I am Legend...and Lem

Last week I wrote about The Futurological Congress, so this week I am going to write about I am Legend the movie. I thought we had a thorough conversation about it in class on Thursday, but I’ll just add a few concluding thoughts. I was most interested in the discussion about Will Smith’s portrayal as a strong black man as it compares to Robert Neville’s book portrayal as a blonde Aryan man. We questioned if Will Smith’s casting decision was as a critical refute of the book character, or if it was just because Will Smith is a good action hero. I personally agree with the latter statement, but I think there is definitely an essay to be written about how the movie’s racial portrayals refute the book’s racial portrayals.

After our class discussion, I don’t have much more to say about the book vs. the movie, so instead I am going to keep writing about The Futurological Congress. I think the end to the novel was a little bit open to interpretation, and I would be interested to know what everyone else thinks about it. The vague ending makes the reader wonder if any of the story really did happen to Ijon, or if the whole thing was a result of a drug overdose. Either way, the plot suggests that the drugs that could lead to the end of true humanity itself. Whether or not the trippy dream is real, it acts as a warning about how our society could change because of our dependences.  

I like Lem because he reminds me of Vonnegut and brings past and present together.

After coming from Helen Sperling’s talk on her experience during the Holocaust and reflecting on Lem’s “Futurological Congress,” I am angry with the ways humanity has messed up the world’s beauty. It seems we can never appreciate the world’s beauty as it is. In “Futurological Congress,” Tichy reflects on the ways humanity looks to the future like there is something better waiting for humanity. Lem describes Tichy as incapable of being in the moment. After Tichy is wounded, he is frozen waiting for a cure. When he wakes up, he appears to be living, but he is still waiting for a cure in a frozen state of mind more or less. In his construction of Tichy, Lem sends us a message about our inability to live in the moment.

The text also conveys humanity’s need to learn from the past. Lem writes, “Yet hardly anyone studies history now—history has been replaced in schools by a new subject called hencity, which is the science of what will be” (p. 89). There are clear differences between science and history. Science is objective, while history is subjective. History directly follows the lives of humans, while science is a product of human history. Lem suggests that history deals with the soul, while science deals with the body, which according to Lem, doesn’t matter. Lem never quite says why the body doesn’t matter, which conveys his lack of regard for the human body. This lack of regard for the body can be seen in Tichy who battles with his own body as he goes in and out of hallucinations and a frozen state. It may be that living in the moment—tuning into our soul—requires an acknowledgement of past human history. 

Expression

It seems Stanislaw Lem wrote the Furturological Congress in a totalitarian society, with censorship all over the place, Lem had no way of expressing his mind without resorting to science fiction. Only the possibility of placing stories, placing meaning, in a world that existed in the future, existed beyond our own, could he escape the censors. And think about it, the whole notion of living in a matrix-like world, that must have been exactly what he felt about living in Soviet Poland.

Is Symington a Hero?

In Stanislaw Lem's Futurological Congress, Symington can be seen as both a hero and a villain. Symington is the head of the pharmaceutical company that manufactures and secretly distributes a class of psychogenic drugs – called mascons – to the entire world. These drugs cause the user to hallucinate, blinding him or her to the barren wasteland that is the world in 2098. Instead, people believe they live in a utopia where money does not exist, everyone can take a pill to shape how they view the world around them, etc. We soon find out that the apocalypse is near and the mascons were used to conceal the end of the world to Earth’s population. Does this make Symington a hero? On the one hand, he is allowing mankind to enjoy the few years it has left by leaving them ignorant to the horror that awaits them. He and a few others are the only ones that know the truth, and therefore, the only ones who are burdened by it. He is a hero because he decides to shield the world from knowledge that will only cause chaos and pain. On the other hand, he does not give mankind the right to choose whether they want to know the truth or not. In this way, he strips every man woman and child’s free will from him or her. Free will is an essential characteristic of humanity, one that makes every life special. Symington is not a hero because he strips this inherent human right from each person living in the world.  

