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Flow of Ideas: articles - Marx and the Future of the Human |
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 A Capital Friendly Culture for Further EducationAcademy ChainsAfter the Hillcole GroupAgainst What We Are WorthAmbassadors of Capital in SchoolsAn Educational Mansion House for BusinessApprenticeship and the Use-value Aspect of Labour PowerArtistic OutlookAyers Rocked In His Own UniverseB GenerationBourdieu on CapitalBourdieu on Cultural CapitalBourdieu on Social CapitalBrown PFI MonsterBusiness Sponsorship of SchoolsBusiness Takeover of Further EducationCambridge University OccupationCaught in the Storm of CapitalCo-payment in Hospitals and SchoolsCold Hands and Quarter MoonCommunitarianism for SchoolsCompulsory Consumption and Uni-NannyConforming Schools Conforming KidsCopy/South DossierCreating MonstersCreeping Privatisation in Higher EducationCritical MassCritical Pedagogy and CapitalismCritical Space in EducationDelivering E-LearningDigital Rights ManagementDistillationDorothy L. SayersDouglas Kennedy: best-selling novelistE-learning for Free at the BBCEdison Schools in the UKEducation and Inspections Bill (2006)Education As Culture MachineEducation FireworksEducation for DebtEducation IncorporatedEducation Markets and Missing ProductsEducation RepetitionEducation the HSBC WayEducation White PaperEducation, Globalisation and the Learning SocietyEmployers and School LeaversEvaluating Different Teaching MethodsEverything Louder Than Everything ElseFinance and FearFive Endings of DesiresFoibles, Frolics and PhantasmsFreedomFreewillFrench New Wave CinemaFull Report Ruth Rikowski's Book Launch for Globalisation, Information and LibrariesGender and Spokesperson in Group Work IssuesGlobal TradingGlobalisation and Education RevisitedHabituation of the NationHigher Education and Confused Employer SyndromeHitchcock: classic auteurHuman capital, the knowledge economy and businessIn Retro GlideIn the Dentist's ChairKids in the Land of No DreamsKM CritiqueLazy Brit KidsLearning in the Earthworks of CapitalLearning InvestmentsLearning to the MaxLibrarianship and Human RightsLifelong Learning and the Political Economy of ContainmentLSBU StrategyMarketisation of the Schools System in EnglandMarx and Education RevisitedMarx and the Future of the HumanMarxism and Education RevisitedMarxist Educational Theory UnpluggedMaturity and FreedomMcDonaldization and EducationMichael JacksonMichele RobertsMiss Allison and Novel WritingMoneythought in Higher EducationMrs Thatcher and Holes in the Kitchen FloorMulticulturalism and Faith SchoolsMy Tony BlairNew Ideas in Ruth Rikowski's Book - Part 1New Ideas in Ruth Rikowski's Book - Part 2New Labour Policy for SchoolsNietzsche's SchoolNihilism and Educational ValuesNo Learner Left UnhassledNotes on the Confessions of John DenhamOn Education for Its Own SakeOn Education StudiesOn the Capitalisation of Schools in EnglandOn Transhumanism and EducationOpen AccessOutsourcing Public ServicesPeter Wilby on School PrivatisationPlanet of the CapitorgPlatoPlaygound Risks and Handcuffed KidsPoems by Gregory RikowskiPoems by Victor RikowskiPost-Fordism and SchoolsPost-Fordism in Primary SchoolsPostmodern Dereliction in the Face of Neoliberal Education PolicyPowerPointlessness in Higher EducationPrivate Schools as CharitiesPrivatisation of Schools in EnglandPrivatisation of Student DebtRaces in the Imperial WarReadings for Teaching CourseRecruitment and Labour PowerRevealed Recruitment Criteria through the Use-value Aspect of Labour-powerRobotic EthicsRuth Rikowski Updates (Archives)Ruth Rikowski Updates (Archives)School Fees and the 1944 Education ActSchools: Building for BusinessScience Fiction Films and HorrorSecond Time as FarceSnowballs and Risk in SchoolsSocial Contract Theory and Political ObligationsSocialism is not DeadSpeed of Life - Part OneSpeed of Life - Part TwoStroppy Individuals and Oppositional Cultures in SchoolsSustainability Policy at London South Bank UniversityTen Points on Marx, Class and EducationThe Business of Becoming a Business for AcademiesThe Capitalisation of Schools - Federations and AcademiesThe CBI and the Business Takeover of SchoolsThe Commodification of EducationThe Education White Paper and the Marketisation of SchoolsThe Evolution of Federations of SchoolsThe Last Parents EveningThe New Japanisation of SchoolsThe Profit Virus - The Business Takeover of SchoolsThe Standards Language-game for Schools in EnglandThe Which Blair ProjectThree Types of Apprenticeship - Three Forms of MasteryTony and Caroline BennTony Benn: Letters to GrandchildrenTransportTurney's and PPUUninspiring TowersUniverse of Capital and My SpaceUniversities in a Neoliberal WorldUtopia and EducationWhat Can Nietzsche Teach YaWhen Bullies Roam the SchoolWhen the Bowers BreakWhy Employers Can't Ever Get What They WantWill Hutton and His E-FossWolf on Marx Without SparksWomen in World Wars
| MARX AND THE FUTURE OF THE HUMANPaper for the Birkbeck College Seminar Series on Marx, Individuals & Society 26th October, 2000 The Council Room, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London Glenn Rikowski “I am here – uploaded and unafraid Of the technology great minds have made; The projects of dreams: now reality, Are revered by few but embraced by me” (Extract from E. Shaun Russell’s, Sonnet On Future Progress) INTRODUCTION The ‘human’ appears to be in crisis. This is not because of superficial postmodernist posturing on decentered identity, which role theorists of the 1950s and 1960s were much better at analysing anyway. Rather, the prospect is a practical challenge to the constitution of human beings. This practical challenge is diverse but comes from four main fields of contemporary science: biotechnology (especially genetic modification of human DNA); cybernetics (in particular connecting microchips up with the human brain or central nervous system); microchip technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics; and nanotechnology [1]. On the basis of this new science, the ‘future of the human’ appears to become open to a world of possibilities. Technology and science seem to offer powerful techniques for generating artificial (rather than natural) selection. Evolution is subsumed under ‘human’ control and possibilities for re-designing the species yield ‘transhuman’ or ‘posthuman’ futures. In this scenario, technological redefinition of what the ‘human’ is becomes reality. Designer humans, downloading of consciousness into computers, bodies without organs and cyborgs (a range of human-computer fusions) are some of the options on the horizon. Some, such as the transhumanists, posthumanists or extropians welcome these post-human futures. On this wave of optimism for a future beyond the human those who seek to impose constraining ethical blocks on working towards post-human futures are labelled as New Luddites. This paper argues that the post-humanists have misunderstood history, have ignored capitalist development and missed the essential point: we are already not-human. We are capital. Furthermore, the post-humanists rely on technological determinism, capricious ‘choice’ about what we can become in the future and disarming optimism concerning our capacity to generate a world worth living in on the back of new science and its applications to design of the species. The unfolding of the new sciences and technologies so lauded by the post-humanists does not proceed in a social vacuum. They are developing within the social universe of capital, the universe within which we exist today. These technologies are an expression of the deepening of capitalist social relations and capital as social force, and so they are not innocent. The horror is not that we shall be invaded by new technologies that have the capacity to reconfigure us a species, a definite life-form. There is a deeper horror; the horror of humanity already possessed by an alien social force: capital. The new ‘inhuman’ technologies are a practical manifestation of this deep possession of the human by capital. The concept of human-capital, on this account, is not some inadequate notion drawn from bourgeois labour economics but expresses our real predicament. This paper summarises some of the arguments first articulated in my Education, Capital and the Transhuman (Rikowski, 1999b) and Nietzsche, Marx and Mastery (1999a). It seeks to deepen and strengthen those arguments through generating a radical account of the social universe of capital based on recent work by Michael Neary (Neary, 2000b). This work also acts as a template for dragging some theses set out Education, Capital and the Transhuman from a Newtonian form of social theorising towards a more adequate account of the social universe of capital based on the radicalisation of Marx through Einstein. At this point, the paper is very experimental and underdeveloped. The first section notes just some of recent or impending scientific or technological discoveries and applications that are reconfiguring the nature of human life. The second section shows how the developments hold promises for life beyond the ‘human’: as transhuman or posthuman life forms. Section three contains a critique of post/transhumanism as development of the human based on ‘autonomous’ technology. The rest of the paper explores how we are already situated posthumanly as capitalised life-forms. Our social existence as human-capital is a contradictory one. It is the form of everyday life as experience of living contradictions that provides the dynamic (and hence the explanation) for us to seek to become post-human-capital: to enable humanism – as an open future for the species. Humanism, on this basis, is our collective freedom to decide what the ‘human’ is to become, free of the fetters of capital. Our lives within the social universe of capital are constrained, limited in myriad ways. In toto, capital limits what we can become. For our very becoming – as a species – is an expression of the ‘becoming of capital’ that Marx wrote about in the Manuscripts (Marx, 1844b), capital as a ‘force we must submit to’ (Marx, 1844a: 269). Humanism becomes possible only on the abolition of capital as social force and this presupposes destruction of capitalist social relations and the social universe of capital whose substance is value. Prior to this ‘humanism’ can be viewed as the practical struggle to dissolves our own existence as a particular social form: human-capital. On this account of humanism, there is no ‘essence’ of the ‘human’, no ‘getting back to where we once belonged’ (after the Beatles old number). Humanism, then, is the struggle for an open future; it is the beginning of real human history. A radical interpretation Karl Marx’s social theory, when brought into contact with a social cosmology deriving from Albert Einstein, provides significance insight regarding why and how the social universe of capital must be imploded in order to set in train the project of humanism as social reality. Until this implosion, like the Rolling Stones ‘we can’t get no satisfaction’: our life as capital forbids it. 1. THE APPLIANCE OF SCIENCE “Genetic Modification (GM), Genetic Engineering (GE), Cloning: ‘We now know with certainty that these profound changes in the biological sciences are imminent and will challenge all our notions of what life is’” (Bill Joy, Why the future doesn’t need us, 2000: 244). “Imagine our lives if we could negate our bodies and become free as bits. Imagine mass transferred into data, flowing as electrons to a receiver that rebuilds us” (Charles Platt, Clear the Line, I’m Sending Myself Right Now, 2000: 205). “It’s theoretically possible: By late in the century the human head transplant might be as common as a kidney transplant” (Jonathan Vankin, A Little Off the Top, 2000: 194). When I was a kid in an all-age village school in Stilton, Cambridgeshire – the kind of school that was technically illegal under the 1944 Education Act – we listened to a radio programme