Yin and Yang and Aliens

Daoism (Also Taoism) is an ancient Chinese philosophy that came about during the tumultuous times of the warring states period before the rise of the Qin Dynasty. It’s founder, Laozi, emphasizes the oneness of the world, how by creating good you also create bad, and vice versa. This is also where the concept of Yin and Yang arise. There is Yang, representing the positive, strong, masculine, and oppressive aspects of life, and there is also Yin, representing the negative, weak, feminine and submissive. But, just as the Yin-Yang sign shows, there is weakness in strength; positivity in negativity; etc.

So what does this have to do with Octavia Butler’s Xenogenisis series, and the movie Alien? First of all both of these movies at their core are about survival. In Laozi’s Daoist writings, he emphasizes survival through the use of the Yin aspects of life, through submissiveness. Laozi believed that the best way to live during the Warring States Period was to surrender to larger, oppressive powers, thus securing long-term survival. Through this show of “weakness” or “femininity” as the ancient Daoist would define it, you also have strength, because in the end you live longer. Water is weak, without form and flimsy, while rock is solid and strong; Yet, given time the Yin aspect of water can wear away at the Yang aspect of rock, dissolving it into nothing but sediment. Within weakness there is strength; within strength there is weakness.

Lilith Iyapo can be seen as the Yin aspect. She represents the feminine, matriarchal, and submissive. She is under almost complete control by her Oankali “captors”, and is tasked with being the “mother” of the new colonies of humans to a renewed Earth. Her own philosophy of “learn and run” is the epitome of the Yin side. By being submissive to the Oankali until the time is right, like the water wearing down the solid rock, Lilith hopes to escape the Oankali. However, in the end, as the two remaining books in the Xenogenisis series show, being fully submissive seems to be the only assured way to survival. Lilith finds that with the Oankali she is able to have children, live longer, thus allowing her genetic material for generations and generations. Those that reject the Oankali are doomed to live tough lives of infertility and violence. Again and again through the novel we are reminded of matriarchy’s superiority over the Yang of Patriarchy or “hierarchical problem” as the Oankali would call it. Gabe, as a very “Yang” and masculine individual struggles with Lilith’s leadership, even though he knows in his intelligent mind that she is right. Curt, another individual that could be said to be even more “Yang” than Gabe is sent away into suspended animation for his aggressive, masculine, hierarchical behavior.

In the movie Alien it is a little bit harder to apply the Daoists principle of survival through the submissive because the Alien is no way like the Oankali, where if you obeyed them they would lead you to a greater life and survival. The Alien would simply massacre you on the spot if you were completely submissive. But if we look at it simply through the lens of Yin femininity and matriarchy, perhaps it is Daoist after all, Ripley is the only survivor of a group of mostly strong, aggressive men. She was initially right about quarantining Kane right away, and was always put in opposition with Ash, the eventual robot-traitor. At the end of the movie we are reminded of her femininity through her “stripping” and through her motherly petting of Jones, the cat. We are shown that in the end, it was not masculinity and strength that survived the brutal Alien, but the Yin aspect of femininity. Just as Laozi wrote all those years ago, to survive we must emphasize the Yin to in the end become strong. In the end there are no opposites. Everything is one.

Michael Randolph