Man's Fate and God's Choice, Bhimeswara Challa [best free ereader .TXT] 📗

capacity for ‘self-replication’ (that is, to be able to make carbon copies of oneself), applied to biotechnology could go terribly wrong or could fall into the wrong hands. The exclusiveness of the actors involved — science, technology, business, and government — and the resultant exclusion of the public who could be the unintended victims is also a source of great concern.

It is also being predicted that there could be ‘horizontal transfer of genes’, that is from one species to another, as it was said to be the case in the earliest stages of life on earth when,

 

 

 

300 Nick Bostrom. Transhumanist Values: What is Transhumanism? World Transhumanist Association. Accessed at: http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/more/transhumanist-values

 

in the words of Freeman Dyson, ‘life was a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information’… evolution then was a ‘communal affair’.301 If this were to recur in the future world, that would be even more technologically deterministic. As for nanotechnology, which is based on the ability to manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular levels, some pundits speculate that, in the hands of a malicious megalomaniac, it could well cause the extinction of intelligent life on earth by releasing ‘biosphere-eating’ nanobots into the environment. The technology that produces such destructive nanobots is much easier to develop than a technology that provides a shield against such man-made creations. It is an issue of profound import and implications for our future, and it is surprising that so little work has been done on this subject. Leaving it to scientists and the political class could well be as catastrophic as the danger itself. Man is now capable of creating microscopic robots that can perform repair at the cellular level and, it is claimed, revive the dead through cryonic technology. Clearly, the moral gap between what we can do and what we ought to do is dramatically narrowing, thus opening either a ‘Pandora’s box’ or a ‘can of worms’, we are not sure.

What anthropologists call culture, which broadly means patterns of human activity in a social setting, has always heavily influenced the human condition, and, in the modern age, culture is shaped by science and technology. Although recent evidence indicates that some other species like chimpanzees used tools like leaf sponges, man alone has been called a tool- making animal, and it was his ability to convert natural materials into tools that tilted the scales in his favor in the struggle for survival. As some historians of technology have noted, “Societies tend to mold themselves around their tools. Tools change the user, in ways that are unanticipated.”302 Technology at once empowers and enfeebles the human condition and carries certain grave evolutionary implications for the future. We have become slaves to gadgets, and a recent study indicates that our addiction to machines is not only for convenience but also for comfort, as a recipe for loneliness and as a substitute for ‘emotional company’. When the telephone was first introduced, Oscar Wilde was told how it worked: “…a bell rings and you go down the hall to see who is calling”, and Wilde quipped with his usual wit, “just like a servant.”303 The irony is that, over time, the servant became the master, and turned the master into a subject. When human beings become troublesome, and human relationships such a hassle, and when a machine seems to serve the same purpose with greater diligence, why bother about opinionated humans? The British philosopher C.E.M. Joad described modern man’s view of sexual desire as “a buzzing bluebottle that needed to be swatted promptly before it distracted a man of intellect from higher things”.304 So, for ‘higher things’, if we cannot find a human mate, a machine might well do! That would seductively save man from having to deal with another human’s moods, passions, and demands. We are now being told that “by the year 2050, your lover may be a…robot” and that “robots as sex toys should already be in the market within five years.”305 There could soon be a time when

 

 

 

301 Cited in: Casey Kazan. Has Human Culture Replaced Biological Evolution? The Daily Galaxy. 4 March 2010. Accessed at: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/03/has-human-culture-replaced- biological-evolution.html

302 Richard Heinberg. Cloning the Buddha: the Moral Impact of Biotechnology. 1999. Health Harmony. B. Jain Publishers, New Delhi, India. p.19.

303 Cited in: Neha Rathi. For Some Lonely Souls, Heart is Where the Gadget Is. The Deccan Chronicle.

Hyderabad, India. 23 March 2008. p.II.

304 Cited in: C.E.M. Joad. Wikipedia. Accessed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._E._M._Joad

305 The Times of India. Hyderabad, India. 17 June 2008.

 

one ‘human’ sexual partner might say to the other, “If you have sex with a robot, I am leaving you”, or purely as a matter of precaution, when one goes on a business trip, “please take your robot because I happen to worry about the red light district.”306

