Week 1523 - Unos Inter Multos - One Among the Very Many

The Concept Explained

Counting Down to 90 - Week 1579

Why 1579

Bhavin's WritingsBhavin Jankharia

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When I was a teenager, I used to entertain a theory that I was the only real person in the world, placed on this Earth as an experiment by aliens, surrounded by people who were not truly people, but elaborate constructs created to see how I react and behave. It was nice to retreat into this fantasy at the time, but when I first mentioned it to a friend, they immediately diagnosed me as a case of extreme narcissism, though the true description would have been “solipsism”, where you believe that only your mind is the true mind in this world and everything else is an illusion. 

I was reminded of this when I started watching “Pluribus” on Apple TV. The central conceit of the show is that after a “virus-like” infection derived from a code sent out from an alien planet, all people on Earth become a single entity, a hive-mind, behaving as one (a “we”). 

Minor spoilers for the first three episodes follow.

The protagonist is Carol Sturka, played by Rhea Seehorn, a writer of historical romances, who one fine day finds that the whole world has gone to nuts, leaving her the only person in the United States, not infected. She finds out later that there are 12 others around the world not infected, but when she reaches out to five of them who speak English, she finds that four of them are just waiting to be “integrated” with the rest of the world, while one is using this time to enjoy life, because the “we” world will do anything to keep them happy, until they find the reason why these 13 are not infected and find a way to make them a part of the pluribus, which means simply, “many”. 

Three episodes down, the show raises so many questions and brings up intrinsic contradictions. The central argument is that while the pluribus maintains that “your life is your own”, it also believes that the best path for people on Earth is for every individual to be part of the hive and this diktat overrides any personal choice that Carol might entertain, though during the process, they will give into all her requests including giving her a hand grenade, a tank or even an atom-bomb, even though the bomb could lead to significant destruction of the pluribus itself. 

Similarly, while they provide meat and fish to the 6 unsullied (remember the phrase from Game of Thrones?) they also make it clear, they have become vegetarian and will not kill any animal or insect (echoes of Jainism), but as long as pre-killed, preserved, safe meat or fish are available, they will cook them for the untouched/Carol because they want to keep them happy. But once that stock is over, everyone by default will be vegetarian/vegan, with no choice to behave otherwise, unless the unaffected individuals catch their own meat/fish. 

It is so interesting. Everyone has access to all knowledge from anyone’s mind. No one remains an individual anymore. So then is there any point for an individual to strive for anything? To try and invent stuff? To discover new places? To experience the thrill of reading a phenomenal book, like Kawakami’s “Under the Eye of the Big Bird”, which I am currently reading? What happens to your own individuality? It is supposed to be subsumed in the service of the larger good, which is what communism was supposed to be theoretically, though it never panned out practically.

Crime is zero, animals have been freed from zoos, everyone is smiling. The cost? Around 900 million died during the first infection. And while the collective is sad, it believes that the means justify the end, echoing what Krishna told Arjun before the war. 

It is rare for a show these days to raise questions without sounding like a documentary. Pluribus is entertaining, well-shot and well-acted. Carol is not a likeable or endearing person, which makes the show even more interesting because you don’t automatically land up taking her side…she grates, she is condescending, screams, shouts and you sometimes want to tell her to take it down a notch…but then she has just lost her best friend/lover, who was one of the 900 million who did not make it and is now faced with the issue of being the only person in the United States who is still an individual, with her own personality and thoughts and does not know what to do about that because she is still dependent on the pluribus for all her material needs and yet needs to figure out a way to remain her own person and not becoming a Borg (remember Star Trek), though with some semblance of a heart.

The pluribus also reminds me of an AI like ChatGPT. If you ask a question, it can generally give you an answer by mining the information derived from millenia of written work, which are the thoughts of individuals put down on paper or other media. AI also can act sycophantic the way the pluribus does and show empathy, though you don’t really know whether they are truly empathetic or feigning a show of empathy because like high functioning sociopaths, they know theoretically how to do so, even if they don’t actually feel empathy. 

I can’t wait for the remaining episodes. What a start!