one morning about what life would be like in the twenty-first century. The only thing I still remember from this schools’ radio programme was this rather pompous voice telling us that in the next century there would be no disease. Even the common cold would be cured, and I thought at the time that those poor kids would never have days off school with chicken pox or measles, like I had. Of course, it didn’t happen. Though significant headway has been made with some diseases, new ones have arrived. Old ones have returned; for example the rate of TB in Newham, where I live, has increased in recent years. However, some leading scientists and medical experts now believe that the scenario described on that crackled old radio I listened to all those years ago is imminent. The Human Genome Project has caused most optimism for big breakthroughs in the near future. It has provided us with a ‘working draft of the human genome’s sequence’ (Williams, 2000: 106). As Matt Ridley has dramatically put it: “On 26th June 2000, the world changed. On that day, for the first time, a species of living creature announced that it had grown sufficiently complex, biologically and culturally, to have read its own genetic recipe. It now had the complete instructions for building and running the body of one of its kind” (Ridley, 2000). For Ridley, the ‘secret of life is out’ (ibid.). The Human Genome Project has provided a map of the human genome. It was only 17 years ago that two Californian scientists spliced DNA and successfully transferred genetic material from one life-form to another (Bruno, 2000: 262) giving rise to a new applied science that spawned a new industry: genetic engineering. Today, biotechnology stocks are booming (Bruno, 2000: 264). Yet these are still early days, and the whole biotechnology sector has capitalisation of only $150 billion – which is dwarfed by that of the Internet. Williams (2000) has argued that by the mid-21st century, the Internet ‘may seem a side-show to the main event in IT – the explosion of bioinformatics’. According to Richard Oliver the ‘Bioterials Age will complete the triumph of economics over politics, which was begun in the Information Age. It will unleash forces stronger than nationalism and more powerful than the combined armies of the world’ (Oliver, 1999: 1). The ‘Biotech Century’ will yield ‘as many headlines about discovery, cures, and healing as the 20th century had about war and destruction’ (Williams, 2000: 106). Matt Ridley stresses the dangers as well as the benefits of inherent in mining the human genome for practical applications. He lists germ warfare, genetic engineering of human beings and social and economic division (between those who can/not afford the benefits flowing from biotechnology) as some of dangers at issue. Steve Jones points towards that way the profit may dampen enthusiasm for the whole Human Genome Project as corporations attempt to patent sequences of DNA ‘without knowing what they do’ (Steve Jones, in Cartwright et al, 2000: 24). Ochert (2000: 2) notes that in the U.S. ‘there is serious talk of genetically modifying people’ and that scientists ‘have begun to talk openly about the possibility’ of GM people. More sinister, is that scientists are also considering possibilities for the ‘direct control of our evolution through so-called “germline” gene therapy’ Ochert (2000: 22). Somatic gene therapy – which has no consequences for offspring – was first carried out 10 years ago. However, Ayala Ochert predicts that in next 20 years, human genetic modification, “germline” modification of inherited characteristics, is on the cards. The consequences of this are that if you ‘change the germline … you change evolution’ (ibid.). Ochert stresses that this work is not being carried out by a bunch of ‘mad professor’ types trying to produce a master race. Rather, it is growing out of mainstream scientific research being carried on in fertility clinics, in medicine, in biology and in pharmaceutical companies (ibid.). If these trends continue, and the applications flowing from the Human Genome Project are anywhere near as significant as many scientists are predicting, then, argues Kat Arney, the development of ‘cloning techniques, brain-cell transplants and micro-computers could allow people to “upgrade” both themselves and their cloned progeny’ (1998). Ochert’s reassurance that 23 European countries signed a Council of Europe declaration prohibiting “germline” gene therapy may not be worth much when commentators point towards the European biotechnology sector being hamstrung by strict regulations on the industry (Guerrera and Firn, 2000). The European biotech sector has also received far less state funding for development than its American counterpart, where tax breaks for biotech start-ups tempt venture capitalists into the field. For now, it may well be the practical difficulties of translating new knowledge about the human genome into hard products are prohibitive. For example, 95-99.9% of all ‘engineered’ embryos are damaged or defective (Ochert, 2000: 22). When these problems have been minimised (and as 20% of parents would choose to genetically enhance offspring in a recent survey (taller, higher IQ etc. – ibid.), then ethical clamping, regulation and prohibition looms to stop abuse arising from the biotech industry. The other technology where solid applications directly affecting the human body seem on the horizon is cybernetics. In the last few years it has come off the science fiction shelves and into the body of real humans, or proto-cyborgs (fused human-machine entities). Campbell (1999) points towards work at the University of Southern California on growing neurons on microchips ‘that are made to emigrate into the brain and communicate with them’, whilst experiments at Reading University, led by Kevin Warwick involve implanting chips in his own arm (Alesky, 2000). An experiment undertaken in August 1998 involved a computer programmed to respond to Warwick’s actions, and