- [Michael] This video is brought to you by Full Sale University. (mellow music) - What's up, everybody. Helen here to tell you how to survive the end of the world
as an adorable kitten. That's right. We're talking about
the video game "Stray", which introduces us to
a post-apocalyptic world where robots have attempted
to rebuild human society after mankind went extinct. But we think there's something
deeper at this game's core that's as satisfying as finally
getting to scratch a rug, because what if a game in
which you pretend to be a cat while hanging out with robots
pretending to be people could actually teach us a
whole lot about humanity? Let's explore in this
Wisecrack Edition on "Stray". "Do Robots Make the Best Humans?" - But before we get into it, I wanna shout out this video's sponsor, Full Sail University. Full Sail offers associate's, bachelor's, and master's degrees in
the fields of technology, arts, media, and entertainment. And they just launched
a new bachelor's degree in Game Business and E-sports, which can help students enter the industry from
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Sail's campus in Orlando, depending on what's right for you. Whatever model you choose, you'll get hands-on, real world experience in the career path of your choice. Plus, Full Sail accepts
new enrollments monthly, so you don't have to build your schedule around traditional semesters. To learn more about Full Sail University's new Game
Business and E-sports majors or any of their other degree programs, visit FullSail.edu/wisecrack. That's Full Sail.edu/wisecrack. And now, back to the show. - [Helen] Upon entering
the world of Stray, we watch our darling,
lonesome kitten avatar enter a post-apocalyptic city. Humanity, we learn, has been
killed off by a brutal pandemic that only their robot companion survived. Too soon, too soon. The gameplay obviously
stands out from the get-go. You're constricted by the
ways an actual cat would move, which obviously involves plenty of jumping and knocking down boxes. The game's been lauded for its
realistic depiction of a cat, a feat corroborated by
real life cat fandom. So by mimicking the abilities and constraints of
inhabiting a cat's body, are we actually learning
what it's like to be a cat? According to philosopher Thomas Nagel and his paper, "What is it
Like to be a Bat?", nah. Nagel argues that most living things have a sense of consciousness. A "Subjective character of experience." That means that there is
"Something that it is like to be that organism, something
it is like for the organism." But we can never really know what that consciousness feels like. That's partially due to
our limited imaginations, as we inevitably map our
sense of human consciousness onto other animals. But even if we animorphed
into a bat for a day, our brains have been hardwired since birth for human consciousness. Thus, we would still not
be experiencing things as a bat, Nagel explained, but
as a person in a bat's body. Sure, we can simulate cathood
through adorable video games. But because we haven't
lived it from birth, we can't fully understand it. But these limitations actually
open up interesting questions about the robots we meet. Because the game positions us
from the cat's perspective, it arguably seems to agree with Nagel, that there is a consciousness
to be had in cathood, even if we can't quite comprehend it. Thus, we can also
presuppose the same thing about the robots. They're not human as
much as they try to be, but they have their own
kind of consciousness and frame of reference, their
own robothood, if you will. But what if anything, do
robots share with humans? Well, just as you can't truly experience a cat's night vision, these
robots probably can't understand the nuances of the human experience. Although they have,
apparently, taught themselves to get crunk. But they're essentially living in a Nagel thought experiment. As our robot pal explains, the companion started
out personality-free, existing solely to perform tasks. But over time, they began mimicking humans and forming societies. First, we encounter a
village called The Slums, full of companions who are
portrayed as working class or lower class folks, and there's a sense of
melancholy, but not despair. It's an actual community, one where they look out for each other. We learned that the robots posthumously discovered humanity's
art, music, and society, and this inspired them to try
to recreate the human world. Fittingly, then, The Slums
despite the grunginess, are chock full of artistic vibes. (eclectic music) (robot chittering) The robots seem to appreciate
all things aesthetic. (robot chittering) They keep a beautiful
tree alive, just for fun, and use neon lights, just
for the pretty colors. Musicians play music for free, as long as you deliver new song pages. Most of the interactions
you have here are bartering or favor-based. If you collect someone's notebooks, they'll do you a solid, and so on. This creates a sense of
a pre-industrial society, one where capitalism and commerce haven't quite established a foothold. What we are seeing are
