January 03, 2007
"Worse than Islam..."
Late last night I was reading in Rand Simberg's blog some comments on a post about Mark Steyn's book America Alone
"The one flaw in Steyn's analysis is that it does not account for the possibility of radical life extension that is likely to be available by 2050. Such technologies include SENS (Strategically Engineered Negligible Senescence) and bio-nanotechnology (synthetic biology).
Mark Steyn hints at the coming transhumanist future with his comments about the future of Japan. However, for whatever reasons, he implies that transhumanism would be even worse than islam (why anyone would think this is completely incomprehensible to me). [My emphasis]
So, facing a problem like demographic implosion, why would something like "radical life extension" not be a good thing?
Mark Steyn is writing about TWO problems that are combining explosively. One is pressure from an expanding Islam. The other is a vacuum in the West, (especially Europe), a deep spiritual malaise, an emptiness that Islam is simply being pulled into. It is both a literal emptiness--the demographic collapse; and a crisis of civilizational morale that leaves many in the West unable to defend our civilization or faith or ideas. Or even to just fight back against killers.
He believes (and I am in complete agreement) that the second problem is by far the worse. If the West still had a tenth of the confidence and élan of centuries past, we would have slapped down Islamic terrorists decades ago, when they first began to surface, and they would not now be a big problem. The same with unruly Islamic immigrants. And without the civilizational malaise there would not have been the lack of children that is drawing in the problematic immigrants.
Islam is just an opportunistic infection. It is a serious problem only because we in the West have a compromised immune system...
The West has lost faith (America alone perhaps retaining it), and our other problems are but outward symptoms of this. (Steyn doesn't quite connect the last dot, but I would say that the West has lost its Christian faith.)
"Transhumanism" is just another symptom of the problem. Think of your typical Frenchman, who can't be bothered to have children, or to fight to correct the blatant problems facing his nation, or to dream of space colonization, or go to church, or fight back against terrorists or criminals, or just to hurry home from vacation because old people (including his grandma) are dying in a heat-wave. He is denying, he is evading, human nature. His own (his ancestors would have said "God-given") human nature. He is avoiding pain. The pain that comes with living life. And it is an iron law that you cannot have the deep joys that make life worth living if you won't accept the pain and risk that go along with them.
And corollaries of this law are that you can't have freedom unless people are willing to fight, politically or sometimes literally. And you can't have prosperity unless people are willing to take risks, to risk losing what they have.
Transhumanism is just another evasion. An evasion of human nature, and that iron law. You don't have to believe in God to "get" this, though it helps. To look at this from another angle, it is a bedrock part of conservatism that there are not going to be any man-made utopias, and that humans and human institutions are always flawed. Our constitution is based on this idea. Transhumanism is a utopian project, and any conservative should be reacting like we reacted to the philosophes before another little project called the French Revolution. Those guys were all decent chaps, who wouldn't hurt a fly. But they loosed upon the world an idea, a mere thought, about revolution being able to change and improve humans, without hindrance from what we would call human nature. We now use tens-of-millions as a convenient unit of measurement for the deaths that have resulted from this "transhuman" idea.
The problem Steyn is writing about is, in large part, that we have nothing we believe in enough to fight and suffer and die for. You are proposing a project based on extreme avoidance of death, and of the pain of living. I'd call that worse than Islam.
Posted by John Weidner at January 3, 2007 08:02 AMHow is transhumanism, as described in this post, fundamentally different from, say, the Internet or laser keratology? Both of those are about improving humans and overcoming aspects of human nature.
Without a doubt, there are utopians who are much taken with transhumanism, but I find them no different than the gushers who went on about how the Internet was going to bring world peace because every one could now communicate easily.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at January 3, 2007 08:32 AMIt's interesting you mention the Internet. I've read some history about the Internet pioneers, and what strikes me is that they had no suspicion that human flaws were going to be a part of it.
They were all nice fellows, and all sort of thought alike, and assumed everyone would act like them. And so they built the Internet with no defenses against human evils. They never imagined a world in which bloggers are jailed, and American companies are helping the Chinese censor the blogosphere...
I think the transhumanist enthusiasts are in a similar state. They are clueless about what might result when their ideas go into mass production. When they are no longer the preserve of a few nice nerdy idealists.
And transhumanism will be much more serious than the "gush" about the Internet. If people can live for a thousand yearts they will be willing to do much more extreme things to protect themselves. Wanna bet that "bio-nanotechnology" will not also provide us with ways to eliminate life? Say, life that threatens my precious 1,000 years? And if it can modify organs, then the next step is modifying the brain. Say, to eliminate "dangerous thoughts." Like individualism, for instance. Leftists already are crusdading to get rid of that problem--they just don't have the right tools yet...
