On Arthur C. Clarke's Criticism Of White Settler Colonialism, and Secular Theodicy

This digression is devoted to an extended aside in A Fall of Moondust; a slender 1961 novel by Arthur C. Clarke (1917 – 2008). It's easy to forget how famous Clarke once was not just as a science fiction author, but in wider discussions of science policy and search for extraterrestrial life. Anyway, the main action of the book is the rescue mission of a group of passengers on a sightseeing tour on the Moon, who are trapped under a kind of lunar dustbowl caused by a lunar Earthquake. While it plays some role in the development of the genre of 'hard science fiction' (or scientific science fiction), the novel is primarily a study, from multiple angles, of group dynamics and leadership under great stress and time constraints. What's neat is that there is no unique hero in the story, but that many kinds of contributions are valued. But because Clarke's characterizations are flimsy (and marred by gendered stereotypes) it's best read as an adventure story with occasionally comic touches. What follows does not contain any spoilers. 

The novel, which is set in the future, is oriented around a kind of settler-colonial mission to the Moon, and the possibility of developing a tourism industry on it. Clarke leaves the exact political details underspecified, and even the institutional contents of global peace is left unclear (especially compared to his slightly earlier Childhood's End). There is some evidence that the United Nations is politically influential and that some of the balance of power in it has shifted to Africa--we'll see evidence of what one might call 'post-colonial subaltern solidarity' that Clarke expects. (It's the great age of decolonization in which he was writing.) And while there is some evidence that the Soviet Union is culturally significant, the novel offers plenty of suggestions that ordinary market capitalism is not extinguished yet. I leave it at that (some of the evidence is quoted below).

Interestingly enough (given Clarke's own non-fictional views), the possibility of encountering extra-terrestrial life is actually minimized and ridiculed throughout the novel. It’s compared to religion in ways unflattering to both UFOs and religion.

In fact, one natural take-away from the novel is that if technological barriers to space-colonization can be overcome (and it is not obvious it's worth the money and risks), it's much preferable over settler-colonization on Earth. And the reason I say this is because there is a set-piece about 2/3rds of the novel, when -- during the dramatic action of the novel things have reached a real nadir -- there is an extended conversation between Pat (the captain of the space-bus buried under lunar dust), who we just learn is Lunar born, and McKenzie (who is one of his terrestrial touristy passengers trapped alongside him).

I'll quote the passage in full:

"...Incidentally, how did you get a name like McKenzie?"

Having had little contact with the racial tensions that were not yet wholly extinct on Earth, Pat could make such remarks without embarrassment—indeed, without even realizing that they might cause embarrassment.

"My grandfather had it bestowed on him by a missionary when he was baptized. I'm very doubtful if it has any—ah— genetic significance. To the best of my knowledge, I'm a full-blooded abo."

"Abo?"

"Aboriginal. We were the people occupying Australia before the whites came along. The subsequent events were somewhat depressing."

Pat's knowledge of terrestrial history was vague; like most residents of the Moon, he tended to assume that nothing of great importance had ever happened before 8 November 1967, when the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution had been so spectacularly celebrated.

"I suppose there was war?"

"You could hardly call it that. We had spears and boomerangs; they had guns. Not to mention T.B. and V.D., which were much more effective. It took us about a hundred and fifty years to get over the impact. It's only in the last century— since about nineteen forty—that our numbers started going up again. Now there are about a hundred thousand of us— almost as many as when your ancestors came."

McKenzie delivered this information with an ironic detachment that took any personal sting out of it, but Pat thought that he had better disclaim responsibility for the misdeeds of his terrestrial predecessors.

"Don't blame me for what happened on Earth," he said. "I've never been there, and I never will—I couldn't face that gravity. But I've looked at Australia plenty of times through the telescope. I have some sentimental feeling for the place— my parents took off from Woomera."

"And my ancestors named it; a woomera's a booster stage for spears."

Are any of your people," asked Pat, choosing his words with care, "still living in primitive conditions? I've heard that's still true, in some parts of Asia."

"The old tribal life's gone. It went very quickly, when the African nations in the U.N. started bullying Australia. Often quite unfairly, I might add—for I'm an Australian first, and an aboriginal second. But I must admit that my white countrymen were often pretty stupid; they must have been, to think that we were stupid! Why, 'way into the last century some of them still thought we were Stone Age savages. Our technology was Stone Age, all right—but we weren't."

