army
besieged the city.
When they could bear no more,
Ashoka sent his
troops in for the kill.
(screaming)
(grunting)
As Ashoka surveyed his triumph,
there was one who
dared to approach him.
MONK: Mighty king, you,
who are so powerful you can
take hundreds of thousands
of lives at your whim.
Show me how
powerful you really are,
give back but one
life to this dead child.
TYSON: Who was this
fearless beggar who dared
to confront Ashoka
with his crimes?
His exact identity
is lost to us,
but we do know that he
was a disciple of Buddha,
then a little known
philosopher who had lived
almost 200 years before.
Buddha preached nonviolence,
awareness and compassion.
His followers renounced
wealth to wander the earth
spreading Buddha's
teachings by their example.
This monk was one of them.
And with his courage and wisdom,
he found the heart
in a heartless man.
Ashoka was never the same.
TYSON: He erected this pillar,
one of many, on the
site of his greatest crime.
Engraved on it was one
of the first edicts of Ashoka.
ASHOKA: All are my children.
I desire for my own children
their welfare and happiness,
and this I desire for all.
TYSON: It wasn't that
Ashoka was violating the
laws of kin selection.
It was that his definition
of who was kin to him had
expanded to include everyone.
He banned the rituals
of animal sacrifice and
hunting for sport.
He established veterinary
hospitals throughout India,
and he counseled his
citizens to be kind to animals.
Ashoka saw to it that wells
were dug to bring water to the
towns and villages.
He planted trees and built
shelters along the roads of
India so that the traveler
would always feel welcome and
animals would have
the mercy of shade.
Ashoka signed peace
treaties with the small
neighboring countries that had once
trembled at the mention of his name.
He would govern India
for another 30 years,
and he used that time to
build schools, universities,
hospitals, even hospices.
He introduced the education of
women and saw no reason why
they could not be
ordained as monks.
He instituted free health
care for all and made sure
that the medicines of the time
were available to everyone.
He decreed that all
religions be honored equally.
He ordered judicial review
of those wrongfully imprisoned
or harshly treated.
The temples and
palaces of Ashoka's reign,
and most of the pillars he
erected throughout India,
were destroyed by
generations of religious fanatics,
outraged by what they
considered to be his godlessness.
But despite their best
efforts, his legacy lives on.
Buddhism became
one of the world's most
influential religious
philosophies.
Ashoka's edicts were
carved in stone in Aramaic,
the language of Jesus,
a couple of hundred
years before his birth.
(echoing)
Ashoka sent Buddhist
emissaries to the Middle East
to teach, compassion,
mercy, humility,
and the love of peace.
Hear that?
This is one of the few temples of
Ashoka that survived the vandals,
a cave in the hills
of Barabar in India.
It's famous for its echo.
The sound waves of my
voice ricochet off the walls until
they're completely absorbed
by the surfaces of objects,
and there's nothing left at all.
But Ashoka's dream is different.
Its echo grows louder
and louder with time.
(baby crying)
Who are we?
You tell me.