Sci-Fi on Drugs

Lem’s “The Futurlogical Congress” is similar to the other sci-fi works that we have read in that it cautions readers about progress by exploring the consequences of innovating to a point of no return. In the novel, it was evident that drugs had begun to be used both as a necessity to escape the crises of reality and as a controlling mechanism by those in power. At the Futurological Congress, naked secretaries with portable supplies of drugs stood at the ready to serve members of the Congress, and when a revolting crowd needed to be controlled, LTN or ‘love thy neighbor’ bombs were set off, drugging the entire crowd in an effort to cease the rebellion. After being evacuated into a sewer, Tichy’s hallucinations due to the drugs in his system magnified his concerns about the future, which stemmed from his observations at the Futurological Congress about drug use as a coping mechanism. In his hallucinogen induced dreams, humanity is struggling with a dire population crisis in which there simply is not enough room on Earth for all inhabitants. As opposed to dealing with this problem, all of humanity is continuously drugged, a state referred to as psychemization, so that their life is one big luxurious hallucination. However, waking up from these drug-induced alternative realities is not an option, because without the psychem, the deteriorated civilization could not endure itself. Because the only solution is to continue masking the horrors of reality, the innovation of psychem in the novel brought humanity to a point of no return.

A Second Chance

While reading The Futurological Congress, I was eerily reminded of I, Robot in that our idea of normalcy is challenged. Like I, Robot, Ijon Tichy enters a world in which humans are not the masters of themselves but rather slaves to their own creations. Tichy’s hallucinations portray many future fears for the human race, including overpopulation, running out of resources and space, as well as the effects of drug use in an attempt to fix (or cover up) these problems. I found Tichy’s world before his hallucinations alarming as well. The use of violence as a common occurrence illustrates the beginning of humanity’s collapse. Tichy describes a violent shooting saying, “sight of a man at your side crumpling to the floor under heavy fire is not among the most pleasant” (Stainslaw, 2). The indifference with which Tichy describes this death shows that he is a part of the problem. However, he is given the chance to solve these world problems when he wakes up in the sewer on the second day of the Congress. This is a common storyline that Stainslaw follows; the protagonist, after a series of unfortunate events, is given another chance to right his wrongs. (The most relevant example might be the movie Click). In any case, after reawaking from his drugged stupor, Tichy realizes the importance of reversing the current situation. As “the manuscript slipped from his hands, hit the dark water with a splash, and floated away,” Tichy and the rest of the futurologists usher in a new era, one that hopefully will differ significantly from Tichy’s hallucination (58).

Technology Is The New LSD

As many others have already noted on this blog, Stanislaw Lem's The Futurological Congress involves an incredible amount of hallucinogenic drug use. The story progressed from a dream-like description of the life of Ijon Tichy to a slow realization that most of what Tichy (and the reader) has been experiencing is a product of widespread drug use, both voluntary and involuntarily. In Lem's version of the future, it is nearly impossible for Tichy to determine what is real and what is not, no matter how hard he tries to make the society more transparent.

Drug and alcohol use is a problem today, but I think that the novel was less about the problems associated with drugs themselves, but about the problems of becoming disconnected from reality. Lem used hallucinogenic drugs as a way to separate the people in the future from reality, but our own world is also disconnected from reality in a different way. We have become so immersed in technology--movies, immersive video games, Facebook--that makes us less aware of the tangible reality around us. Instead of being in a constant chemical trance, we are constantly immersed in our phones and computers that distance us from what is "reality", reality meaning what is physically existing around us. Lem wrote this book in 1971 as a vision of the future, and although we (thankfully) are not as reliant on drugs as Lem predicts, we are just as immersed in something equally addicting.

Hard & Soft Social Engineering with references

The satirical references in Futurological Congress somehow were lost in translation for an English reader in the 2014. With little knowledges to the Polish socialism that occur in during 1950s to 1970s, Futurological Congress can be dismiss at Stanislaw Lem is tripping on LSD. Lem comments on the citizens disgruntle attitudes with the socialism as the belief of this time period suggesting that socialism equates communism. Because there are fear of communism, radical group aligns itself to capitalist ideas rather than the socialist ideas. Lem represent the radicals in Futurological Congress with terrorist group that are bombing the Hilton.The socialist movements that ruled Poland during the time are done with brute force, which included the expansion of ORMO (militia) force to control any radical uprising — the hard social engineering part. Again being satirical, Lem suggests that the room are bomb free, a promise that parallel to the Socialist party guarantee that citizens who follow the socialist movement harm free from the radicals actions. Other references that being used are the are drugs induces, namely “benignimizer,” a type of soft social engineering. The “shipwreck reality” that Tichy end up with alludes to Poland’s 1970 food riot. The “mascons” drugs that Lem presents to the reader is his satirical way suggesting that Polish government trying to hid the Poland’s 1970 food riot from the other nations.