There seemed nothing incongruous to Pat about this discussion, beneath the surface of the Moon, of a way of life so distant both in space and time. He and McKenzie would have to entertain each other, keep an eye on their twenty unconscious companions, and fight off sleep, for at least five more hours. This was as good a way as any of doing it.

"If your people weren't in the Stone Age, Doc—and just for the sake of argument, I'll grant that you aren't—how did the whites get that idea?"

"Sheer stupidity, with the help of a preconceived bias. It's an easy assumption that if a man can't count, write, or speak good English, he must be unintelligent. I can give you a perfect example from my own family. My grandfather—the first McKenzie—lived to see the year two thousand, but he never learned to count beyond ten. And his description of a total eclipse of the Moon was 'Kerosene lamp bilong Jesus Christ he bugger-up finish altogether.'

"Now, I can write down the differential equations of the Moon's orbital motion, but I don't claim to be brighter than Grandfather. If we'd been switched in time, he might have been the better physicist. Our opportunities were different-that's all. Grandfather never had occasion to learn to count; and I never had to raise a family in the desert—which was a highly skilled, full-time job"

Perhaps," said Pat thoughtfully, "we could do with some of your grandfather's skills here. For that's what we're trying to do now—survive in a desert."

"I suppose you could put it that way, though I don't think that boomerang and fire stick would be much use to us. Maybe we could use some magic—but I'm afraid I don't know any, and I doubt if the tribal gods could make it from Arnhem Land."

"Do you ever feel sorry," asked Pat, "about the breakup of your people's way of life?"

"How could I? I scarcely knew it. I was born in Brisbane, and had learned to run an electronic computer before I ever saw a corroboree—"

"A what?"

"Tribal religious dance—and half the participants in that were taking degrees in cultural anthropology. I've no romantic illusions about the simple life and the noble savage. My ancestors were fine people, and I'm not ashamed of them, but geography had trapped them in a dead end. After the struggle for sheer existence, they had no energy left for a civilization. In the long run, it was a good thing that the white settlers arrived, despite their charming habit of selling us poisoned flour when they wanted our land."

"They did that? "

"They certainly did. But why are you surprised? That was a good hundred years before Belsen."

Pat thought this over for a few minutes. Then he looked at his watch and said, with a distinct expression of relief: "Time I reported to Base again. Let's have a quick look at the passengers first."—Chapter 19.

We don't learn what role Belsen (presumably a reference to Bergen-Belsen) has in the intellectual self-understanding of the future. But the implication seems to be that it is a non-trivial part of the cultural common ground of the educated of the future. Clarke here invites the reader to reflect on the commonalities (and some of the differences) between the genocidal treatment of the Jews by the Nazis and the settler-colonialism of the Anglo-Australians toward the aboriginals. 

More explicitly, McKenzie's argument (which is not contradicted anywhere else in the novel) is critical of racist views of intelligence in two ways (one obvious and one more subtle): first, he rejects racial nativism as explanatory when it comes to intelligence, and he plainly comes down on the side of education, opportunity, and culture as key drivers of intellectual development.

Second, he explicitly rejects the idea that there is one kind of intelligence; intelligence is something context specific. And, in fact, in this day of machine learning, it's a useful reminder of the older, wiser idea of intelligence as a culturally embedded skill that allows one to navigate one's environment(s).

This anti-racist view is embedded in a Victorian stance (that one finds in, say, J.S. Mill) that draws on a much older conceptual contrast of civilization vs savage that is understood in energetic and cultural evolutionary/selectionist terms ("geography had trapped them in a dead end. After the struggle for sheer existence.") Now, again the 'civilized' are not necessarily smarter--the point of the passage is to alert us to their arrogant stupidity and biases that makes the more powerful miss or overlook intelligence when they encounter it (and it suits their interests to do so).

But the implication of the cultural/group Darwinian argument in the quoted set-piece is that it is fundamentally better to be technologically civilized and that ‘savage’ life-styles are fundamentally not worth preserving or revitalizing (notice that 'dead end'). That is to say, the total effect of the extended aside is a kind of cultural argument for technological progress or spatial manifest destiny that tries to avoid the racialist, even genocidal versions of the past. But the racist versions are not wholly repudiated on consequentialist grounds because  "in the long run, it was a good thing that the white settlers arrived" despite the costs. Not to put too fine point on it, but this is a species of secular theodicy.