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Beyond
Caution
Exploring,
Inspiring, Reassuring
Statement for Vital Progress Summit 2004
By Max More, Ph.D.
A deep
metaphysical and existential anxiety lurks behind seemingly diverse forms of
opposition to progress in any technologies capable of altering “human nature”.
What is common to Kass’s fear of going “Beyond
Therapy”,
For Kass,
the use of technology to overcome the historical, biologically-rooted limits of
humans is “the deepest source of public anxiety about biotechnology” and raises
the weightiest questions of “the nature and meaning of human flourishing,
and the intrinsic threat of dehumanization (or the promise of super-humanization)”.
In the case of the Precautionary Principle, note how it is applied primarily to
genetic engineering and to alterations in the “natural order of the biosphere.
Shock and Awe Times Four
Our hearts
should go out to those who are not born neophiles (lovers of progress,
exploration, and discovery). We need to understand why their philosophical
immune system has been activated. We need to go gently on the attack, putting
more effort into acknowledging, reassuring, and curing. Their ailment goes
deeper than the future shock associated with Toffler. Today’s reaction against
a possible transhuman transition represents a fourth traumatic
metaphysical-existential shock.
The first
shock came with the Copernican revolution in which our culture lost the
reassuring and situating idea that the Earth was the center of all Creation. Humanity
experienced a second profound metaphysical shock in the Darwinian Revolution,
which removed from our species any claim to be the special design and the
center of a divine plan. The third shock arrived about a century ago with the
unveiling of the unconscious mind. No longer masters of the universe or of the
world, we could no longer even be sure that we were had domain over ourselves.
Now a
fourth chapter in this disturbing tale threatens to unfold: The removal (or
transformation) of the central characters of this drama - human beings
themselves. Most opponents of progress are holding on tight to the “eternal
verities” of human nature. They prefer the devil they know (disease, aging,
death, emotional and cognitive shortcomings) to the great unknown of a
transhuman future. Leon Kass has been known to quote Nietzsche. In the
character of Zarathustra, Nietzsche vividly conveyed the metaphysical shock of
his time:
How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to
wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth
from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually?
Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left?
Are we not straying as if through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the
breath of empty space?
That
shock is resurgent today. Apologists for the “natural order” don’t want to
recognize that, for humans, causing change is natural. This opposition, this
neophobia, takes several forms. For the deeply religious, human enhancement
should be opposed because it makes it obvious that the existing order is
flawed. This strikes at the root of belief in a perfect being. The extreme
environmentalists resist the technologies of transformation because of their
commitment to Nature as inherently benevolent and humanity as inherently evil
or debased.
A lesser
but overlapping form of opposition derives from rationalizing the existing
order. Over many centuries everyone has known that humans must age and die (and
must fight the infidel, look to higher forms of intelligence for solutions, and
so on). The painful reality and inevitability of weakness and death induces a
psychologically powerful defensive reaction seen even among many humanists: If
this apparently miserable fact is something we cannot change then it must
really be good, be necessary for our lives to be meaningful, or is an essential
part of the “best of all possible worlds”.
Evolutionary
psychology probably plays a role in reinforcing these causes of excessive
caution. For the vast majority of human history we lived on the edge of
survival. There was no canned food, no safety net, no
backup plan. Experimenting with a radical innovation involving a vital matter
like food production could and usually would lead to disaster. Great caution
has survival value when you have no reserves. As we have deepened our reserves
and interconnected our diverse cultures and institutions, we can afford to
lessen caution and apply it in more focused and intelligent ways. Yet our
psychology has yet to catch up with this reality.
Beware of Perfection
One point
on which I can agree with Kass (but not a way he would like) is his warning
about the pursuit of perfection. He talks of pro-enhancers as seeking perfection
of mind and body. This would indeed be a mistake, but Kass has it backward. The
religious opponents of enhancement are the ones who believe in a heaven of
passive perfection – a realm where nothing changes, no one develops, and
everyone rests forever. As Zarathustra put it: “Weariness that wants to reach
the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that
does not want to want anymore: this created all gods and other worlds.”
Those of
us who favor advancing technologies both to heal humanity of its historical
afflictions and to enable our continued growth as a species have little
patience for perfection. Perfection is not the real issue. The real issue is
the pursuit of fundamental knowledge and the breaking of the chains of human
nature. The Precautionary Principle and the gloomy visions of Kass,
Let’s Stop Stopping
The
Precautionary Principle creates an impossible standard. It would have us stop
progress until we have proof of safety. But we can’t know what is safe without
trying it out. Nor can we know all the potential benefits. And, as others have
pointed out, precaution of this kind and relinquishment of the Bill Joy variety
carry their own risks.
As Bill
McKibben insists, Enough is Enough! Fine.
But enough for who, and
for how long? McKibben sees us as asking for too much. Kass and
The Party of Life
None of
us plans to force upon Kass,
We can
appreciate and respect what Kass calls the “giftedness” of the world (though it
is a fact, not a gift). We can take precautions. We can allow for a plurality
of values and choices. At the same time, the diverse people who comprise the
Party of Life can balance precaution with pioneering, relinquishment with
reaching, hiding with exploring. As the “mind of nature” we can choose the
noble responsibility of appreciating what is while creating what can be.
Even as
we explore, venture, develop, experiment, stretch, grow, and dare, we would do
well to embrace those who pull back in fear. Our responsibilities as reasonable
proponents of profound technological progress, include
envisioning positive futures, developing pathways to those futures,
communicating those futures, and thereby soothing the fears of those ridden by
metaphysical anxiety. Only then can we all join today in welcoming and shaping
an ever-improving future.