genuine signs of community, encapsulated in the way the elders sit in silent, collective meditation. We learned that Momo, otherwise
considered an outsider, is desperate to recover
his missing friends, which demonstrates how important
companionship is for him. (robot chittering) When you rescue a long
lost scientist robot, he's greeted with love by
his son and former friends. Everyone is basically kind to you. And even the grouchy Seamus,
we learn, is only rude because he so missed his father. (robot chittering) What we see is robots
interacting authentically with one another, and it gives them a convincing
semblance of humanity. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel famously talks about this concept in the context of recognition,
which we've discussed before. Essentially, in order
to understand ourselves as distinct individuals, we need to be recognized
as such by others. Our personhood is thus established through affirming interactions with others who recognize us as human beings, or as the Hegel-inspired
Jean-Paul Sartre put it, "The road of interiority
passes through the other." Philosopher Charles Taylor thinks recognition is
a "Vital human need." And that "We need
relationships to fulfill, but not define ourselves." In this way, the robots
through recognizing one another and affirming interactions
are providing one another an essential aspect of humanness. Philosopher Axel Honneth contends that recognition is essential
to self-actualization and living freely. This is only possible if you are "An active member
of a social community, the cohesion of which has emerged from a mutually shared value
orientation toward freedom." Basically, you need community
to be a fully formed person. Now, a more advanced
version of robot society exists in Midtown, which has a New York or
Hong Kong feel to it. But we aren't in The Slums anymore. Here, arts and crafts
are replaced by commerce, and just about every interaction takes place in that context. And a sense of alienation
permeates this level. In contrast to The Slums, people in public places mostly
tend to keep to themselves. When you do try to engage, many of the robots are
downright rude to you. (pensive music) Public culture seems somewhat superficial. The closest thing to
community is the barbershop, which is still, after
all, a commercial space. For the most part, these robots
seem defined by their labor, rather than by any semblance of community or by extension, humanity. What we see here is what
philosophers call "misrecognition" or as Honneth explains, "The withdrawal of social recognition, in the phenomena of
humiliation and disrespect." Robots are reduced to
their commercial value and their ability to perform labor, rather than their unique identities or attempts at humanness. Taylor argues that when
others misrecognize you, it can make you misrecognize yourself. In the lonely nightclub, your companion, who used to be a human,
points out what's missing. He used to drink with his
friends during the bad times, and the joy of these interactions
gave their lives purpose. (robot chittering) He sees the lack of recognition as essential to the apparent
unhappiness we witness in Midtown. Indeed, commercial relations here make for a cutthroat world. We explore an ugly factory
where workers are surveilled by sentinel robots who also
act as police officers. One guy heartlessly gets
you arrested, saying- (robot chittering) What we see here is that
society has progressed from a pre-industrial
system of favors, bartering, and small businesses, to a
cutthroat corporatized world. That shift is essential to the alienation that permeates Midtown, where everyone seems worried that you're gonna steal from them. The transformation
recalls Rousseau's theory about the dangers of private property. He wrote, "The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of
saying 'this is mine,' and found people simple
enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society." Rousseau believed that
much human suffering could have been avoided if everybody had told the
loser claiming the land to (beep) off, because according to him, civil society was a misguided step away from the state of nature, which
is a morally neutral place where people generally act
towards self-preservation and with compassion, much
like what we saw in The Slums. It's fitting that in this
capitalist landscape, a police state proliferates
via the sentinel robots. This mirrors the real world. As historian Gary Potter explains, "The police are primarily there to protect business property
first, not human interactions. If that were the case,
they would fail miserably." This suggests that a system of capitalism would appear simultaneously
with a system of policing to enforce that system
of private ownership. And when we make it to the
final level, the Control Room, we find an even more
alienating environment. Everything is antiseptic,
like a boring office building. The only nature comes in the form of carefully
manicured centerpiece, and the only art is a banal
