Learning To Be Human By Daniel Suarez

The Humanities: Our Moral Compass
How do we, as humans, know what right and wrong are? What is the intangible feeling that gives us a moral compass? Can a computer replicate this - can it tell good from evil? All these questions are touched on in Influx, by Daniel Suarez. Influx asks why the rapid development of the 1900s has slowed so much in recent years. When eccentric physicist Jon Grady figures out how to reverse gravity, he is taken by the Bureau of Technological Control - a Cold War agency that now possesses god-like technology. Grady is imprisoned and must fight the BTC to release these innovations to the public. The same questions are addressed by the article “Learning to Be Human”, by Sophie Gilbert in The Atlantic. In the article,
Philosophy forces them to think about morality. Theater, literature, and film put students into the mindset of others.” “Learning to Be Human” teaches a lesson that holds true during Influx - that the humanities must provide our moral compass in a world increasingly dominated by science and technology.
In Jon Grady’s prison, called Hibernity, he is tortured for months by a sadistic Artificial Intelligence. Though at first it seems like punishment, eventually Grady discovers that the goal of Hibernity is to build a human consciousness without free will. The BTC has found that though AIs are very good at calculations, they cannot truly innovate in the way a human can. They wish convert innovation into an “industrial process.” This itself demonstrates the need for the humanities in our
For the longest time, I thought I knew what a moral compass was - something that made me smile or feel good was good, something that made me cry, scream, or whine was bad. Talk about being a big baby. I operated under this system for a while, until I eventually got to Freshman English. In that class, instead of studying the grammar and vocabulary previously associated with the subject, we talked quite a bit about philosophy, justice, and good versus evil. This humanities-focused approach helped me understand what morals really are, and that there is more than one set of them. Philosophers such as Kant, Rawls, Mill, and Plato led me to find my own moral compass, and develop a stronger sense of what is right and what is wrong. There was one day in particular, when we were learning about Utilitarianism, when everything hit me at once. This set of ideas made sense. I remember my teacher and I getting into a long discussion in the middle of class, the eyes of my classmates going back and forth as I tried to speak with authority on a subject I had never heard of twenty minutes ago. Mill’s theory formalized everything I thought was right and wrong, and gave me a framework to evaluate everything around me. The humanities provide that framework - that is how one can stay moral and make good choices. The BTC failed to