Dogs in Space Explore Existential Questions

My son, now 10, still averages about 30 minutes of media time a day (which, yes, I’m annoyingly proud of). Sometimes it’s good stuff like the recent PBS climate change documentary, Saving Venice, which we just watched together. Other times it’s late night TV clips (Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Trevor Noah, or Saturday Night Live). And other times classic films: modern ones like Beetlejuice (that are regularly talked about, and ick, even now have a Broadway version), or early classics like The Idle Class with Charlie Chaplin (which my son laughed at more than even Beetlejuice!).

But sometimes, sometimes, we dig into the current stuff, wade through the countless series of newly released sparkly bits of unwatchable garbage to find a gem that might not be watched a decade from now, but is excellent and speaks to our moment of ecological decline and disconnection with nature.¹ Series like Hilda, Kipo, or most recently Dogs in Space. Yes, I write that almost with embarrassment. But it was really funny, it played off Americans’ love of dogs and space opera (even drawing in Star Trek royalty to voice some of the characters), and most importantly it grappled with humanity’s destruction of our home and even whether we’re worthy of redemption. That’s pretty deep for a kid’s cartoon about cute little genetically engineered dog explorers in space (probably why the New York Times gave it such a rave review).

So, I want to write today about the final episode of the second season (apologies in advance for the spoilers). After years of botched exploration and failed diplomacy by the space dogs, one species who wants revenge on Earth due to the poor choices of the lead character of the series, Garbage (formerly Captain Garbage), decides to launch a ‘planet seed’ at the poisoned Earth and grow a new planetary system in its place (destroying Earth in the process). These aliens (or at least the vengeful captain) are essentially evil Gaians, or perhaps more accurately evil druids (which derives from “Oak-knower”). Their planet is a living ship, shooting thorns and dandelion-seed-like bombs, and they’re walking trees (can’t know a tree any better than being one)!

Anyway, long story short, our dog heroes concentrate some of Earth’s poisoned atmosphere to make a weapon that can kill the tree aliens’ living ship (the pollution is that bad) but at the last moment Captain Stella (Garbage’s replacement) just can’t pull the trigger. She and her crew are captured and using strong emotional appeals convince the arboreal crew (other than the angry captain) that humans are worth saving (the rest of the Earth or its myriad lifeforms, including dogs, are never part of the consideration).² The crew mutinies and Gaia is saved, at least in its horribly polluted form.

Ultimately, from the few moments of human life we see—a general who doesn’t answer his phone and instead leaves instructions to DM him at his social media handle @MrFunTrucks and a guy sipping an iced coffee at an outdoor café, where there are only video images of trees and an Air Quality Index warning of high particulate matter (at 385 µg/m³ of PM2.5, more than ten times today’s unsafe level)—the show doesn’t offer a strong argument for redemption.³ But one of the space dogs, Kira, argues that, “Yeah, some of them are bad people, but that’s true of every species, right?” and humans get a second chance.

But it does pose a fair question that I’ve shied away from to a degree: are humans worth redeeming or would Gaia be better off without us? We mostly have a pretty instinctive and anthropocentric answer that we should be here (my gut screams, yes!). But that might not be the honest answer. Then again, if we could get our affairs in order—and re-enter the living community as peer or even servant rather than conqueror—perhaps we do have an important role or two to play.

Humans as Gaia’s Immune System?

Extending the planetary organism metaphor, asteroids and comets could be seen as the equivalent of dangerous pathogens. Earth’s atmosphere (membrane) is good at deflecting or dissolving the smaller threats, but can’t stop the biggest ones—sorry dinosaurs. But perhaps humans can serve that function. In fact, for those who missed the recent news, NASA successfully collided a small spacecraft with the moon of a comet recently, altering the moon’s course. As the head of NASA, Bill Nelson, noted, “If an Earth-threatening asteroid was discovered and we could see it far enough away, this technique could be used to deflect it.”

Yes, we have much farther to go before we perfect this capability, but it could protect humans, and more importantly life itself (in its current form) from destruction. That is a worthy role to play not just for ourselves, but for all of Gaia.

Or Even Gaia’s Reproductive Organ?

We might even play a role in seeding other planetary organisms. To be clear—not human colonies—we are part of Gaia and cannot live on other planets. And even if we could, the ecological expense of this and the anthropocentrism makes it an unworthy pursuit. But we could play a very important role as Gaia’s sporangia (or spore stalks). Our rockets could launch extremophile bacteria to uninhabited worlds to seed new planetary beings in a million or hundred million years. Not for humans or even our distant descendants. Indeed, even if we lasted that long, that world would have evolved different life that probably wouldn’t be compatible with Gaian (or human) life. So the point is to decenter ourselves and see that we could play an important role in simply spreading life to space, not human life.⁴ That is a worthy aspiration, though only once we clean up our home, cultivate an ecocentric restorative culture, and get the planetary defense system all set.

But Never, Ever, Gaia’s Brain

Let me end on what humans’ role shouldn’t be. We’re not going to colonize the stars. And we’re not the brain of Gaia (as too many writers and thinkers have suggested). Our web and cloud are rudimentary, our knowledge incomplete and in many cases probably simply wrong or clouded by human myopia, anthropocentrism, or the desire to profit. The idea that we are connecting and linking up Earth into a thinking being through our limited primate brains and technologies is sheer hubris. That’s not to say we can’t keep expanding our knowledge, that we can’t keep striving, and exploring the far reaches of math, astronomy, medicine, ecology, and so on. But never with the impression that we’re making Gaia smarter. We can defend Gi, maybe even help Gi spread, but that’s the extent of our service—other than of course, knowing our place, and not destroying the many Gaian systems that we depend on through our pursuit of the Consumer Way.

Perhaps this will be proven wrong four thousand years from now—after millennia of living in balance with and serving Gaia. Maybe then we’ll have more knowledge and wisdom to contribute, so that we truly help make Gaia smarter (whatever that means), but right now, this idea is preposterous, bordering even on sacrilegious, and risks countless dangers—from opening up the floodgates of genetic engineering, geoengineering, and synthetic biology, to who knows what else. So let’s remind ourselves that just as the sun doesn’t revolve around Gaia, Gaia does not revolve around us. Rather we serve Gaia, and getting to work healing the damage we’ve done and protecting Gi from outside threats would be a good place to start.

Endnotes

1) An homage to Colbert’s “Meanwhile,” one of the best bits on late night TV.

2) Yup, once again an example (like Eternals) where the only species considered is the thinking one. But the show was written by humans so this deep anthropocentrism that infects nearly every work of human creativity is sort of understandable.

3) Aside number three: I recently heard a statistic (on Saturday Night Live of all places) that 86% of young Americans would like to become a social media influencer. Gone are the days of dreaming to be an astronaut, doctor, or teacher, I guess. Instead, we want to encourage other people to consume more crap.

4) Frankly, I’d be worried if humans actually spread to the stars. There’d be a good chance that if we did it would come at the expense of other living planets; like the Americas, we might wreak havoc accidentally or on purpose to other worlds. Read, for example, the beautiful novel, The Sparrow, for an accidental example, or watch Independence Day for the intentional (it’s not hard to imagine that those aliens could be us).