I have wanted to introduce Creative Minority readers to transhumanism for awhile now. It is, in my personal opinion, the most dangerous movement that no one knows about. When it showed up on a new Disney Channel series, I decided the time is now.
What is transhumanism? Transhumanism is a philosophy that advocates using technologies like genetic engineering, drugs, and nanotechnology to go beyond treating or preventing disease and use them to enhance otherwise healthy humans beyond natural capabilities. They envision a world where you can leave your “sick and stupid” existence behind and enhance your way to being super-smart, super-strong, super-happy, basically super-human. Transhumanists want to take man’s evolution into their own hands creating a race of “post-humans.”
An example of transhumanism would be removing a perfectly healthy limb and replacing it with an artificial one that performs “better” than the original. Or to use genetic engineering to go beyond curing genetic disease with gene therapy and use it to genetically enhance ourselves or our children.
The transhumanist will often set a trap where they say that the technology used to treat and cure disease is transhumanism. They often present the scenario that in accepting medical progress for treating disease or disability, one must also accept technology to enhance man beyond what can be accomplished by nature. Opposing transhumanism means “opposing medical and scientific progress.” They insist that rejecting enhancement means taking away Grandma’s hip replacement and Grandpa’s defibrillator and only the angry, hate-filled Luddites of the world would want that.
In reality, technologies like genetic engineering, artificial limbs and pharmacology are not all or nothing. We can make the decision to limit these technology for therapeutic uses only. Which is what the Catholic Church teaches specifically about human genetic engineering (and which is now considered good medical practice.)
There are many flaws in transhumanist utopian ideas. Flaws that they find hard to address. Most notably that transhumanism will result in a world where the enhanced super-humans will naturally rule over the “stupid and weak” unenhanced. Those that can afford or have access to enhancements will be the elite and those who do not or cannot be enhanced will be second class citizens.
The transhumanist also contends that enhancements will always be a matter of choice. But in a world where enhancements are commonplace, average people will be compelled to have invasive modifications on their brains and bodies just to keep up. At this point, I contend that we will become slaves to the technology we created.
Transhumanism is philosophically flawed as well, assuming that our nature needs enhancing. That we must take the evolution of our species in our own hands and go beyond being simply human. We have tried to take human evolution into our own hands before. It was called eugenics. Not surprisingly the term transhumanism was coined by a well known eugenicist back in 1957. (And we all how the eugenics movement ended.)
Now you may believe that transhumanism is nothing you and your family need to worry about. It is the stuff of science fiction and you are not being exposed to transhumanist ideas. Except you and your children are slowing being boiled in the transhumanist pot.
Consider Captain America, a super-hero not born of an accident or natural genetic mutation, but of enhancement experiments performed by the United States Army. Consider also the TV series Chuck where an unsuspecting computer nerd is cognitively enhanced by the CIA.
And consider the brand new Disney series Lab Rats where three of the main characters are teenagers that, according to the promotional material, are super-human kids genetically engineered with enhancements by a billionaire inventor to “save the world.”
The message is getting louder and louder and your children are listening. (I know because mine are.) To be a super hero you need to be enhanced and it is OK (and even cool) to let the government or scientists experiment on you. It is time to have a conversation with your children. Tell them enhancements, while fun to watch on TV or in the movies, are morally wrong and that their faith says so. Even if the intentions are good, experimenting on otherwise healthy people is wrong. Enhancing humans will create a an unfair world where those that are enhanced will rule over those that aren’t. And enhancing children, like the Lab Rats, who cannot give informed consent is super wrong.
If we are not successful in educating ourselves and our children, I fear transhumanism with widespread human enhancements is our future. This was a simple introduction. There is so much more to know about the transhumanism movement. If you want to go more in depth please visit Mary Meets Dolly and read on!
March 3, 2012 at 6:46 pm
The eugenics movement isn't dead. Why would you say it is?
Barb
March 3, 2012 at 6:49 pm
Great piece, Rebecca. Excellent. Keep the good fight.
March 3, 2012 at 7:00 pm
Barb,
You are right. The eugenics movement isn't "dead" per se just repackaged. I meant that the eugenics movement of the early 20th century ended in the Holocaust.
March 3, 2012 at 9:01 pm
My guess is you haven't read much Sci Fi. These ideas have been around for a long time. Is your alarm now because they are possible with our newer technologies? Or that people are accepting that it might be good to do this.
