Having just seen the movie Avatar (I rarely see movies at the cinema house anymore), I have to say it is one of the most amazing films I have ever seen. Visually stunning, thrilling and a timeless story: an indigenous, holistic, technologically primitive people rising up to defend and preserve their way of life against a technologically advanced aggressor. That would be us, by the way (humankind, that is). This is what we have been doing to ourselves since the Fall. One person or a community of persons who are not able to defend what they have will have it taken from them by the stronger. This is a simple and unavoidable fact. It may not be right but it nevertheless happens.
The most fascinating thing here, however, is the concept of transference of human consciousness into a genetically compatible alternate body. This is an age-old concept that has been presented in many varieties of science fiction, from the old TV series The Twilight Zone to Star Trek and many others. It is a very exciting and attractive concept, considering that many of us (who are willing to admit it) are not very happy with the bodies we have been given; we would much prefer to be some one or some thing – other. Hence we have movies, video games, the Society for Creative Anachronism, etc, all of which are avatars of a sort that provides temporary means of escape from reality.
I understand the desire for this all too well. I have never had much liking for my own reality. I would much prefer to live in the Shire with the Hobbits, with the Elves in Rivendell or on one of the Jedi worlds. Not because I consider these to be utopian worlds but because life there would have a different character, based on a different dynamic, or so I imagine. So while we fantasaical-minded folks have to live in this reality, we ignore as much of it as possible, allowing our fantasies to translate our lives into a manner of perceiving that views this reality as highly abstract. In other words, we don’t belong here.
Of course this reality and our fantasy world both share a common element that is inescapable and cannot be ignored no matter how much we want to: the reality that all things die. Death is the hardest and most frightening reality we face and we either face it with hope or we face it with dread. But our technology is advancing so much (along with our immorality and arrogance) that the idea of a constructed immortality is no longer confined to the realm of science-fiction fantasy. To wit:
An Introduction to Transhumanism
Attempting to Make a New Type of Person
By E. Christian Brugger
WASHINGTON, DC, APRIL 21, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The ideas of the young international movement known as "transhumanism" are beginning to characterize the thinking of an increasing number of clinicians and bioethicists. I thought therefore that our readers might profit from a brief introduction to them.
Transhumanism is really a set of ideas that has developed in response to the rapid advance of biotechnology in the past 20 years (that is, technology capable of and aimed at manipulating the physical, mental and emotional condition of human beings). Conventional medicine has traditionally aimed at overcoming disorders that afflict the human condition; it has prescribed leeching, cauterizing, amputating, medicating, operating and relocating to dryer climates, all in order to facilitate health and militate against disease and degeneration; in other words, the purpose has been to heal (i.e., has been broadly therapeutic).
Technology is now making possible interventions that in addition to a therapeutic aim are intended to augment healthy human capacities. There is a gradual but steady enlargement-taking place in medical ideals from simply healing to healing and enhancement. We are all too familiar with "performance enhancing drugs" in professional sports. But biotechnology promises to make possible forms of enhancement that go far beyond muscle augmentation.
Germ-line gene therapy, for example, still in its infancy, aims to genetically modify human "germ cells" (i.e., sperm and eggs) in order to introduce desirable intellectual, physical and emotional characteristics and exclude undesirable ones. Since the modifications are made to cells in the "germ line," the traits would be heritable and passed on to subsequent generations. Drugs to improve mental function such as Ritalin and Adderall are increasingly being used by the healthy in order to enhance cognitive abilities. One study has shown that close to 7% of students at U.S. universities have used prescription stimulants for enhancement purposes. [1] That number appears only to be increasing.
