Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Transhumans - Robots in Disguise

Well, I've only just got out of bed, but I have a lot to do today, and, since I haven't received any new e-mails, I thought I might use this time to continue my ruminations on John Harris' quest for immortality, bio-ethics, and what I have learnt is called 'transhumanism'.

I haven't really got anything planned, so all of this will be a kind of jotting of notes to marshal my thoughts.

First of all, immediately after I'd written my last post on the subject, I hated it. When I tried to analyse why this should be so, it seemed to be a kind of self-consciousness about it, an almost self-imposed distance between the authority of my target - John Harris - and myself, which I nonetheless attempted to close. It was that attempt to close a self-imposed distance, I think, that made me cringe. Of course, the distance is not entirely self-imposed; I'm sure that Harris would describe himself as an 'expert' on something or other and use every opportunity that academia, science and so on furnished him with to pull rank on those with whom he disagreed. He speaks with the idiom of authority. Perhaps what I hated about my entry was that I was using that idiom - or an uneasy version of it - in order to attack that idiom. Actually, I'm not sure how else it is to be done. This is the game of 'being taken seriously' that I referred to.

However, it also occurred to me that (and this is something that the likes of Harris often take advantage of) language often creates the illusion that two different things referred to by the same word are the same thing. I identified a desire on my part to be taken seriously in order that I might be able to challenge the 'being taken seriously' of Professor John Harris. When I thought about this, however, it seemed to me that, yes, I do want to be taken seriously, but in quite a different way to John Harris. My impression is that he is in the game - as are most or all so-called 'experts' - of being taken seriously in a hierarchical manner. This is vertical 'seriousness', and it is quantitative. For instance, someone might say, "I have an IQ of 180, and therefore my intelligence is higher than yours, and therefore what I say goes." Quantitative = vertical = hierarchical. I would like to be taken seriously in a qualitative way. What does that imply? That implies that I'm human, with human qualities and feelings, and therefore would like to be treated with respect. I invite anyone to savour the 'quality' of anything I say and experience it for themselves, not to accept my vertical authority. This kind of qualitative 'seriousness' is immensely important if we are to avoid human atrocities. As I have said before, such atrocities are made possible when people are treated in a quantitative rather than a qualitative fashion. What happened in the Nazi extermination camps was a result of human beings stripped of their qualities, no longer seen in terms of irreducible qualities. They were 'not taken seriously'. Their persecutors held the hierarchical authority of quantity that is the same as that which John Harris holds, and which is the same that he propagates when he smugly speaks about having not a single spiritual cell in his body. In this connection, it's interesting to note that, when he's contemplating the possible problems of immortality, he considers it in mathematical terms. Why should it matter, he asks, if no new people are born (if everyone is immortal) if the number of human years lived is the same (though shared between fewer people)? Thankfully, he does decide, after all, that the 'renewal' brought about by new people being born is desirable, but the mathematical consideration seems typical of the tenor of his thoughts.



John Harris has already foreclosed on any possibility of the spiritual (quality) in life. What is his idea of immortality? It seems nothing more than a quantitive extension of numbers in a life-span. 120 is necessarily more desirable than 80, because it's a higher number. This really seems to be the way he thinks. He will be able to fit more in to a longer life-span. He will be able to have a longer shopping list. He will be able to play more rounds of golf. Is this the best that the dynamic duo of science and materialism can offer us? It really seems to be. We will extend your life, and you will be able to do more. And we will call this "immortality" even though it's not, because we don't want to think about the fact that we will still inevitably die. In fact, we don't really want to think about anything except our longer shopping list. Is this a mature and wise way to sculpt a future for human beings?

I've said before - and had it thrown back in my face sometimes - that the whole aim of science is control. I don't find this to be an admirable aim. John Harris would appear to be of the transhumanist movement. I quote from the Wikipedia article on that movement:

Transhumanist philosophers argue that there not only exists a perfectionist ethical imperative for humans to strive for progress and improvement of the human condition but that it is possible and desirable for humanity to enter a post-evolutionary phase of existence, in which humans are in control of their own evolution. In such a phase, natural evolution would be replaced with deliberate change.

Humans in control of their evolution! What does control mean? Control implies lack of union. There are two things here - what is controlling, and what is being controlled. And what is it that is being controlled? Answer: nature. Actually, I see this as an impossible and disastrous project. The thing that is controlling is the ego, the conscious mind, and the conscious mind is much slower and clumsier than the unconscious (nature). In a sense, none of this matters, because it's like some freaky, hilarious and sinister puppet show, in which the puppets vow to control not only the hands pulling their strings, but the whole world on which those hands are contingent. Nonetheless, it's a phenomenon that will be cataclysmic for us humans, and I'd rather see it averted while there's still time. Do musicians think about what note they have to play next? No. If they did, they'd totally fuck up the tune. They let the unconscious mind, the memory in their body, take over. For humans to want to try and 'control' their evolution, is like a musician thinking, "Okay, I'll play B-flat next. Now, I'll play a G, but hold it a bit longer." Etc. It's not going to work.