Brave New World, Huxley, is a Sci Fi book happening now which is probably scarier in that we have PP providing the "Contraception Drills", Marital Relations aren't for marriage or for babies, and those that think relations are for what they are naturally for live on a reservation and are savages. If you've not read that one or 1984, Orwell, I recommend them highly.
Gatica is a good sic fi movie for telling the future of genetics. The Island, is a great pro-life sci fi movie, that I don't think they meant to be pro-life taking the use of embryos in research debate further.
Good sic fi is usually about something that is just about possible with what we can do now, but still seems beyond our ability. Sci fi has replaced fairytale magic with technology. Fantasy Sci Fi has both 😉
Sci fi has always been a window to possibilities and a warning to what may happen.
March 3, 2012 at 9:38 pm
Julie,
A lot of Sci Fi shows serious downsides to enhancements. That is still the case. But newer depictions in Limitless, Captain America and now Lab Rats do not. (If there are downsides portrayed they are not all that bad.) That is what I find disturbing.
With nanotechnology and genetic engineering on the horizon, I think we all should be wary of these "cool" depictions of enhancements.
March 3, 2012 at 9:44 pm
The genetic patrimony is altered accidentally every day, to the harm or benefit of the individual, simply by mutation and genetic drift. As long as the enhancements don't damage the individual and only improve his quality of life, I don't see why we have to fear them.
These things happen naturally, or by human innovation. You have to make a tighter case as to why, when we inject human intervention into the scenario, such changes are wrong/evil. Also, I think we should be careful not to let a subtle egalitarianism creep into our scientific thinking ("if I can't have it, afford it, dream it, plan for it, have not the will to work for it, then nobody should"). Having everyone be the same is not the goal – human excellence should be.
In addition, I we need to be attentive to the fact that our human nature is NOT changed and cannot be changed by these enhancements. As long as we are rational animals, we will be human, and fully human. Human nature is not the sum of our accidental physical properties.
Thanks for the thoughtful and interesting article.
March 3, 2012 at 10:30 pm
I really don't think you should lump Captain America into the "transhumanism" camp. The story of Captain America goes back to the 1940s, and is really a "Swamp Thing" or "3 Million Dollar Man" type fantasy. Like Spider Man, Captain America is transformed by something outside himself, and has to decide if he will consider himself "more than" (superior to) human, or sort of "double human" or "human plus" — having a sort of double dose of humanity. It is not meant to be a story about how great it would be to have a lot of transhuman, "improved" people running around, although there's a whole genre of stories about that, too — usually with the message that it would not, after all, be great.
The scary thing about transhumanists is not that they like Captain America (I doubt they do) or that they have never seen Ricardo Montalban play Kahn. It's that they think they know how make new, improved people, and they don't care what anyone else thinks about it.
March 3, 2012 at 10:33 pm
Clarification: By "double dose of humanity" above, I meant that the characters in this sort of story end up either pitting themselves against humanity, which they believe to be inferior (in the "Captain America" movie, the Red Skull plans to take over the entire world because even Hitler isn't eugenic enough for him) or that their "enhancements" or "powers" or prosthetics make them see that they are inextricably human and that they will die to defend the rest of humanity.
March 3, 2012 at 11:19 pm
Intentionally genetically altering our offspring or ourselves is nothing like random mutations that normal human reproduction produces. Watch out equating the two. Genetic engineering (inserting genes or extra chromosomes) is a dangerous prospect, which is why the Catholic Church says genetically engineering for enhancing an otherwise healthy person is morally wrong.
As for Captain America, we all love him as a super hero, but be careful about overlooking what the message is because of that. Steve Rogers volunteered to be permanently enhanced by the military to win a war. He was small but otherwise healthy. As much as that pulls at our patriotic heart strings, it is still morally wrong. I worry that will be the initial argument for invasive and permanent enhancements: that our soldiers need them for fighting and it will spread from there.
March 3, 2012 at 11:24 pm
Just a note about the tv show, Chuck.
While Chuck does get a computer (known as the Intersect) put in his head. He (as well as several others that have the Intersect put in their heads) spend a good deal of the last couple of seasons dealing with memory loss, headaches and other bad health issues stemming from the Intersect. So while it is shown to be "cool" i.e. "I know kung-fu!" there are also shown to be consequences as well.