further self-experimentation is planned for 2001 (ibid.). According to Theodore Burger (in Campbell, 1999), the capability exists for building computer chips that act just like nerve cells. From this, argues Campbell (2000), computer chips in the brain to boost memory becomes a feasible step. These chips would allow ‘people to “download” large quantities of information instantly, as a computer does from the Internet’, according to neuroscience writer Ray Kurzweil (in Campbell, 1999). Kurzweil, well known for the accuracy of his past predictions on the appliance of science [2], states that: “By 2050, […] computers will be small enough and clever enough to work with people from inside the human brain. We’ll be able to send intelligent machines called nanobots through the bloodstream to the brain. There they will take up positions and they will actually expand our brainpower” (Kurzweil, in Campbell, 1999). Whilst this technological invasion appears to reconfigure the ‘human’ this is nothing as compared with its opposite; the ‘downloading’ of our consciousness into a computer lodged in a robot. Though much further off, this leaves any conception of what it is to be ‘human’ in limbo. As Bill Joy, cofounder and Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems, ponders: “But if we’re are down loaded into our technology, what are the chances that we will thereafter be ourselves or even human? It seems to me far more likely that a robotic existence would not be like a human one in any sense that we understand, that the robots would in no sense be our children, that on this path our humanity may well be lost” (Joy, 2000: 244). Charles Platt argues that it we downloaded our consciousness into a computer then the resulting entities would be ‘isomorphs’ – minds without organs (2000: 208). Nanotechnology holds out great promise for medical science and practice. It is the design and manufacture of devices to atomic-scale precision. The potential of the technology is truly phenomenal. For example: “Using “assemblers”, molecular machines that can place atoms in almost any arrangement compatible with physical law, we will be able to do cell-repair, large-scale space colonization, dirt-cheap (but perfectly clean) production of any commodity, and to build chips the size of a sugar cube yet a million time more powerful than a human brain” (Bostrom, 1998: 26). As Natasha Vita-More notes, nanomachines could repair aged tissues and organs. They could even reanimate people who have been frozen in cryonic suspension (und: 14). With nanotechnology, argues Paul Virilio, the ‘inner core of the living’ is to be equipped with micromachines that can ‘effectively stimulate our faculties’ – including enhanced cognitive capabilities (1995: 101). Nanobots – tiny machines we could swallow – could be launched into our blood streams. They would ‘supplement our natural immune system and seek out and destroy pathogens, cancer cells, arterial plaque, and other disease agents’ (Kurzweil, 1999: 176). Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at the London School of Economics, predicts the creation of “superintelligence” within the next 40 years: a cognitive system that drastically outperforms the top present-day humans in every way’ (1998: 13). Such a system would fuse human cognitive capability with: “… hardware neural networks, simulate neural networks, classical AI, extracranially cultured tissue, quantum computers, large interconnected computer networks, evolutionary chips, nootropic treatment of the human brain, biological-electronic symbiosis systems or what have you” (ibid.). Wired up in this way, we could shut down all our schools and universities. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly The collective benefits from all the technological and scientific realities, probabilities and possibilities listed above – should they all come to fruition – would be immense. For example, Henderson (2000) notes the discovery of a gene that raises the risk of contracting diabetes. Modification of this gene has the potential to erase diabetes (Hawkes, 2000). Henderson also indicates that this same research holds promise for fighting Alzheimer’s disease, asthma and other diseases. This is the first time scientists have located a gene that is responsible for a common, genetically complex disease, notes Henderson. Bill Joy contends that genetic engineering may soon provide treatments or cures for most diseases, nanotechnology and nanomedicine can be used for bodily repair and enhancement and ‘together they could significantly extend our average life span and improve the quality of our lives (2000: 242). Neither are some of these things as far off as we may think (or fear): “Scientists are developing an aspirin-sized robot that will carry a suite of miniaturised electronic scanners into patients’ bodies. The spy probes would be swallowed so they can transmit crucial medical data about a person’s stomach and intestines” (McKie, 2000). Furthermore, Integrated Diagnostic for Environmental Analytical Systems (IDEAS) ‘will push electronic miniaturisation beyond its present limits’ (ibid.). According to Zeichick (2000: 278), genetic screening and analysis are making the ‘transition from being mainly research tools to being more practical instruments that allow physicians to diagnose diseases’. The ability to identify a specific disease by recognising their DNA signature pattern as an aberration within normal human DNA sequences is nigh. With this technology, patients can be screened for susceptibility to specific ailments (Zeichick, 2000: 281). Although the benefits of these new technologies seem huge, so too are the risks. These risks are of an altogether different order than those posed by past scientific applications. This is dangerous appliance of science. As Bill Joy states: “Accustomed to live with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st century technologies – robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology – pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before” (2000: 240). The really worrying dangers are that robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share ‘an amplifying factor: They can self-replicate’ (ibid.). Thus, the nightmare of nanobots reducing all inorganic material to “grey goo”, or nanites turning organic matter into “black goo” as they self-replicate and ‘eat up all forms of energy and destroy the human race’ suggests itself (Ouroboros, 1999b: 2). Bill Joy conjures up the horror of ‘knowledge-enabled mass destruction’ (KMD) – the use of nanobots and nanites in warfare, where their self-replicating capacity goes on beyond destroying the enemy to obliterate human life conditions (2000: 242). As Nick Bostrom (1998: 26) notes, the risks of nanotechnology are enormous. There are ‘social risks’ too. Bill Joy envisions the possibility that we ‘re-engineer ourselves into several separate and unequal species using the power of genetic engineering’, and this would undermine the notions of equality and hence also democracy (2000: 244). Furthermore, differential access to these technologies, for individuals (on the basis of ability to pay), and for nations (with leading capitalist countries reaping most of the benefits) generate possibilities for the emergence of distinct human types: more or less techno/genetically enhanced. As Bruno (2000: 264), there is ‘concern over whether the pace of biotech is outstripping our ability to wrestle with the fundamental issues of life’, and this concern will intensify as the applications come on stream. The ugly side of all this is the way corporations are moving in for the payoff from these scientific developments. The future of the ‘human’, human life as we know it is, up for the dollar. Bill Joy notes that: “We are aggressively pursuing the promises of these new technologies within the now-unchallenged system of global capitalism and its manifold financial incentives and competitive pressures” (2000: 248). Capital increasingly comes to shape the human soul. In this section, I have not tried to list all the scientific developments (actual, imminent and possible) that are and will shape the ‘future of the human’; this would be impossible in a short a paper. They key point is that human life appears to be subject to reconfiguration. According to Paul Virilio, the scientific developments outlined in this section have particular consequences for human life. For our species, the situation has been reached where classical evolution as natural selection no longer applies. We are on the verge of a ‘techno-scientific phase’ of evolution where artificial selection, selection based on conscious choice, prevails (Virilio, 1995: 117). Some do not mourn this ‘passing of the human’, but look to a transhuman future which holds great promise for liberation of all kinds, and it is to trans/post-humanism that we now turn. 2. A TRANS/POST-HUMAN FUTURE “As we blur the boundaries that define what it is to be human, the fusion of man and computer could develop into a whole new species” (Kat Arney, Feeling Chipper? 1998). “Kevin Warwick plans to make history in 2001. He will become a cyborg. He will have a chip implanted in his upper left arm which will radio all his nerve impulses to a computer. This will record the tiny electrical signals that control all his motions – and his emotions” (Tim Radford, Cyborg man will be able to plug into his own emotions, 1999). “This is the fourth revolution of our history – the ultrahuman revolution” (Max More, in Alexander, Don’t Die, Stay Pretty, 2000: 179). “Biology is not destiny. It was never more than tendency. It was nature’s first quick and dirty way to compute with meat. Chips are destiny” (Bart Kosko, in Ouroboros, Transtopia: Technology Will Set You Free, 1999b: 1). “We are striving to deanimalize our species – debiologize intelligence – deplanetize” (FM-2030, und: 1). “General goal: infinite existence under the best possible conditions. Primary means to achieve this: reason, science, technology. Motivation: enlightened self-interest” (Ouroboros, The Transtopian Principles Version 2.2, 1999a: 1). The previous section pointed towards scientific applications that not only have the capability to maintain human functioning and health but to radically alter the nature of humankind. Some welcome this possibility, and actively strive to speed up its development. Nick Bostrom summarises this outlook: “Over the past few years, a new paradigm for thinking about humankind’s future has begun to take shape among some leading computer scientists, neuroscientists, nanotechnologists and researchers at the forefront of technological development. The new paradigm rejects a crucial assumption that is implicit in both traditional futurology and practically all of today’s political thinking. This is the assumption that the ‘human condition’ is at root a constant. … This assumption no longer holds true. Arguably it has never been true” (Bostrom, 1998: 24) The ‘human’, it seems, is headed for history. However, it is more complex than this, as the following discussion makes clear. A useful starting point is with the notion of the “transhuman”. This concept posits the contemporary constitution of the ‘human’ as being in a state of radical transition. According to Max More: “We are transhuman to the extent that we seek to become posthuman and take action to prepare for a posthuman future. This involves learning about and making use of new technologies that can increase our capacities and life expectancy, questioning common assumptions, and transforming ourselves ready for the future, rising above outmoded human beliefs and behaviours” (More, und.). This definition begs the question of what the “posthuman” is, and this is addressed later. What is clear is that the “transhuman” is a practical process of leaving currently constituted humanity behind. It implies a transition beyond the human condition and human nature (whatever that is). Transhumanism, on the other hand, carries with