Hello everyone,
I didn't realize until reading an essay I found on the web that I had fallen
in with a group of...MUTATIONISTS! People without a shred of morality who
will lead us into a global civil war of battling super-mutants! We are so
consumed with lust for technology, novelty and power we are blinded as to
what makes human life worth living!
This essay I feel makes some very interesting but also at times highly
short-sighted criticisms of transhumanism. I thought some of you would find
reviewing and rebutting it an appealling task. The author does give us
credit for at least the present not planning to create slave races!
This essay may have already come to the attention of the list members and if so I apologize but I thought if it had not it would be worth posting.
Karl Jahn wrote this and I found it with just a general search engine search. So if I can many more will over time. The url is http://members.tripod.com/karljahn/trans.html for this fellow's homepage where he shares alot of other views with visitors.
I look forward to how this would be picked apart by list members. If some extropians reached out to him he would perhaps in some way concede that he did not give us a chance. Damien Broderick comes to mind when I think of someone to contact him.
Sincerely,
John Grigg
Karl Jahn wrote:
In
defense of Humanity: Against Transhumanism
In the course of my exploration of cyberspace, I discovered an ideology
called "transhumanism," a term redolent of (seemingly harmless)
crankishness. Some of it
was interesting and appealing: its emphasis on the power of science to
improve the human condition. Some of it was disturbing and repulsive: the
notion of moving
beyond humanity. Suddenly I realized: "Ye gods -- they're Mutationists!"
Mutationism, you see, was something I had invented, as part of a
science-fiction scenario, on which I have fitfully tried to base a series of
stories. I felt nothing but
shock and horror when I realized that my prophecy was starting to come true,
decades before the time it was set in. You will understand my horror when
you read
the scenario:
The early Space Age was a period of rapid scientific and technical progress in every field. In most areas, this progress was but a continuation of earlier
developments: but biological technology, or biotech, was a radically new departure. It was even more fraught with peril than atomic energy, since it
could be, and inevitably was, applied to man himself. The unleashing of these strange and terrible new powers interrupted the conquest of space with a
fourth and final World War.
The advance of biotech revived, in a new form, many old, half-forgotten ideas about the social implications of biology. These had traditionally been
associated with the political Right (first with aristocracy, and later with racism), and as such, they had been banished from intellectual discourse for
political reasons after the defeat of National Socialism. Along with it had gone eugenics, although it was ambiguous in Left/Right terms: a progressive,
rationalist plan for the secular salvation of humanity through selective breeding.
Now applied biology could take shortcuts, and avoid the invidious implications of eugenics; for even the defectives, through genetic surgery, could have
healthy and superior offspring. The new powers and opportunities inspired a large, multifarious ideological movement, generally called Mutationism. The
Mutationists embraced the new technologies of biological engineering to reshape the human race. Different Mutationists naturally proposed different
mutations, dividing the movement into quarrelling factions, each spawning a new race in the image of its particular ideal. ...
The full development of Mutationism ... was [very] diverse, but its overall tendency was to divide the human race into two (or more) species: a
master-race of supermen, and a slave-race (or races) of submen. To make matters worse, of course, there were dozens of rival master-races, each
seeking to reproduce itself faster, to grow stronger, than its rivals.
Mutationism in turn aroused a contrary movement, Humanism, comprised of all those concerned about the perils of applying these techniques to man
himself. They warned that this threatened to abolish man's very nature, and feared the chaos and void this would leave. Could man, once unmade, be
remade? they asked. What standard of value could be used to judge biological "improvements" in the absence of a fixed human nature? ...
At first it seemed possible to find a middle ground between the two sides. Haphazard attempts were made to limit or control the new techniques, while
numerous piecemeal changes, each small enough in itself, proved so desirable as to be objects of nearly universal consensus, accepted even by the
doubters. Hereditary diseases such as hemophilia were rooted out, and
tendencies towards longevity were reinforced. The human body was improved
by eliminating such vestigial, useless, and sometimes harmful items as
Finally, however, the conflict escalated beyond all reason and compromise. The peril was obvious: normal humanity would be supplanted; and then the
various master-races would be unwilling to share the honors with each other, and would covet each other's lands and slave-races. Race-war followed
inevitably: a war to the death. Any sense of common humanity with or between these bioengineered races was long since lost.
The Humanists grew stronger with the general reaction against such excesses, and more militant in campaigning for the control of biotech. States were
torn apart, or one party or the other came to power. Once again, nearly a century of peace was broken by a series of immense and unprecedented
wars. The Mutant and Clone Wars were the most ruthless of all wars, for the stakes were the very existence of humanity.
Fortunately for the cause of natural man, the Mutationists worked against each other as often as together; their internal disunity, again and again,
thwarted them on the verge of victory, and at last brought them down in defeat. The losers in the race-wars were exterminated, unless they were
resourceful or lucky enough to go into hiding, and ultimately escape to other planets. ...
