By Caleb Strom

This past fall, I watched the fourth and latest installment of the Jurassic World franchise, Jurassic World: Rebirth (hereafter, Rebirth). Jurassic World is a sequel franchise to Jurassic Park, launched by the classic film of the same name in 1993. In the original Jurassic Park, a wealthy businessman, John Hammond, creates a theme park on a remote island with dinosaurs resurrected (or de-extincted) through genetic engineering from dinosaur DNA recovered from prehistoric mosquitos trapped in resin. Hammond invites two paleontologists, Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler, to review the park and give Hammond their scientific recommendation to boost his park’s reputation. Unfortunately, the genetically resurrected dinosaurs end up escaping their confines and terrorizing the humans. Jurassic Park has become synonymous with the dangers of the misuse of science, which is explored in more detail in the two sequel films of the original franchise.

The first film of the sequel franchise, Jurassic World (2015), delves more into the theme of misuse of science for the sake of economic profit. A new park is created many years later by the same company, InGen, which starts to create increasingly more monstrous dinosaurs to revive the novelty of the park and increase profit from ticket sales. Eventually, one of the genetically modified dinosaurs, Indominus Rex, gets out and chaos ensues. Themes of animal rights are also implicit in a striking scene in the first Jurassic World film. Vic Hoskins, head of InGen security, portrayed as enthusiastically supporting using velociraptors as weapons of war because they “can follow directions,” convinces the protagonist, Owen Grady, to use the velociraptors to track the renegade Indominus Rex. When the velociraptors catch Indominus Rex, with the human characters watching in the background, the semi-sapient velociraptors and I. Rex communicate with each other and conspire to betray the humans. 

This scene could be interpreted as the dinosaurs revolting against the humans to avoid becoming slaves in a biotech military-industrial complex. To drive the point home, Hoskins is eventually eaten by a velociraptor, a common fate of greedy corporate characters in the franchise. The slogan “eat the rich” is literal in these films. 

A pattern throughout both franchises is a dichotomy between the corporate characters interested in profiting off the dinosaurs and those who see the dinosaurs as intrinsically valuable and want them to be left alone so that they can have the best chance of survival. Another example of the former is Peter Ludlow, the CEO of InGen in the second film, The Lost World: Jurassic Park who has a T. Rex transported to San Diego to start a new theme park. In contrast, Hammond is an example of the latter. He is portrayed as an idealist who wants to bring back the dinosaurs to give humanity humility and perspective. 

Implicit in both franchises are different perspectives on the role of technology.  In the former case, exemplified by corporate characters, technology is for extracting value from nature, seen as a warehouse of raw materials for human production and consumption, through exploitation of natural resources. In the latter case, exemplified by Hammond and most scientist characters in the films, technology is to help us to gain humility and perspective on our true place in the cosmos. 

A real-world example of using technology to help us gain humility and perspective from appreciating nature is the famous pale blue dot image of Earth. In 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, on its way out of the solar system, was told to turn its cameras to look back at Earth. Voyager 1 recorded Earth as only a point of light suspended in a sunbeam. In this way, a robotic spacecraft was used to remind us of our true place, small and fragile in a vast universe. 

In the real world, the for-profit company Colossal Biosciences wants to resurrect long extinct animals, such as woolly mammoths, to restore ecosystems and even fight climate change. It could be argued that this is misguided, but it is certainly a mission-driven, not profit-driven, enterprise because there is currently not a business case for resurrecting woolly mammoths.

The challenge is that although many tech startup founders seem to genuinely seek to benefit humanity and the planet, they operate within an economic system that is based on accumulating profit for investors. Many startups interested in sustainable or “eco-friendly” technology are shaped implicitly or explicitly by eco-modernism. Eco-modernism is better than mere capitalist extractivism in its emphasis on environmental sustainability but falls short because it fails to question the underlying assumptions of the ideology of economic growth for its own sake that undermine environmental sustainability efforts. Religion could play a role in shifting from eco-modernism to true ecological solidarity that encourages the necessary structural changes.

Many religious traditions emphasize our connection to the planet and the importance of nature as God’s creation. They also warn against the folly of seeking wealth as the ultimate source of fulfillment. This outlook is common within Indigenous communities. Also, within Christianity, my background, there is a strong tradition of seeing humans as stewards of God’s creation, particularly in the tradition of Saint Francis of Assisi and the work of modern eco-theologians such as  Leonardo Boff and Sallie McFague who have argued that a healthy relationship with nature is essential to a robust spirituality. More recent religious statements such as Laudato Si by Pope Francis II also emphasize the importance of caring for the planet as a human calling and warn against the dangers of environmental destruction in the name of avarice.

Such religious traditions could help to inspire an approach to technology where the main goal is not expanding capitalist production but to remind us of our place in the cosmos, encourage humility and a non-anthropocentric perspective, and improve the wellbeing and flourishing of humanity and the planet. 

A social movement that embodies such a view of technology is the convivial technology movement founded by Ivan Illich, which inspired the creation of human-scaled technologies to promote individual and communal autonomy. Other examples include the indigenous-led Buen Vivir movement in South America, which encourages living in an ecologically sensitive relationship with nature, and the Red Deal, an Indigenous political proposition that includes restructuring the world economy around, among other things, ecological solidarity rooted in an Indigenous worldview.

It could be said that capitalism currently functions as a global religion. Specifically referencing ecology and biotech, do we want a world that looks like Jurassic World, where dinosaurs are exploited for profit often to the endangerment of human beings, or one that looks more like, say the ending of Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, where humans and talking animals together live freely and in peace? It will depend on what we end up worshiping.

Caleb Strom is an Anglican Christian with a scientific background in planetary science. He also writes about science, faith, technology, and how they can work together to make a better world.

Image credit: Allstar/Universal Pictures