it a moral and political challenge: we ought to try to overcome the ‘human’ limitations resulting from our physiology and biological foundations. For Ouroboros (1999a: 4), “transhumanism” is: “The belief that we can, and should, try to overcome our biological limits by means of reason, science and technology. Transhumanists seek things like intelligence, augmentation, increased strength and beauty, extreme life extension, sustainable mood enhancement and the capability to get offplanet and explore the universe. These goals are to be achieved with the aid of contemporary and future technologies such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, cryonics, megascale and space-time engineering, AI, and mind uploading” (Ouroboros, 1999a: 4). Max More (und.) has described transhumanism as related philosophies of life that ‘seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and limits’. Science and technology are the principal means to these goals, though for More ‘life-promoting principles and values’ also play a role in transhumanist outlooks. Religion and dogma, on the other hand, are to be avoided. Transhumanism is no religious cult, according to More. It is based rather, on the belief that ‘it is good to improve oneself, physically and mentally’, and to dissolve existing biological and social limits to processes of self-improvement. These limits can be overcome through utilisation of ‘rational’ methods (technology and science) (Transcendo, 1998: 1). Transhumanists advocate the ‘progressive transformation of the human condition’; there is no end point (Burch, 1998: 1). Thus: “Transhumanism sees the present time as one in which the power and subtlety of our tools has grown to the point where we can now turn our tools on ourselves to augment our very nature, a project that promises a super-acceleration of potentiality often referred to as “the singularity”. Transhumanists see the near future as a time in which our technological power of self-transformation will lead to a real transcendence of “human nature” itself. Thus transformed, the far future of humanity holds essentially limitless vistas of expansion into the universe” (ibid.). The core goal then, is the transcendence of “human nature”; the practical redefinition of the human. The “posthuman” is the realisation of the transhumanist project. Transhumanism is a ‘politics of/for the posthuman’; humans actively striving to become post-humans (Rikowski, 1999b: 56). Posthumans are the goal of transhumanist politics and efforts. Max More defines the “posthuman” in the following way: “Posthumans have overcome the biological, neurological, and psychological constraints evolved into humans. Posthumans may be partly or mostly biological in form, but will likely be or partly or wholly postbiological – our personalities having been transferred “into” more durable, modifiable, and faster, and more powerful bodies and thinking hardware. Some of the technologies that we currently expect to play a role in allowing us to become posthuman include genetic engineering, neural-computer integration, molecular nanotechnology, and cognitive science” (More, und.). Burch hold a similar notion of the “posthuman”. He says that ‘I use the word “posthuman” to simply mean what we or our “mind children” will be when we have changed so much that our (or their) state no longer can be accurately called “human” (Burch, in Burch and Toth-Fejel, 1999: 1). Another significant term in this lexicon is “posthumanism”. Posthumanism is an ‘attitude on how to deal with the limitations of the human form’ (Ust, und: 1). It is a tragic feeling or attitude, focusing on the frustrations of life as merely ‘human’. It is the negative side of the positive vision of transhumanism. However, there is much confusion at this point. Ust’s (und.) “posthumanism” sounds very much like More’s “transhumanism” when the former talks about posthumanism as ‘a vision of how to move beyond those limits by the radical use of technological and other means’. (Ust, und: 1). Posthumanism, for Ust, is also about “human diversity” and techno-transcendence: using technology to overcome limits (human and social). Two final concepts are required – extropy and Expropian – though there are many others that could be added in a comprehensive rendering. The significance of these two concepts is that they define the position of the world’s leading posthumanist, Max More, co-founder of the Extropy Institute. The Extropian Movement started by Max More and Tom Morrow (not their real names) in the late 1980s. More is British and has a degree in PPE from Oxford. More met Morrow whilst doing a Masters in philosophy in California, and together they co-founded Extropianism (Gibson, 2000: 29). They started up the journal Extropy in 1988, and there is now Extropy Online. There are also the Extropy Institute (with annual conferences), a bi-monthly newsletter, an electronic email list, a boarding house – Nextropia – and parties and lunches (ibid.). According to Gibson, membership of the Extropy Institute is increasing. The annual conference is particularly important. At the Extro4 conference earlier this year, the gap between Extropians and mainstream scientists visibly narrowed as several scientists from a range of fields got together formally for the first time with leading Extropians at a major venue (Alexander, 2000: 180). So what are the Extropians about? According to Alexander they are ‘techno-believers with boundless faith in science’s power to amp up human potential (2000: 179). Life extension is a major goal, with deathism scorned. Gibson (2000: 26) characterises the Extropians as ‘a Californian group of hardcore technological believers, who aspire one day to be able to download the informational essence of their minds onto computer databases and achieve cyber-immortality’, but it is perhaps fairer to let Max More define the key terms. As More notes, extropy is the extent of a system’s intelligence, information, order, vitality, and capacity for