Technology is also becoming a primrose path on the quest for bodily betterment. Hitherto, the human had essentially accepted the body he was born with, and within that limitation worked towards making it healthier and stronger. It is being predicted that one day, parents will be able to choose genes for their children, genes that increase athletic ability or musical talents, and so on. What science is trying to do now is to go beyond that ‘limitation’, as in the case of, for example, the eye. It is being predicted that soon human beings might be able to experience 3-D virtual reality through glasses and contact lenses that beam images directly to their retinas. With such devices, we are told, we will be able to block the ‘real world’ entirely and ‘live’ in a virtual world. Another ‘limitation’ has been that the genes get ‘mixed up’ at birth; the offspring inherits them from at least two sources, the mother and father. One way to ensure genetic ‘purity’, or even ‘excellence’, it is claimed, is cloning, which really is to artificially produce identical twins. Although it is said that cloning success in animals does not necessarily extend to humans, and “no one knows why some species are tougher to clone than others,”307 already the world’s first human clone, a girl dubbed ‘Eve’, is claimed to have been created, and several thousands are said to be waiting to be cloned. We will be creating what we may call adult identical twins, the idea being there is nothing wrong in parents being enabled, if they can afford it, to give their children something that some other children already have. This brings us to the possibility that if human intervention is likely to alter the ‘basic features of birth’, it nullifies the theory of Karma, at the least. If a certain group of human beings continue cloning themselves from one generation to another, the likelihood is that the genetic pool of the human race would remain frozen and identical.

On the other hand, as the British molecular geneticist Johnjoe McFadden argues, whether we like it or not, if humanity is not to become an endangered species, we must face up to the challenges of genetic engineering. It is posited that while natural selection took care of the defective genes by weeding them out, in the earlier times, modern medicine lets us survive them and, in the process, while we live longer, the undesirable genes become weaker. Thus, we have two diametrically different visions, and like much else in life, it depends on individual perception.

Whether a cloned man will resemble a being from Huxley’s Brave New World or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or the idyllic world of Utopia, whether such a man would be on par with the Buddha or a Stalin or a Hitler, it is anybody’s guess. Science is supposed to be a search for truth and meaning, and technology is supposed to help man overcome the limitations of natural laws. It is modern man’s ability to fuse the two that has endowed him with such power that he himself is fearful of it. After the first atomic explosion, Albert Einstein remarked that everything in the world has changed except man. He said, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former.”308

Like much else in the human world, science and technology are double-edged weapons, both a boon and a bane, a mixed blessing. They have ameliorated the living conditions of millions but left behind billions in abject poverty. For mass poverty is caused

 

 

 

306 The Times of India. Hyderabad, India. 17 June 2008.

307 Cathryn M. Delude. Transfer Troubles. Scientific American. USA. October 2004. p.12

308 Albert Einstein. The Quotations Page. Michael Moncur’s (Cynical) Quotations. Accessed at: http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/9.html

 

not only by economic and social exclusion, but also by technological exclusion. The fact is that the largesse of science-based technology has largely bypassed the majority of mankind. Our greater comprehension of the neurological and biochemical basis of the human brain, and of the biological basis of human nature, can give us new insights and instruments for social engineering and spiritual awareness. But instead of throwing up a superman or spiritual men, it could also lead to the creation of a physically powerful man with a weak and vile mind.

Hence, instead of being a ‘noble savage’, man is all set to become a ‘toxic technological animal’, totally dependent on machines for everything other than eating, sleeping, and sex. Through contraceptives, science and technology have decoupled sexual pleasure and reproduction, and abortion has detached the fates of the mother and the fetus. Children are no longer the price or purpose of pregnancy; artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization have removed sexual activity as a necessary condition for human multiplication. And if science bestows the boon of ‘eternal life’, then children may be wholly dispensed with, and then sex will become, as some biologists dub it, an “evolutionary accident…during the evolutionary bootstrap phase of our history.”309 We have sleeping aids, and maybe in the not-too-distant future, the stomach may become superfluous and predigested food can get straight into the bloodstream.

Science and technology are now trying to dig into the deepest layer of the human condition: the faculties of thinking and feeling. No ‘sacred cows’ hold them back; no ‘final frontiers’ are final. While a full-fledged ‘thinking’ computer is a scientific possibility, a ‘feeling’ computer is another matter altogether. The odds about a merger between man and machine are long and formidable. In the first place, we do not know the biological origins of feelings and emotions. A ‘thinking’ or ‘organic’ computer may be ruthlessly rational and its decision-making process may be superior to ours. Devoid of emotions, feelings and tenderness, such a computer may be more substantially efficient, but not even nervously human. For example, if his mental calculus reaches the conclusion that the world is better off without humans, he will destroy mankind, say, by pressing the nuclear button. But in the process he will also destroy himself and the very world he is trying to save! That is what clinical reasoning leads to.

Since the emergence of science-based technology as a transforming force three or four centuries ago, many observant people have expressed concern about its adverse impact. The ‘Luddite’ revolt in 19th century England was one such voice. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind.”310 With the exponential increase in the power of science and technology in the 20th century, many writers and historians like Aldous Huxley, Arnold Toynbee, Bertrand Russell and Mahatma Gandhi tried to awaken humanity to the potential risks and dangers. The French historian and philosopher Jacques Ellul wrote, “Technology is not content with being, or in our world, with being the principal or determining factor. Technology has become a system.”311 It is a system that is driven by its own dynamics