postcard-like image of a beach. The robots are also completely different from their downstairs counterparts. None of them have names and they don't do anything
except work silently. When you try to ask them for help, they won't even look at you and just offer vaguely
polite corporate speak. Whereas other robots
personally engaged with you, these robots arguably are participating in what Taylor would
call "nonrecognition." He writes that, "Nonrecognition
or misrecognition can inflict harm, can
be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted and
reduced mode of being." We see that by living in a world where they're not recognized for anything other than
the work they perform, the robots have been reduced
to the role of, well, robots. And that's in stark contrast to their more human-like
counterparts on the lower levels. Interestingly enough,
many folks in The Slums dream of making it to the top, where they assume life is better. However, your travels from the peaceful community of The Slums to the antiseptic depersonalization
of the Control Room suggests they might be wrong. The game seems to argue that
progress isn't always good, and the gameplay slowly
reinforces this idea. You're able to converse
with just about any robot in The Slums, but as you move up, you have fewer options to engage. In other words, you are
recognized more in The Slums, just like the robots themselves. The importance of art
to the human experience is also emphasized by the
game's focus on aesthetics over expediency. It's not about a race to finish the game. It's about enjoying the artistic
experience along the way. That's something the robots
in The Slums would know, while the robots in the Control Room seem incapable of thinking
beyond capitalist efficiency. So what can we learn about
our own world from this? Well, the game seems to be saying that a big part of what makes
the robots and us more human is our ability to connect with one another on an emotional and communal level. And as Ephemera Journal recalls, in the early 20th century, German philosopher
Walter Benjamin lamented that long-term, meaningful
and deep human connections have been supplanted by
short-term, isolated moments that began to constitute human existence. So what was the culprit? You guessed it, capitalism. As the OG Karl Marx explained, "Alienation is the objective
structure of experience and activity in capitalist society. Capitalist society
cannot exist without it. Capitalist society in its very essence requires that people be
placed into such a structure and, even better, that they
come to believe and accept that it is natural and just." And that's exactly what we see in "Stray". As the world becomes more capitalistic, the robots become more
alienated from one another and from you, which is wild
because you are so cute. Their total absorption
into consumption and status in Midtown goes hand in hand
with their lack of socializing. We're socializing only in
the context of commerce, theft, and policing. This alienation only escalates as you make it to the top
floor, where you see robots who have been completely
reduced to laborers, clearly believing that their
tasks are natural and just. What all this suggests is that progress under
capitalism has a major downside, the breakdown of community. We see this even in Midtown, where entry into practically
every community space has a price, in contrast to The Slums where you can roam freely. What it seems to suggest is
that we become more robotic, more alienated, and more
detached from one another when we define ourselves solely by our ability to perform
labor and pay for things. When we fail to foster communities around mutual recognition, we rob ourselves of something
fundamentally human. Still, this is a largely optimistic game. Yes, it seems to say that the efficient world
of the Control Room, where robots indeed act
like robots, is bad. And yes, the Control Room seems to mimic aspects of our world
where we are, in fact, reduced to our ability to perform labor. But what if there's a way out? What if we can still recognize the aspects of our fundamental humanity? Your robot companion does as much when he essentially destroys
himself to override the system and save all the robots. This suggests that even as our own world starts to feel like the Control Room, that there's still hope for us. Our basic humanity and
need for mutual recognition can be our saving grace
and foster connection, even in the worst of circumstances. And if all else fails,
you can go adopt a cat. But what do you think? Is "Stray" a warning about
the perils of late capitalism? Or are we reading way too much into a game that your cat can probably beat you at? Let us know in the comments. Thanks to our patrons
for all your support, and don't miss our new Patreon perks. And remember, you can
join us every Thursday for our weekly live stream. Hit that subscribe button like you're pouncing on the laser pointer, and don't forget to ring that bell. And as always, thanks for watching. Later. (energetic hip hop music)
