Midway: Chapter 8

  Johannes was walking down the central corridor of the habitat ring and towards the primary school classroom.  When the first children were born onboard, they were taught individually by their parents, but as more and more children were born, a more formal and structured education system needed to be established.  There were four ‘schools’ on board, each of which consisted of just a single room.  Much like in the past on Earth, education aboard ship was split into primary and secondary.  Beyond that on the New Horizon there was also the tertiary which consisted of a deep knowledge of a restricted domain, and the quaternary level which consisted of a deep knowledge of a second (or more) different restricted domain(s), with an added focus on synthesizing what one could out of the combined multiple fields.    

  Primary education consisted largely of foundational and breadth material and it typically took children between the ages of four and twelve, but this varied by the aptitude of individual students.  This foundational level constituted the basic essentials of reading, writing, and mathematics, but it also included brief preliminary introductions to some of the basic concepts of philosophy, science and history.  Primary education was also about ensuring a basic working knowledge of various general aspects of life like time, hygiene, and how to use technology manually before sudents received their Brainchip in their early teen years. 

  Secondary education usually started around thirteen years old, and it continued as long as it took for a student to complete the material of the secondary level courses.   Some finished this material in only a few years, while for some other students this could last them well into their twenties.  The curriculum consisted of the basics of most disciplines, and built on the foundational material of primary school.  Everybody was required to learn these fundamentals, and to have a general competency and literacy in just about everything in order to have the well-rounded education required to be a competent and effective member of the ship bound community.  

  This included basic knowledge and a working understanding of all of the primary sciences like chemistry, biology, physics, and calculus, but it also included an equal focus on the humanities.  Students in the secondary level learned much greater depth about the history of Earth, including the essential political, military, and cultural histories; they studied societies from classical antiquity, all the way through to the latest news from Earth about the current global political situation from the most recently received transmission.  

  Language (as had been mandated by the great Kim In-Su) was also studied in detail.  Each student was required in secondary school to become fluent in a second language other than English which was the common language on the ship.  Their language options were largely in sync with the primary ethnicities which were reflected on the ship, but some others were included because of the rich literary history that came with them.  The most popular choices included French, Mandarin, Navajo, Hindi, German, Arabic, Russian, and Latin.  

  Naturally other languages were also available for study, and even if there were no natural speakers of a more obscure language on board, there were extensive conversation recordings with detailed explanations and descriptions in the central archive.   Most helpful though was the ship’s artificial intelligence being able to engage in a constructive dialogue with the students in any language.  The difficulty of the conversations had with the computer could be adaptively increased incrementally as the student’s abilities increased.  The most popular languages were the ones considered most useful, and this usually meant that they were either the primary language of one of the Great Ethnicities onboard, or one of the ones with the richest literary traditions.  

  Secondary education was also where students were introduced to music and were expected to learn how to play at least one kind of musical instrument.  Some displayed very little interest and were permitted to drop the practice after attaining a basic proficiency, but some display a remarkable aptitude, and continued to participate in the ship’s orchestra, which regularly performed concerts for the entertainment of the rest of the crew.   They would perform both classical pieces of music from Earth, as well as some original compositions from past and present members of the crew.  Like the linguists, they would often spend the majority of their tertiary and quaternary education perfecting more and more instruments, and spending their brain hours writing new music.

  In the tertiary education system, each member of the New Horizon family was required to master some particular domain of inquiry, and the options as to what field one could study were completely open.  One could master the domain of something practical like engineering or something artistic like the aforementioned music devotees, something physical like martial arts or something more applicable like astrophysics, or even something more esoteric like philosophy; there was no discrimination between disciplines.   Each was regarded as a different approach to the same questions about life, the universe, and everything.

  Beyond the tertiary education, one had the option of going on to the quaternary system, which simply consisted of returning to the tertiary system to do it all over again in a complementary field, or in a different field altogether.  Many people did indeed avail themselves of the opportunity to reach the level of mastery in a variety of things, returning to tertiary school over and over again.  Many of the crew with science or engineering masteries also held complementary masteries in a domain of the arts or the social sciences; they appreciated the complementary nature of the disciplines in service of a thoroughly rounded education.

  Johannes came to a stop outside the door to the primary education room.  He knocked on it, and gave a little wave to his son through the window in the door.  Tycho was the current full time primary school teacher which satisfied his brain hours, but he usually also volunteered a great many hours teaching the secondary and tertiary levels.  He had only served in the position for a couple years, but he’d really taken a shine to it.  This pleased Johannes and others who cared deeply about Tycho; he had always seemed to have some angst about being ‘caged in the ship’ as he sometimes put it, but he really seemed to have found some sort of peace of purpose, a calling or raison d'être in teaching their youngest students.

