COLLABORATING AGAINST THE SPECIES :

A Dim View of a `Posthuman Future' (NICHOLAS WADE, April 2, 2002, NY Times)

If the human mind and body are shaped by a bunch of genes, as the decoding of the human genome seems to underscore, then biotechnologists will one day be able to change both and perhaps, in seeking to refine the imperfect human clay, will alter human nature.

That prospect should be worrying a lot more people, in the view of the political theorist Francis Fukuyama, because history's central question — that of what kind of society best suits human needs — has been settled only if human nature remains as it is, warts and all.

I've just started reading Francis Fukuyama's new book, Our Posthuman Future, but right away it's provoked a question in my mind. I accept Mr. Fukuyama's position, as I think even his foes would, that our emerging capacity to manipulate our genetic makeup and our brain functions seems to have set us on a course which will see us become something other than we are now, something not recognizably human. As humans we are defined not merely by biology, as are other species, but by mental processes, by our knowledge of our own mortality, by our free will, etc. Should we reach a point, and it appears to be within our theoretical grasp, where we can change human behavior through drugs and other treatments, where we can breed humans to meet certain desired blueprints, and where at least the DNA pattern of a given person can be immortal, then we will have ceased to be human. We may still be classified as homo sapiens or whatever, but these beings will be so much different than we are--with cause to fear death; with the tendency to violence programmed out or inhibited by drugs; with all unusual social behaviors, from homosexuality to gregariousness, removed; with no baldness, no shortness, no fatness, no physical trait that might distinguish them from their fellows in the slightest--that it would be absurd to consider them human.

It is, of course, entirely possible that this is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Perhaps it is our destiny to become absolutely perfect and to leave this benighted stage of our evolution far behind. God knows we humans are a turbulent lot. At nearly all times in human history about half of the population has wished to achieve the kind of security that this future foretells. Everyone will be the same, so there'll be no envy. Everyone will be drugged into happiness. Life will be just as static and boring, but luxurious and safe, as ever a utopian dreamed it could be. There is something to be said for such a society.

I oppose it utterly.

I'm fat, bald (except my back), wall-eyed, obstinate, ill-tempered, lazy, arrogant, a physical coward, an intellectual bully, etc., etc., etc.. I, like you, am a terrifying, yet wonderful, combination of any number of entirely human qualities that someone might well wish to see removed from the species, and which surely will be in the "Posthuman Future." But I do not welcome the prospect of my own demise. I do not see anything desirable about a future that has no place in it for me, or for you, or my children, or for any of the billions of incredibly difficult, but mostly marvelous human beings around us. In fact, I don't think it is going too far to say that those who do eagerly seek such a future are quislings to the species, are filled with such a self-loathing as to make them truly antihuman.

The proponents of this future cloak themselves in the mantle of human freedom, yet they work toward a future that must surely be devoid of both humans and freedom. And, in truth, freedom is something that we humans celebrate, uniquely among all the animals. There is really no reason that our successors should value it. They after all will have no need of freedom, able as they may be to simply manipulate their psyches to render endless pleasure. And so Man's greatest achievement, our freedom, will perish with us. How can this be something that a human being would welcome? How can someone collaborate not only in their own demise, but in the destruction of everything they claim to believe in? They call this progress and they label those of us who resist them Luddites, but if what they call progress ends in our extinction then I for one will be happy to heave a sabot in their loom.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 3, 2002 9:28 PM