Posted by: John Weidner at January 3, 2007 09:23 AM"How is transhumanism, as described in this post, fundamentally different from, say, the Internet or laser keratology? Both of those are about improving humans and overcoming aspects of human nature."
The internet isn't improving humans and overcoming aspects of human nature. If it was we wouldn't have trolls and spam. The only thing the internet is overcoming is distance and time. But all that immediate globe-wide contact has confirmed is that we're the same old human beings as we've always been.
Beyond that I am not philosophically adept enough to counter the idea of "transhumanism" in the accepted way. Oh I'll admit it, the idea simply bores me to tears. The whole transhumanism thing seems to be just another kewl new fad for the young and those who can't bear to not be young -- "look, ma, I've got an adamantine skeleton, a nano-liver, an extra 50 years of youth and perfect health, and the chicks are going to really love my titanium penis!" You think that "transhumanized" people are going to use their lengthened lifespan to finally study all that philosophy and quantum physics and "improve" themselves? Child, please.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at January 3, 2007 03:46 PMI can think of no fate more frightening then being in a Transhumanist Englightment Commune in San Francisco.
Posted by: James Pacella at January 3, 2007 04:39 PMWhenever I read articles by proponents of transhumanism I always think of Dracula's Renfield driven mad by his obsessive quest for "more life!".
A transhuman is a thing that is not human. Designed and built by humans. Wasn't there another 19th century novel about the perils of this project? What terrible, stitched together thing will be designed by these transhumans to advance _their_ nature?
Paris Hilton? Oh wait -- that's subhuman.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at January 3, 2007 06:40 PMI would agree 1) that some people get excited about the idea that "transhumanism" will somehow result in more nearly perfect human beings, and 2) that those same people don't understand that the phrase "more nearly perfect human beings" is an oxymoron.
If one sets aside the hype, however, what "transhumanism" boils down to is life-extension. And I have to ask, "What's not to like?"
Will people use the extra years to "finally study all that philosophy and quantum physics and 'improve' themselves", as Andrea asks? Probably not. And so what? It's not my life or John's or Andrea's. It's that person's life. Shouldn't that person be allowed to spend his life as he or she sees fit, however frivolous his or her choices seem to us?
Near-immortality may not be a good idea. I can't help thinking of that Harlan Ellison short story, "For I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream", about a person who winds up the prisoner of a sentient and insane computer, and is made effectively immortal by that computer, and who has absolutely no hope of rescue.
Yet, life-extension technologies are on the way, and the only questions before us are how to harness them, and how to cope with nasty side-effects, like the "gray goo" problem foreseen a long time ago by the nano-technologists. "Relinquishment", a la Bill Joy, isn't on the table.
Besides, if you don't want your life extended, don't get the treatments, eh?
As for those unfortunates that John writes about in the main post, those who shun pain and fear death, they'll eventually wind up a tiny minority in the end, as the rest of us who do embrace life, despite the pain, continue to have children. When the "red-staters" and their grandchildren to the umpteenth generation are exploring and settling the cosmos, I think a few cranky, superannuated "old Europeans" stuck in some ghetto that used to be called Paris won't be anything to worry about. Let them stew in their own juices. And who knows? They may come to wisdom in time.
Posted by: Hale Adams at January 3, 2007 07:44 PMMs. Harris;
But time and distance (or more accurately, the humanly percieved scale of them) are part of human nature. These have been radically altered by the Internet.
You seem to be interpreting "improve" in a rather narrow sense as moral improvement. The fact that I can do research in an hour that would have taken my grandfather a lifetime is an improvement in my human capabilities. That was the point of also mentioning laser keratology.
For me, transhumanism is exactly this sort of this, with better technology — something to make improve me by making me more capable.
You think that "transhumanized" people are going to use their lengthened lifespan to finally study all that philosophy and quantum physics and "improve" themselves?I can't speak for others, but I certainly would (except quantum physics — been there, done that).
Mr. Weidner;
I need to think about your comment for a while before responding.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at January 3, 2007 08:19 PMIf one sets aside the hype, however, what "transhumanism" boils down to is life-extension. And I have to ask, "What's not to like?"
You must like people a whole lot more than I do.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at January 4, 2007 04:21 AMI think that the Red State trimphalism is way overblown, as well as the Euro-pessimism, but John is on target with his critique of transhumanism. Whenever I hear of a new philosophy that begins with "trans" I grab my gun. These are people who are looking for a lifeboat or an escape hatch. It's a cult just like Heaven's Gate except it's technology and not aliens that will save them from themselves. Another image that comes to mind are those people sitting in rowboats waiting for the Second Coming.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at January 7, 2007 11:54 AM