  He really did love the youngsters though, which was in some ways an odd contrast to the general disdain and lack of enthusiasm he seemed to hold for the adults on the ship.   Of course it is not difficult to understand why anyone would enjoy spending their time working with bright children, it was just that this contrast about him always seemed a little odd… but Johannes shook off the thought.  This feeling of oddness was well outweighed by his satisfaction that Tycho had found a role onboard that seemed to suit him so well.

  With a silent wave of his hand Tycho invited him into the room, to which Johannes opened the door and entered.  “Johannes, how fortuitous!  Say hello to Johannes, class.”

  “Hello Johannes,” the children obediently chorused.

  “Bao, Johannes tertiary training is in psychology, why don’t you ask him what you asked me just a moment ago?”  The eleven year old East Asian girl (who was remarkably bright for her age and would soon be swept into the secondary program a couple years early) stood to ask her question again.  They had been studying the ancient and more recently developed religions of Earth, and on the two meter screen at the front of the class was the standard flowchart of the Abrahamic monotheistic religions, which they had all learned about in primary school.  It had all the various ancient pagan influences feeding into Judaism prominently displayed at the top of the chart, with Christianity and Islam beneath them, and all of their various derivatives below them, most of it taken up by the Christian splinter groups developed in the Americas, with Mormon right at the bottom amongst all of the other most recent incarnations.

  “Johannes, how could people believe things that were so obviously not true?”  Young Bao respectfully sat down again to await a response.

  “Oh,” Johannes chuckled in response, “is that all…”  Johannes looked at Tycho, who merely shrugged at him, unsuccessfully concealing his amusement at his revered father being so uncomfortably put on the spot.  He pulled up a stool from the side of the classroom and sat on it as he considered how to answer the question.

  “Well Bao, the things they believed in the later years, the things you’re thinking about, were not always so unbelievable in their historical past.  What I mean is that, while their beliefs were never based on the kind of science we know and understand today, when they first started believing the things they did, those things didn’t contradict with what they could know about the world around them.  That denial that is hard to understand took a long time to develop… a long time.  As science revealed more and more truth about the world and humanity’s place in the universe, faith more and more became a necessary virtue, as a conscious and deliberate denial of what science revealed about the world.  It happened gradually, in steps, each new revelation getting its own rationalization and denial of implication.”

  Bao stood again and attempted to ask a follow up question.  She was cautious at first as she considered her wording, but she continued more confidently as she came to better understand what she wanted to ask.  “But why… why would somebody born in that later time believe it, having better information available to them, and all around them?  That’s what I don’t understand…”

  Johannes took a deep sigh and started casually twirling his long white hair in thought. “You know Bao? I used to wonder the exact same thing.  It’s part of why I became interested in psychology in the first place, long before I took it in tertiary. ”   He continued to twirl a thick lock of hair as he went on, then let it go.

  “Bao, babies come into the world… perfectly gullible, and by necessity.  They have a lot to learn and never enough time to learn it all in a dangerous world.  The brains of infant and toddler are specialized to absorb vast amounts of information from the world around them, from language to social norms… to their culture’s cosmology.”  He surveyed the class and they seemed to be following him for the most part.  Bao was scrutinizing him intently, reminding him of the same intense look of concentration and scrutiny he remembered of her grandfather, whom he could recall meeting when he was much younger.   She was the granddaughter of Kim In-Su, one of the principle founders of the New Horizon mission.  “Are you with me so far?”

  “Yes,” the class murmured collectively.

  “Okay, well this is all well and good for us here, all born on a ship and taught all about humanism and science.  But a lot of people in the past and… I imagine, some people still on Earth today, are taught from day one a cosmology and moral system based on a book of fairy tales derived from the oral traditions of an otherwise unremarkable people living thousands of years ago in the Bronze Age.  To us, with what we know, what they believed might be so obviously ridiculous but it isn’t to them.  They are like… they’re like fish in water; they live in it so they can’t see it from a different perspective like ours.  Do you follow Bao?”

  “I think so… but, but do people ever see it… like, from the inside?” she asked.

  “Yes dear, absolutely.  From both those who were raised secular and those who were raised in a fairy tale there will be those who emerge as questioners.  Born investigators, or people who have accidentally seen the untruth of what they’ve been taught, or… or people who have suffered a grave injustice-” Johannes felt a frisson when he said the words ‘suffered a grave injustice’ it had unexpectedly reminded him of the murder scene and his hypothesized motive for the crime.

