More Human

Dear St Andrew’s,

I recently watched the 2014 film Lucy, in which Scarlett Johansson plays the title role: a young woman living in Taiwan who is unwillingly caught up in a drug-smuggling operation. A packet containing a fictional chemical called CPH4 is surgically implanted in her abdomen. When it ruptures, the drug floods her bloodstream and begins to unlock more and more of her brain’s capacity.

Morgan Freeman plays Professor Samuel Norman, a neuroscientist who has spent his career speculating about what human beings might be capable of if we could use more than the supposedly normal ten per cent of our brains. Their lives intersect when Lucy becomes the living answer to his theoretical question.

As the film progresses, a running percentage tells us how much of her brain Lucy is supposedly using, rising from the normal ten per cent towards one hundred. The suspense comes not only from whether she will escape the drug smugglers pursuing her, but from what she will be able to do next.

At first, she gains access to all her memories. She becomes able to control her body completely, ignoring pain and using guns and knives with expert precision—both useful abilities in her circumstances. Soon she can control the movements of other people and physical objects. Eventually, she can manipulate electromagnetic waves, enabling her to contact Professor Norman and hatch a plan to preserve everything she is learning before she dies, whether from the drug or from those trying to kill her.

What interested me most was the film’s underlying question: what does it mean to be human, and what is our purpose?

Professor Norman offers an answer early in the film. The purpose of life, he suggests, is to pass on information to the next generation, either through our DNA or through the knowledge we accumulate. Lucy accepts this without question. She becomes driven to learn as much as possible and leave it behind – rather implausibly, on a handy USB stick.

Yet the more Lucy’s abilities increase, the more her humanity appears to diminish.

Her movements and voice become increasingly robotic. She loses ordinary emotions such as compassion and empathy. To demonstrate her abilities to one of the professor’s colleagues, she accesses his memories and describes the car crash in which his daughter died. It proves her point, but understandably causes him great distress. Lucy either fails to notice or simply does not care.

She also appears to lose any moral concern for others. During a frantic drive through Paris, she causes carnage in the streets. Although the consequences are not shown, many people must surely have been injured or killed. Lucy remains completely unmoved.

There is one striking exception. Early in her transformation, when she has reached twenty per cent capacity, Lucy telephones her mother. She can now remember every detail of her infancy: her mother’s touch, the depth of her care, even the taste of her milk. Tears roll down Lucy’s face as she tells her mother how deeply she loves and appreciates her.

But after that, the tears disappear. Lucy becomes single-mindedly focused on achieving her information legacy.

Is this what it means to become a higher-functioning human being? What about EQ as well as IQ? If Lucy is gaining intelligence, knowledge and power, why is she losing empathy, moral judgement and concern for others?

As Lucy’s powers increased, I could not help comparing her with Jesus.

Like Lucy, Jesus knew things about people that no ordinary person could know. He had power over human bodies, healing sickness and disability. He could even command the created world: the wind and the waves obeyed him.

Yet Jesus’ extraordinary power never diminished his humanity. On the contrary, in him we see humanity as God intended it to be. He showed compassion, mercy and grace. He wept with grieving friends. He welcomed outsiders. He touched those whom others avoided. He used his power not to control people, but to serve them – and ultimately to give his life for them.

It might be wonderful to access more of my brain’s capacity. But watching Lucy, I found myself thinking that I would rather be Eve before the fall than Lucy at one hundred per cent: fully human as God intended, knowing him, loving others, and using whatever abilities I have for their good.

Blessings,