improvement (1999: 1). It is the opposite of Entropy: the second law of thermodynamics that states that everything in the universe is inevitably subject to death and decay, in short, that life is subject to mortality (Gibson, 2000: 26 & 29). Extropians are those who seek to increase extropy for ‘humans’ (More, 1999: 1), and believe that the best strategy for attaining posthumanity to be a combination of technology and determination, rather than looking for it through psychic contacts, or extraterrestrial or divine gift (More, und.). More outlines the core Extropian principles as: perpetual progress, self-transformation, practical optimism, intelligent technology, open society, self-direction, rational thinking (1999: 2). His partner, Natasha Vita-More, notes that even without the promise of the new sciences and technologies there is still much that can be done today to keep entropy at bay: 7-8 hours sleep, 8 glasses of water, scheduled meals, low-caloric intake, adequate exercise, creativity, watch your smoking and drinking. There are ‘add-ons’: hormones, smart drugs, supplements (co-enzyme Q10, DHEA) and cosmetic surgery (Vita-More, und: 10). The politics of the trans/posthumanists varies substantially, but an overall bias towards neo-liberal capitalism seems standard. Interestingly, someone snappily called FM-2030 articulates a kind of transhumanist Third Way: “All existing ideologies of left and right are inherently industrial age. As we hasten to a new age these ideologies lose relevance … Years ago I suggested the term “Up-Wing” as the ideological heir to the right- and left-wings. I suggested that Up-Wingers are those who are committed to helping accelerate the shift to new historical and evolutionary levels” (FM-2030, und: 1). The Up-wing, like Anthony Giddens’s Third Way is beyond left and right, but with pseudo-superiority, above it too. For FM-2030, the right and left ideologically are trapped within the ‘industrial-age continuum’. At most, they seek to modernise existing systems. Hence they: “… call for better family relations – more progressive schools – more sophisticated hospitals – more reliable postal services – more efficient government bureaucracies – more jobs and prosperity – more open elections of government leaders and representatives – cleaner and more efficiently run cities and so on” (FM-2030, und: 1). In contradistinction to industrial age modernisation, the real trends point towards ‘decentralization – despecialization – demonopolization – debureacratization – globalization’ according to FM-2030 (und: 1). Meanwhile, the Extropians are decidedly anti-government. They are ‘true libertarians in every sense of the word. They hate taxes and are staunch free-market capitalists. They gleefully wait the time when digital money and its owners will be freed from the pressures of taxation’ (Gibson, 2000: 29). According to FM-2030, industrial- age systems are outdated and they are beyond salvage through incremental modernisation. Their irrelevance is given by the ‘powerful new forces in the world … [that are] … steadily rescripting life in fundamentally new ways’ (und: 1). Economically: “Everywhere the industrial world is wearing out. It is not an accident that suddenly more and more of our institutions are malfunctioning. It is not an accident that in advanced industrial societies the nuclear family and school education and postal service and small farms and labor unions and the auto and steel industries and central governments and industrial-age cities and national economies are all buffeted by persistent problems. … The fact is that the entire planet is shifting to a new stage – beyond industrialism” (FM-2030, und: 3). For FM-2030, the foundations of modern economics have not altered since the Neanderthals. The starting point for Neanderthal and contemporary economics is ‘how to provide for people’s basic needs – survival needs’ (und: 4). However, we are going beyond mere survival and a new economics is required to reflect this. This new economics ‘deals not with survival. The new economics wants to ensure our immortality’ (FM-2030, und: 4). According to Alexander the practical solutions to the ‘death problem’ are not yet here, but ‘they’re close enough so a payoff is imaginable – and payoffs are what drive research. … [For] … whoever harnesses life-extension technology first will reap the greatest economic reward in human history (2000: 181). Alexander contrasts the Extropian search for immortality favourably with evolution; the latter ‘doesn’t care’ whereas death prevention is morally superior. Furthermore, in order to explore and colonise space, ‘earth-adapted biological humans’ ill-equipped to respond to the challenge need to give way to beings especially designed ‘beyond’ what evolution has thrown up (Moravec, 1992: 1). Ironically, the Extropian and transhumanist stress on transcending classical Darwinian evolution through artificial selection runs counter to crude neo-Darwinian reductionism at work in socio-biology. As Steven Rose (2000: 30) notes, this New Darwinism attempts to explain human behaviour in terms of DNA. New Darwinism operates on three main tenets: (1) most features of organism are adaptive (2) features of organisms are generated by natural selection and (3) natural selection acts solely or primarily at the level of individual genes. For Rose, this is the New Darwinian ‘fundamentalism’ (ibid.). The radicality of transhumanism is that it is against any form of naturalism, including any naturalistic science that holds to fixity or constants – especially the notion of a fixed and unchangeable human genome or ‘human nature’. The transhumanists also find themselves against religious naturalists too. As Robert Bradbury puts it: “We have to deal with human naturalists, those people who think it is non-human to live 200 years, or the religious deathists, who have a significant amount of power by having the key to the Pearly Gates, so to speak” (in Alexander, 2000: 179). As Natasha Vita-More