At this juncture, I'd like to note that, if I recall correctly, I read in a book called, In the Beginning Was the Worm, about the 'discovery' of DNA, some idea that biology and physics have in some way swapped roles. Traditionally, biology (the organic science) was seen as the one in which there was greater unpredictability, and physics as the one with immutable, logical laws. At some point in the twentieth century this situation started to reverse. Now biology is all about immutable rules, and physics is embracing ideas of uncertainty. I know which I prefer. I don't have the book to hand, but I remember that one member of the Watson-Crick DNA team in particular was adamant that everything in the universe must be predictable, that given sufficient data, every outcome must be knowable, that all life is, therefore, mathematical. Personally, I can't think of anything worse than a totally known, totally predictable universe, but that was actually the ideal for this highly influential individual. That was his holy grail. Control. Traditionally the forces of order are seen as good and the forces of chaos as bad. I'm on the side of chaos in this one. Here, order is totally soulles and oppressive.

On the subject of DNA, I was interested to note that, just after I wrote my last entry on bio-ethics, the papers were full of James Watson's idiotic racial comments, which have apparently led to him being asked to retire. Hmmmm. I feel like I want to take a step back here and approach this one leisurely. The target is too easy, and I don't want to play some facile race card here. I quote:

The eminent biologist told the British newspaper he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really."

Okay, he's not specific about what testing. Are we talking about IQ tests here? I think he could have been a bit more circumspect in what he said. If Africans have scored on average lower in such tests what this proves is that Africans score on average lower in IQ tests (if that). To immediately assume that a difference in intelligence has been demonstrated is, anyway, reckless. So, I don't immediately think that Watson is racist. I think that he's probably arrogant and stupid, and believes that his position as a scientist means he can say whatever he likes. Okay, actually, he's obviously at least a little bit racist, or else why jump to such a conclusion when his scientific training should tell him not to jump to conclusions? (I have slightly ammended this view in the comments section here.)What interested me here, though, is that these are the words of the co-discoverer of DNA, of someone known for his work in the field of genetics. I would like to posit here that scientific theory is not - as many would like us to believe - ideologically neutral, that it springs from something within the people involved, that it is, in brief, a projection. What is the cultural meaning, then, of DNA? Something that mathematically determines what life is? That turns life into a computer? Into a quantitative hierarchy, so that one living thing can be quantitatively better than another, so that it can be quantitatively enhanced? Watson has also given his approval to a world in which, through genetic intervention, "all girls [are] pretty". Yeah, sounds at first like an old man's joke, doesn't it? But when you consider that this is an eminent scientist working in the field of genetics, this takes on a distinctly sinister complexion.

Would it be good if we rid the world of all ugliness and deformity? Maybe we would then spare people suffering. I remember - I believe it was the disabled actor Nabil Shaban - talking about people who suggested eliminating deformity before birth. His (I believe rightly) furious response to this was, "What these people are saying is that I should not exist." (Might not be verbatim.) I am also reminded of Ian Dury's rousing declaration that I seem to remember was on the cover of the single Spasticus Autisticus, but unfortunately, I can't seem to find the declaration online. Maybe later. Anyway...



There is something a bit Nietzschean about the transhumans. Nietzsche, of course, famously wrote that "man is something that must be overcome". Interesting that Nietzsche, too, should be linked with the Nazis. Actually, I have some sympathy with Nietzsche's sentiment, but it's as if the transhumans have taken all the interesting bits out of the Nietzschean idea, and are determined to become superhuman in the most shallow way possible. Nietzsche was talking about a kind of spiritual transcendence, an evolution through death of the ego (please do correct me if I'm wrong, I'm speaking from my memories of Thus Spake Zarathustra). The transhumans, on the contrary, want to avoid any kind of death (and, I expect, especially of their egos). I have used this metaphor before, but if Nietzsche was proposing evolution the hard way, then that could be compared, for instance, to winning someone's heart. How do you do that? It's not an easy or clear-cut thing. The answer of the transhumanists is to use rohypnol. Easy. It gets results, yeah (the usual scientific boast), but are these really the kinds of results you want?

In describing humans in terms of machines, and saying that the only way forward is technological advancement, what the transhumanists are doing is actually emulating robots. Robots are their role-models. But not mine, I have to say. It's as if something in them simply can't believe in the qualitative experience, that should be avaiable to everyone, of humanity.

Labels: James D. Watson, John Harris, transhumanism