Review: Harmony by Project Itoh

Harmony is set in a world where technology makes it possible for everyone to be in perfect physical health. In such a world, Project Itoh (the pen name of author ITO Satoshi) thinks the only remaining source of suffering would be free will.

I enjoyed the book: the world is interesting and I was hooked on the plot. But I can’t recommend it.

First, a petty complaint that I need to get it out of the way: the book shares Golden Age of Science Fiction’s unfortunate fixation with writing like:

To prove that these tits, this ass, this belly, aren’t a book.

I’m no Andrea Dworkin but I just don’t think that’s good writing. A male main character who, transposing from the first chapter, had constant thoughts like “While my dick is growing longer… While my balls are still dropping…”, would be equally annoying.

🚨 Warning: spoilers follow!

The conceit that the XML-inspired “ETML” markup, e.g. <anger>, is for readers in the book’s world who no longer have the ability to experience inner emotions is cute. But the author conflates qualia with rational vs. emotional behavior in a way that doesn’t make sense to me.

For example:

People cried as though they were sad and raged as though they were angry. But these actions carried the same value as the mimicked emotional responses a robot would have had in the previous era. All people had lost their inward minds.

Mankind was in perfect harmony with its medical industrial society.

The instant the old folks had entered their codes and the Harmony program had begun to sing, suicide disappeared from human society.

… and:

“What happens when you lose your consciousness? Do you just sit there all day in your chair, drooling?”

“Nothing of the sort. You go shopping, you eat, you enjoy entertainment–you merely no longer have to make decisions what to do at any given time because everything is self-evident. It’s the difference between having to make choices and having it all be obvious to you. That’s all it is. … From the outside, it’s nearly impossible to tell whether someone has consciousness or is merely acting as though they did. However, because their system of values is fashioned to be in perfect harmony with society, there are far fewer suicides…”

…

“When she came back, Miach said it had been pure ecstasy. … She only had the sensation that she had been in a wonderful, joyous place.”

…

“People with perfect judgement do not require a consciousness, so it does not exist.”

This sounds a lot like a description of philosophical zombies¹ (henceforth p-zombies) (“as though they were sad” and “had lost their inward minds”). Although the statement that “it’s nearly impossible to tell” (emphasis mine) implies that unlike p-zombies there is a change in behavior.

The author claims that “having to make choices” leads to consciousness, which leads to experienced emotions, which leads to e.g. suicide. But the characters without consciousness still display emotions even though they don’t experience them.

Surely there is a distinction between experiencing X and “acting as though” you experience X. But why do the people without consciousness cry as though they were sad and rage as though they were angry but not commit suicide as though they were depressed?

I don’t want to get hung up on qualia: the idea that people might try to reduce emotional behavior in order to create a more harmonious society is interesting. If the book were only about using WatchMe to involuntarily reduce everyone’s emotions rather than to totally eliminate their consciousnesses (“All people had lost their inward minds.”) I think I’d like it more.

I don’t think I can recommend the book, but I try to make sense of it in the context of the book’s creation: Project Itoh worked on Harmony in the final year of his life, dying from cancer. The thesis of the book is that in order to eliminate pain and the temptation to commit suicide we would have to give up subjective experience and the ability to choose at all. That says much about what he believed he stood to lose and what we enjoy for a little longer.