March 3, 2012 at 11:30 pm
Reminds me of a great series of young adult style novels that I read during the 90s when I was younger, called "Replica." A teenaged girl discovers she is one of 13 genetically engineered super humans that resulted from a shut down secret project. She must constantly outwit those who seek to use the superhumans for evil.
If I recall, the series got kinda weird eventually and I didn't read all the books, but they raised very interesting ethical points.
March 4, 2012 at 12:39 am
KHAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNN!
Sorry, just had to get that out there….anyway, I agree 100%.
It's downright scary.
March 4, 2012 at 1:09 am
archaicsteam – very true about Chuck. We watched it as a family and I made sure to point out the memory loss personality changes etc. to my kids. The beginning of the series though didn't have that story line so those who didn't stick with it didn't get to see that downside.
The change in popular media I think will be subtle. In the past the downsides to enhancements has often been significant, but over time I noticing them less and less. I fear eventually there will be no repercussions portrayed at all (much like sex has been portrayed lately.) By that time I fear our kids will be sold.
Great discussion y'all!! 🙂
March 4, 2012 at 2:38 am
James Patterson wrote an interesting novel, not too long ago, called "Toys". It was about a world where the "enhanced race" were an elite society, and the "natural" folk were treated like trash. However, there were lots of down sides to the enhanced life.
I agree, there is a definite trend toward "perfecting" the human experience, and anything that isn't "perfect", by the standards of Princeton Utilitarian Philosophers, needs to be either "fixed" or thrown out.
Thanks for a great thread.
March 4, 2012 at 3:00 am
The Island of Dr. Moreau is becoming reality but it is really Dr. Strangelove, especially the part where Dr. Strangelove cannot stop his own hand from strangling him itself. "How to stop worrying and love the bomb (atom)" Frankenstein, all over again. The reality is that Frankenstein turned on his maker and killed him. The anomalies produced will be infected into society without citizens' informed consent, in the same manner as genetically engineered foods have been covertly injected into the food chain. Those made of aborted baby body parts makes of us cannibals. Progress into cannibalism, headhunting, and human sacrifice. Truth in advertizing. God is watching.
March 4, 2012 at 3:24 am
Dean Koontz writes about transhumanism a lot. His whole Frakenstein series was on this topic as is his new book 77 Shadow Street. I have personally corresponded with Mr.Koontz on this subject and he is spot on in his analysis of the insanity. He wrote the following on transhumanism in an intro to his Frankenstein series, "We live in hubristic age, when politicians imagine themselves to be messiahs and when many in the sciences frankly discuss their dreams of creating a “post-human” civilization of genetically engineered supermen, ignorant of the fact that like minds have often come before them and have left no legacy but death, destruction, and despair."
Brain J. Gail also writes about transhumanism in his Fatherless, Motherless and Childless series. In that series Gail calls it “Genesis 2: Man creates man in his own image and likeness.” I don't want to give too much away but, in Childless, as transhumanists succeed a time of great death and destruction falls on the earth.
March 4, 2012 at 3:39 am
It's hard to conceive of people craving this much power over other people…but then, look at the Fed joining with other central banks to exert complete economic control over the world, the elites who think they know best how "stupid" people who don't think like they do should live and think (corporate media, for example?)
March 4, 2012 at 1:45 pm
Thanks for another thoughtful article. If you or your readers have not read it, I recommend "The Abolition of Man" by C. S. Lewis. It goes to the heart of what you're saying.
March 4, 2012 at 3:44 pm
(And we all how the eugenics movement ended.)
I'd have phrased "where it keeps going," myself.
If I remember correctly, the original Captain America didn't want to be a super-human, he just wanted to be strong enough to enlist at a time when we were in dire need of help. Much different from wanting to be a super-human.
Interestingly, if you look at the X-men, being a mutant is fine– but when there's a way to CREATE mutants, it's a bad thing that bad people do to people against their will. An important distinction, I think.
March 4, 2012 at 4:03 pm
@ Mike: Now, I must read C.S. Lewis's THE ABOLITION OF MAN. The human being is created of body and immortal soul. The problem lies in this: If a person is being somebody else, who is being the original person himself? There has got to be a great deal of self-hatred to discard one's own sovereign identity. How can anybody who hates himself so much accomplish anything worth while? Human nature is predicated on love of God, our Creator, Divine Providence and love of mankind.