Objects in Space is an episode of the fantastic show by Joss Whedon, Firefly. I'll be writing about themes from the show that struck me as Conservative, like their economic structure, their opposition to Humanism, the remarkableness that they had, as their moral guidance, a Protestant preacher, but that's for a future day. I've just finished watching the commentary to the episode Objects in Space and I wanted to put down my thoughts.

The "artistic" theme of the show involves two insane people in the episode, River and Early. River was experimented on in a nefarious plot, and Early is sadistic, but in an unusual way. What distinguishes them from the other characters is that they have much keaner appreciation objects as physical beings bereft of their function, remoevd from the meaning our human minds bestow upon things by knowing what those things are commonly used for. This bestowing of meaning is foundational of what distinguishes human thought from, say, Artifical Intelligence (AI) because we are able to create for ourselves models of our world, whereas AI typically accumulates facts and then searches these facts for connections without ordering it, but these two, because they are unique - even if somewhat regressed in their understanding - present a unique challenge to the members of the crew. If all of humanity thought this way, there would be no civilization, but when confined to these two, it seems as if they are capable of incredible insight.

His monologue is fascinating, and it reminds me why I'm simply not a very good engineer. Though I didn't then have the vocabulary to discuss it, this was my very understanding: that because I don't easily understand objects as "objects in space", but rather things with function, I'm less capable of using them in ways that they are not designed for. It is a remarkable scene, for me, in Apollo 13, the engineers are capable of constructing an air filter out of the objects to be found in the capsule, despite none of those objects being a manufactured "air filter". I ran into the same trouble in the machine shop in school; I was frequently blinded by the vast difference in function between a "block of metal" and a "hinge" that I frequently failed to see how similar they were physically, so shaving off the bits of metal that would transform a "block of metal" into a "hinge" was something that took a lot of mental anguish.

It's also something I struggle with in Accounting, although it's something I believe I'll do better with. In Accounting, distinctions are made between "money", "money", and "money". I mean money is different in some situations than in others. Money is basically the opposite of value; it flows in the opposite direction of what we value, but isn't valuable by itself. We can't eat a nickel, but we can use what money can be traded for. In this way, we can quantify the value of one thing against the value of something very dissimilar. We can compare apples and oranges, literally. So, Accounting doesn't just track money; it tracks real things using money as the measurement of them. And it makes distinctions between different types of value. There is money that arrives regularly, called Income, and things that can provide Income, called Assets. There are things that can suck money away, called Liabilities, and money that simply goes out, regularly and without end, called Expenses. Now, when I buy a pair of sneakers, they are an Expense, simply the cost of owning a human corpus. One must keep coverings on the lower bits. A pair of sneakers to a athlete, however, can make them play better and so increase their Income; to an athlete, sneakers are an Asset. Here, a real thing is measured differently and causes the numbers on a Balance Sheet to move differently, simply by changing our conception of them. By changing the meaning we "imbue" to them, amazing things are suddenly different. Learning to exploit this, as I grow as a business-man, is currenlty fascinating me and making me more content to wait to start my own firm.

What concerns me a little is his assumption that this is unique to "Existentialism". (Perhaps "interests" is a fairer term; I'm not that worked up really except with a hope that he'll fair as well as anyone before the Creator.) I don't  remember where I read this (I don't believe that it was Mr. Whedon; likely it was the book Finding Serenity edited by Jane Espenson), but I read that there is concern that leaves many people lost because, if objects exist independent of the meaning we give them, we are left with the choice between meaninglessness, accepting an absolute reference for an authoritative "meaning", or accepting our own meaning as the only meaning relevant to us. This conception of objects as independent of meaning, in fact, is exactly and explicitly Christian belief. "Rape" is only evil because God said so. Without His giving such a meaning to the action, it is nothing but a particular type of intercourse. It's interesting that, of the 10 Commandments, only "God is the authority" (forgive my paraphrasing of 1) is absolute. All of the rest are dependent on circumstance and intention. This is the root of my somewhat excessive rejection of the King James translation; translating of sixth commandment as "Thou shalt not kill" rather than the more-accurate "Thou shalt not murder" confuses the issue. "Murder" is a specific type of "kill", distinguished by the meaning given the action. Killing in war is not murder; killing in self-defense is not murder. This is the same relationship that "adultery" has to "sex" and "lying" has to "talking"; an action alone cannot be a sin. Dennis Prager once called this "situational ethics".

I love this show. It's television and it only lasted half a season. But its consistently full of deep ideas, expressed beautifully and accessibly. And virtuously. In this episode, there is an explicit difference made clear between River and Early: River and Early both see a gun as nothing but a particular configuration of steel and they both know how to use a gun to cause lethal damage to another human being, but Early puts himself above the pain of others, rejecting "good" and "evil" and River embraces that Good and Evil are different and chooses to recognize that difference and chooses Good freely. That, in the end, is just right.