The Mutant and Clone Wars were truly a global civil war, for both parties were international, and every advanced nation was divided within itself.
Therefore, the victorious Humanist governments promulgated the uniform Genetic Laws, codifying the new and more literal "crimes against humanity,"
and established a single global state, the World Federation, to enforce these laws stringently and uniformly.
(Perhaps I should mention that I regard the very idea of world government
with intense suspicion and distaste; but it would be an infinitely lesser
evil than the
abolition of man.)
Transhumanism today is only the embryo of the Mutationism I envisioned. So
far, the transhumanists seem to have no interest in creating slave-races,
and none of
them have any clear idea of what sort of "posthuman" race(s) they want.
Indeed, they put much stress on the fact that "posthumans" will be so far
superior to us that
they will be incomprehensible. Presumably this will change as technology
advances and concrete options become available; but we should pause and
wonder at the
state of mind of people so eager to transform themselves into who-knows-what
kind of utterly alien being.
Most of them (at the moment) seem to belong politically to the
libertarian/individualist Left, so it is likely that each of them, given the
power, would mutate himself in
some unique way, and be solely concerned with his own egotistical and
Narcissistic gratification: certainly no great loss, and maybe no great
danger, to the human
race. But egalitarian/collectivist ideas appear frequently enough to raise
the specter of an attempt to transform humanity into a single gigantic
hive-mind, like Star
Trek's Borg. Already, then, one can see the potential for the clash of at
least two über-Nazi super-races.
In any event, if the transhumanists have their way (and I doubt that there
is any scientific reason why they couldn't, though I get some comfort from
the probability
that the technology is still decades away), we will still face the problem
of a world divided between mankind and one or more "posthuman" super-races.
I shudder to
think of the fate of those not ready, willing or able to join their
glittery, sinister utopia. If the "posthumans" are so powerful and so alien,
they would have no more
compunction about exterminating us than invading Martians would.
The transhumanists might or might not be psychologically pathological, but
they are undoubtedly afflicted with a spiritual pathology. They are in fact
the most extreme
example and synthesis of a complex of spiritual pathologies: the worship of
wealth, power, novelty, machinery. In short, they idolize means at the
expense of ends.
Such idolaters habitually conflate "can" and "should": to them it seems
self-evident that if we can do something, we should do it -- regardless of
the consequences.
They want to leap into the dark -- into a darkness all too likely to be a
bottomless abyss.
Nothing could be more dangerous than technology without morality, unlimited
means ungoverned by ethical ends. Every advance of technology should be
challenged
with the simple question: "Why?" Transhumanists, and less extreme idolaters,
ask only "Why not?" The answer to their question is that means should serve
ends, and
not become ends in themselves. Nothing can be good unless it serves a truly
good end.
No objective standard of value is possible unless it is grounded in nature,
i.e. in objective reality. Other than nature, there are only two alternative
standards:
whatever we happen to want, or whatever God wants (which means, in practice,
whatever those who pretend to speak for God happen to want). If the standard
of
nature is rejected, desire is liberated from morality: no desire is either
good or evil.
Transhumanists explicitly celebrate the "liberation" from nature, and at
least tacitly celebrate the liberation from morality. At the same time they
celebrate the potential
of mind-altering drugs of the kind Aldous Huxley foresaw and called "soma,"
now exemplified by Prozac. Desire itself, the only standard of value that
transhumanists
can conceive of, will be infinitely malleable in the Brave New World they
envision. This begs the question that they cannot answer: What should we
desire?
Here is my own answer: We should desire to make ourselves better human
beings, not "posthuman" beings. Man, at his best, is quite good enough. The
problem is
to enable the whole human race to live up to the potential inherent in human
nature. This is the goal set by nature. (For more details, see my
"Foundation of Ethics").
Eugenics, despite all its excesses and abuses under the Nazi regime, was
benign compared to transhumanism. The eugenicists' ambition was to make the
human race
more fully human: stronger, healthier, more beautiful, more intelligent.
Their standard was set by human nature, which was taken as given; they only
wanted to enable
the whole of mankind (or in the Nazis' case, only one part of mankind) to
flourish according to that standard.
Properly guided, genetic engineering could achieve the same goal by less
problematic means. But such is the intellectual confusion, moral imbecility,
and willful
ugliness of our age that the goal itself has become problematic.
Transhumanism is nothing more than intellectual confusion, moral imbecility,
and willful ugliness
elaborated into a self-conscious ideology and deliberately applied to the
whole range of potential 21st century technologies, but particularly to
genetic engineering.
The ultimate irony is that in their ambition to be more than human,
transhumanists can only succeed in being less than human. Their lust for
wealth, power, novelty and
machinery blinds them to everything that makes a human life worth living;
which is, I suppose, precisely why they are so eager to become "posthumans."
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