Research is rapidly progressing on advanced technologies such as direct brain-computer interfacing (BCI), micro mechanical implants, nanotechnologies, retinal, neuromuscular and cortical prostheses, and so-called "telepathy chips." While it is true that each of these technologies may play a role in transforming the lives of disabled patients to enable them better to communicate, manipulate computers, see, walk, move their limbs and recover from degenerative diseases; transhumanism sees them as potential instruments for transforming human nature. The 2002 version of the Transhumanist Declaration states: "Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. We foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition, including such parameters as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet earth."[2]
Their most radical proposal is to overcome death. Although the aim sounds fanciful, there are influential scientists and philosophers committed to it. The prominent transhumanist scientist and inventor, Dr. Ray Kurzweil, argues that for most of human history death was tolerated because there was nothing we could do about it. But a time is rapidly approaching where we will be able to isolate the genes and proteins that cause our cells to degenerate and reprogram them. The assumption of death's inevitability is no longer credible and ought to be retired [3]. Michael West, the CEO of one of the largest biotech companies in the U.S., Advanced Cell Technology, agrees. He argues that "love and compassion for our fellow human being will ultimately lead us to the conclusion that we have to do everything we can to eliminate aging and death."[4]
Although I think the majority of people in the Western world do not yet share transhumanism's more radical ideas, the assumption concerning human autonomy that underlies the transhumanist philosophy is practically universal in secular medicine and bioethics today. Living wills enshrining people's right to refuse life-sustaining treatment for practically any reason, even if they are not dying, are becoming as routine in our hospitals as informed consent forms. Oregon, Washington and Montana have legalized physician assisted suicide each using as a rhetorical bludgeon the argument that autonomy guarantees a person's right to exercise self-determination not only over his life but also over his death. If autonomy extends to these things, then surely it guarantees the liberty to enhance my capacities.
I fear that the only thing presently preventing wide-scale affirmation of the transhumanist imperative is an emotional "yuck" factor, which we can be sure will gradually subside under the gentle and inexorable prodding of secular opinion. When it does, our rationality insulated by this extreme notion of autonomy will find itself helpless against the technological imperative which says: if we can design our perfect child [5], if we can be smarter, stronger, and more beautiful [6], if we can extend human life indefinitely [7], then we should do it. If embryos are sacrificed through the experimental process required to perfect this technology, or if inequalities are introduced to the advantage of some and disadvantage of others; these are the costs of progress!
The 2008 Vatican Instruction on bioethics, "Dignitas Personae," addressing the use of biotechnology "to introduce alterations with the presumed aim of improving and strengthening the gene pool," strongly cautions against the "eugenic mentality" that such manipulation would promote. The mentality likely would stigmatize features of hereditary imperfection generating unfair biases against people who possess them and privileging those who possess putatively desirable qualities.
The instruction concludes saying: "It must also be noted that in the attempt to create a new type of human being one can recognize an ideological element in which man tries to take the place of his Creator" (No. 27).
Endeavoring to manipulate human nature in this way "would end […] by harming the common good" (No. 27).
This is nothing short of a new manifestation of The Great Lie first told in the Garden of Eden – ‘You don’t need God; you can become a god without God.’
Or at least, you can become immortal.
The quest for immortality has been active since we lost it in the Garden. We comfort ourselves in this quest for the unobtainable with the idea that we live on in the memories of those who love us. In other words, no one ever really dies as long as someone remembers him or her. This idea is not necessarily and entirely false. Our remembering surely does count for something. But keeping someone alive in our memory is not the same thing as actual eternal life.
God’s remembering causes existence.
Our remembering does not.
We want to be immortal but we are not, so modern man has put his faith in science and technology to achieve this ‘pearl of great price’. We desperately want eternal life but we want it on our terms and under our control, not according to God’s conditions. We reject God’s conditions not because they are harsh or beyond our capacity but because they require an absolute answer to the question: Who do you say I am? Many have turned to science simply because it does not ask this question and accepts all answers.
Seeking the answer to that question will always lead one into a confrontation with Religion (usually within the meaning of institution not of virtue). That confrontation produces more questions: Which one is right? And which sect within which one is right? Some grow weary of trying to figure it out and opt to create their own. Others let the answer be relative to each one’s perception. Both cases allow us to imagine ourselves as masters of our own destinies and agents of our own change, enabled by the attitude, which says, “I refuse to be led around by the nose by dogma!” I wonder if they realize they are indeed being led around by the nose – by the arrogance of their own opinion, which they value more than truth (and we know who’s holding the stick with the carrot).
The character of Dr. Walter Bishop on the TV series Fringe said, “All destinies lead to the same destination.” In a certain sense that could actually be true but that is not to say that free will is an illusion. We are all destined to stand before the Judgment Seat of Jesus Christ but the willful choices we make on that journey determines if it will be a judgment of condemnation or of absolution; a resurrection to eternal endurance or of enduring Communion.
This is our ultimate destination. Whether we be in the Shire, in Rivendell or on Pandora; whether we be a Jedi or in the body of our avatar, and we had best be ready to give an answer to Him who is Uncreated Reality.
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