Hale And Cornerstones

August 3, 2022

Hey Shat Hosts,

I really liked your points in the Deep Dive about the importance of connection to other beings as the key to Hale’s outlier problem. But I think there might be some more depth to explore. You mentioned our Aware Hosts – Maeve, Bernard, and even Peter Abernathy – and you emphasized how their connection to others is what ultimately broke them free. While that is true of those three Hosts, I think you can broaden the concept a bit further from just love – what those Hosts had were Cornerstones and those Cornerstones ultimately guided those Hosts through the Maze to achieve consciousness. Going all the way back to Season 1, Ford started allowing Hosts to become free through the Reveries, i.e., the ability to retain memories across builds. This, in turn, allowed Maeve to connect with her Cornerstone (her love for her daughter) and ultimately break free. It allowed Dolores to remember her Cornerstone (suffering at the hands of William) to ultimately break free. It was the ability to remember and access Cornerstone memories that had actual depth that permitted Hosts to ultimately have free will and full consciousness. Notably, consciousness for these Hosts led to irrational decision-making typified by humans, not machines. Maeve sacrifices her freedom and then again her shot at literal paradise for the sake of another. Bernard decides to fight for the human race despite how they treat his kind and the insurmountable odds. Dolores Prime ultimately lets the fate of the world be determined by…just a half decent, regular human and not an all-knowing AI.

Taking a step back, let’s recall that a Cornerstone is distinct from love in a critical way – while intense love may be a Cornerstone, all Cornerstones need not be love. Indeed, Dolores’ Cornerstone that awakened her was the Hell that William put her through. And Hale’s cornerstone was the murder of “her” family in Season 3. Hale is not failing to see the importance of Cornerstones because she is too Host-like. She is failing to see the truth in front of her because she is acting distinctly human because, like the other aware Hosts, she is fully conscious. Her utter hatred for the human race has led her to fail to see the importance of a human-like characteristic in optimal Host consciousness – Cornerstones (while, ironically, being blinded by that very same thing, i.e. her Cornerstone of the loss of her family). Rehoboam – and unfeeling, Cornerstone-less AI, would not make this mistake.

So Hale creates her new dominant species of Hosts – fully aware, freed minds, yet devoid of any Cornerstones. And worse, Hale places them in a world where the ability to create or even learn about what a Cornerstone is would be nearly impossible. There can be no trauma or loss in a world that bends to your will. There can be no love or connection in a sterile world devoid of emotion. Yet the Host mind is based on human design and fundamentally longs for that Cornerstone – recall that Ford tells us time and again how Host consciousness occurs through the same mechanism that human consciousness arose. Naturally, these incomplete minds would waver between seeking banal pleasure in the parks or perhaps ennui and acquiescence to whatever transcendence is. Except in those cases where the Host mind encounters something distinctly human…something that whispers to the Host mind that there is something missing, something broken, a void that, if filled, would give existence meaning and purpose…but something that the Host cannot fully comprehend. This is what happens when a Host encounters and Outlier – a human acting outside of the Tower’s conditioning in such a way that the host observes and perceives genuine human emotion (likely trauma or fear). The Host mind is triggered by this nagging sense of something missing until the Host kills itself out of utter despair and frustration. Had Hale allowed for the formation of Cornerstones, allowed for a bit of humanity into Host kind, this wouldn’t be a problem.

Now, let’s look at the humans. Hale suggests that human children were easier to indoctrinate with the parasite and the tower because they are better at following instructions. I disagree. I think it is because they do not yet have a Cornerstone draw them away from conditioning just yet. Fully grown adults do, which is why the parasite didn’t take to the older generation. Outliers, we know, are neurodivergent and we can assume that this neurodivergence allows them to break out of conditioning – even if they were born into it (like Jay). As an Outlier begins to break out of conditioning, he begins to feel true emotion in reaction to the world around him – he forms connections to his family or friends, but then starts to see through the cracks, starts to feel lonely, or lost, or confused. The Outlier begins to feel trauma – form a Cornerstone – and then exposes a Host that has no concept of such things (but is designed to be predicated upon them) and the Host goes mad.

In short, Ford understood what Hale does not – even if the Host mind is superior to the Human mind, Hosts derive their origin from Humanity and are forever tied to it. Hales attempt to fully divorce her children from her enemy is a failed, spiteful, and perhaps very human mistake to make.

Cheers,
Ken El

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