  “For whatever reason Bao… some people come to question everything they’ve been taught, no matter what they’re taught.  I’m sure some of you will, but you’ll probably find out rather quickly that there aren’t many contradictions between what you learn on your own and what we can teach you.  At least that’s what we strive for anyway!”   Tycho chuckled good-naturedly at that, agreeing as the teacher.  “But those who were taught the fairy tale, if the information is available and they investigate hard enough; they’ll find that a great deal which they thought they knew is actually a lie.  Depending on the era they lived in they could either be put to death by the state for heresy… or ostracized by their community, or live the lie they were taught and pretend they don’t know the truth.  In recent modernity though, this has become less and less of a problem.”

  “What’s the difference between someone who is… like that, and someone who isn’t; between someone who questions and someone who doesn’t?” Bao asked, staying in her seat this time.

  “Well, being a questioner is actually a pretty unnatural state for people Bao, most people most of the time just go along with the world around them, the world as they know it.  For better or worse we are for the most part a species of conformists, a species who goes along to get along…  Most people just have millions of years of evolution telling them to quickly and readily accept whatever supposed truth they’re told by their superiors.  At the end of the day, most people just want to live their lives and the… the metaphysics of it all doesn’t really concern them.”  ‘Stay on target…’ Johannes thought to himself.  ‘You just said metaphysics to a eleven year old.’

  “This… tendency Bao, the tendency to believe what we’re told by authority figures has been the source of much misery on Earth… and it’s part of why we encourage each and every one of you to be well rounded individuals who can think and reason for yourself; to resist group think and arguments from authority wherever and whenever possible.”

  “Can that go too far?” the girl pried.

  “Absolutely.  Like everything in the universe Bao, it’s a continuum between two extremes.  On one side you have the people who will never question their prescribed worldview no matter how much contradictory evidence and reasoning they are provided with, either because of stubbornness, or lack of intelligence, or lack of interest or some combination of the three.  And on the other side you have people who can’t believe anything they’re told no matter how much convincing evidence and argument they are provided with.  But in the middle between those extremes is everybody else, people who have the potential to crack open their world view if, and I do stress if, they are stressed enough and in the right ways, and at the right times.  Everybody in that middle ground has their own formula for what it would take to break them of their beliefs.”

  “I think I understand, but… but wouldn’t that formula change over a person’s life?  What’s the difference between a kid and a grown up?”  

  “Yes it does change over time.  Generally speaking, the younger you are the more gullible you are, and the older you are the more resistant you are to changing your mind about anything.   When you’re young you need to absorb a ton of information as quickly as possible and questioning the information just slows down that process.  As you get older and older though, you have more and more invested in things being the way you think they are.  

  “When somebody has taught the fairy tale to their children, then seeing the truth means acknowledging they were wrong to do so, that’s one kind of investment in the lie.  When loved ones die and instead of fully and appropriately grieving their loss they instead cling to the fairy tale which tells them that their loved ones are not really dead but are instead are just ‘somewhere else.’  Then to admit the lie would be to kill their loved ones all over again.  That’s an investment in the lie too.   

  “People invest in their education, their career, their money on Earth, and the more they invest in life being the way they think it is, the more resistant they become to seeing it any other way, and the more they’ll fight to defend those beliefs and push them onto others.  Do you understand?” 

   “Johannes,” chirped Tycho, who Johannes had for the moment forgot was even there, “this would probably be a good time to tie in the other G.S.S.s and why they launched?”

  “Indeed,” Johannes agreed, turning back around to face the children again.  “Class, we left Earth to go into deep space, the last horizon of human exploration.  We did it to learn, to test our limits as a species, to create a human foothold in another star system, and dammit, just for the sake of the adventure.  But before the New Horizon left Earth, there were two other Generational Star Ships which preceded us, the Catholic one, and Mormon one.”  As his father said the names of the religions, Tycho pointed to them on the flow chart behind him for the benefit of the class.

  “In the century before they left,” Johannes continued, “the world became ever more immune to their religious myth as more and more people across the world were taught science and secular humanism of fairy tales.  The believers had to fight harder and harder to protect their own worldview and successfully implant it in their children.  But it became so hard for them that their best option came to be using their vast economic reserves to leave Earth altogether.  They believed this would make it possible for them to fully preserve their world view, and to protect it completely against contradictory evidence.

  “Alone and cut off from Earth, they will be able to control and artfully craft what is taught to their children, and those children will have no opportunities at all to discover any contradictory evidence, other than their dogma’s own internal contradictions.   Those ships were designed to be intellectual closed systems.  We brought the wealth of knowledge which Earth had to offer with us; they carefully avoided bringing any more than was absolutely necessary.   Essentially, they are undoing the last eight hundred years of scientific and social progress, and returning to a time when there was no information at all to contradict their dogma, ironically using state of the art deep space technologies to intellectually travel back to the early middle ages of Earth.”