Lem, Drugs, Consequences, and Sci-Fi

Although Lem wrote The Futurological Congress in 1971, it can still helpful and interesting commentary on the effects of psychoactive drugs and substances in modern times.  The entire novel is told in a humorous tone; however, it is obvious that Lem is making a statement about the negative effects that psychoactive substances are having on this society.  Though it might be interesting to live out the fantasy worlds that are seen on TV, the people in the story ultimately lose touch with reality, and appear oblivious to the collapsing world around them.  I think Lem is making an interesting point about our choices can have consequences beyond anything we could have imagined, since the people in the story likely chose to take the drugs in the first place, but didn’t foresee how this decision would steamroll out of control and create a world that is completely dominated by hallucinations.  Like the other sci-fi books we have read this semester, The Futurological Congress offers yet another commentary on how all of our choices have unintended consequences. 

The Men Who Loved Us

          Futurological Congress by the one and only Stanislaw Lem exemplifies the sci-fi genre as a medium through which many authors bring forth a non-nonsensical string of nonsensical images to project and warn the readers about a reality that may or may not exist yet, wherein humans become servant to their own creations. The best example to illustrate this observation is the evolution of  futurology from its early days. In this entry I’ll discuss futurology’s three-fold significance as it is presented in the first day of the Congress. With regards to its function in Tichy's imaginary future of the year 2039/ 2098, maybe some other time.

          The watcher-watched dynamics created by Tichy our narrator is what makes the beginning of this novel humorously dark compared to the rather serious tone of Tichy’s cryogenical experience in the second half. But there's more. Tichy was first and foremost a victim of the hallucinogens. The readers watch him going through all sorts of confusing mental and physical turmoil after he drank the drugged water. However, Lem does not want this course of event to make Tichy become an unreliable narrator. And this is where the stream of consciousness narrating style comes in. This style does not only place more emphasis on the confusion that Tichy and everybody in the Hilton hotel were having, but also puts the readers directly into Tichy’s shoes and consequently forces us to momentarily stop over-thinking, to overlook our doubts in the validity of his narration, and to instantly feel angry at/with him. In other words, much like how Tichy was midly appalled the moment he saw himself experiencing a love-hate complex with his archnemeses, readers would most likely be appalled while watching him watching himself (“Why would you worry about your archnemeses when there are possibly hundreds of time bombs scattered around in the vicinity of the hotel???”). To confuse and offend the readers with characters who confuse and offend themselves is part of Lem’s plan to project a reality where drugs pose a serious threat to the mental and physical well-being of humanity. And to know that it is part of Lem’s plan makes the premise of the novel (but not necessarily the characters themselves) hard to hate and ever more comically dark.

          Coupled with this narrating style is the absurd juxtaposition between the dire and horrendous assaults abound the Hilton hotel and the cordial atmosphere inside it. The juxtaposition is so rugged and so satirical that it almost begs the reader to not take the Congress seriously. There were stripteases, a Pope assassin, LTN bombs,  three Japanese scientists with the same name, countless deaths, and oral presentations in which spewing out numeral headings of research paper was not only not absurd, but necessary. The guest lecturers were nonchalant, apathetic, and serious to a fault, except for an unfortunate (or fortunate) few who had a whiff of the benignimizer. Meanwhile, the protesters were so convinced that the most effective method to stop the scholars from having these important discussions about the survival of humanity was to literally spread love into the air. This juxtaposition, in addition with the narrating style as discussed above, reveals that the novel’s quirky European dark humor has other two levels of significance. First, it shows that these scientists and scholars, who believed themselves to be the last hope for humanity’s future, nevertheless failed to see how far removed from reality they actually were. They were not so much a part of the solution as a part of the problem itself, as proven by the aggressive response from the protesters. And second, by stripping off the sophisticated façade of these men, by letting the readers know their inner thoughts, the novel means to help us reflect upon the state of the actual world that we the readers live in. For the most relevant real life example, think of the Hilton hotel as an isolated, small-sized liberal arts college in a rural setting where the best of the best convene to discuss grand ideas 24 hours a day seven days a week, and where many young male and female in their early 20s get intoxicated and who-knows-what-else on the weekends.

Here's something fun. Hilton is short for a hill in Clinton, or Hamilton College. Just kidding. Not really.

LTN Bomb: Make Love, Not War.