notes, some people will choose to “stick with nature”. She calls these the “humanish” (after the Amish) (in Alexander, 2000: 186). It is this anti-naturalism that has turned many transhumanists away from Nietzsche and his Overman, and moreover, categorically against any search for a “master race”. This is because both projects install natural limits on what the species can become. Furthermore, Left-transhumanists argue that one of the selling points of transhumanism it that it practically destroys ‘difference’ as a designator of hierarchies. As Anders Sandberg has argued: “Nietzsche’s views are not transhumanist. He was a deep irrationalist, whilst transhumanism has rational thinking as one of its core values. The eternal return mocks many transhumanist ideas on progress. ‘Nietzsche’s problem is that he believes in a closed world, and hence the highest ability is to accept the eternal return and still enjoy life, while to a transhumanist the world is open for eternally new possibilities – creation becomes the highest instead’” (1999: 1). Mania (1999: 1) has castigated Nietzsche for his antidemocratic, antifeminist and elitist thinking. Whilst Nietzsche’s announcement of death of God ‘might have been a revolutionary act in 19th century Germany’ his philosophy of the eternal return of the same was rooted in Schopenhaur’s pessimistic approach to life, argued Mania (ibid.). The key debate centres on genetic engineering, which has been linked to Nazism and more arguably to Nietzsche. Burch argues that even if these claims stick they miss the point. Certainly nanotechnology cannot be linked to either Nazism or Nietzsche: it was unknown, perhaps virtually unimaginable to both (even though its potential as a technology is far greater than genetic engineering). What this shows is that transhumanism cannot be reduced to any single technology, and that furthermore it has nothing to do with developing a “master race”, argues Burch (in Burch and Toth-Fejel, 1999: 1). This becomes more apparent when some of the positive claims for transhumanism are stated. These include dissolution hierarchies based on gender, ‘race’ or any other ascriptive characteristic – including age, especially for Extropians aiming at immortality. The goal is individual choice of skin colour, texture, choice of the range of sexual organs and decision on overall body design. No single body design is superior; it is just a personal preference or fashion statement – which can be altered. Natasha Vita-More speaks of a future with multiple sex organs, polymer skin that changes colour and virtual reality eyeball implants (in Alexander, 2000: 179). She states: ‘I love fashion. Our bodies will be the next fashion statement; we will design them in all sorts of interesting combinations of texture, colors, tones, and luminosity’ (in Alexander, 2000: 185). Shaun Jones takes the argument further as he talks about ‘the manipulation of the firewalls that exist between species’, so that we may have fur instead of mere skin for part or all of our body (in Alexander, 2000: 186). Oliver points towards a ‘growing awareness that at the atomic level, all matter – organic and inorganic – is the same, … [and there is] … an evolving unity of humans, animals, plants, and minerals’ will ‘fuel a new unity across a wide spectrum of business’ (1999: 142-143). Why buy mink fur with cruelty inherent in its production when you can grow it on your own arms? Dramatic claims have been made for the cyborg as harbinger of a new equality. As our ‘evolutionary descendent’, it is the ‘solution to gender’ and the solution to power differentiation (Lewis, 1998: 377). Thus, ‘the cyborg may appear animal and material, invincible and perishable, utopian and mythical, corporeal and opaque, male and female, historical and subversive’ (ibid.). The cyborg as fused human-machine entity break down hierarchy: “The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian and completely without innocence. No longer structured by the polarity of public and private, the cyborg defines a technological polis, based partly on a revolution in social relations in the oikos, the household. Nature and culture are reworked; the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation of the other. The relationships for forming polarity and hierarchical domination are at issue in the cyborg world” (Donna Haraway, 1991: 151, in Lewis, 1998: 377). The cyborg promises an “informatics of liberation”, and this informatics would ‘seek to advance semblation beyond the entertainment perimeters of arcade games and capitalistic processes generally’ (ibid.). A posthuman future would open up, not close down possibilities or maintain hierarchy and domination. And it would be more fun: “The toilet, as we know it, would be a thing of the past. Sexuality, on the other hand, would persist throughout the ages, with the transhuman’s sexual capacity increasing in variety, intensity, duration, and just about every other imaginable way. New organs, new sexes …” (Regis, 1990: 168). This transhuman equality and real human choice and difference would have been anathema to Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s eternal return was essentially the project of splitting humanity in two for eternity: between a small cultural elite of ‘artist warriors’ secure in their superiority, and the mass who were required to support them economically (Rikowski, 1997). Stripped of its fancy cosmological interpretations, this as what the doctrine of Eternal Return was essentially about (Waite, 1996). At the end of some transhuman futures resides the ‘body without organs’, however (Bukatman, 1999: 325), an idea drawn and expanded from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. A consciousness swirling round in chips inside a robot may well sound like a practical case of annihilation of the ‘human’, as a parallel to the ‘abstraction of sublime annihilation – being below zero’ (ibid.) of the body without organs. Tattersall (2000: 75) questions whether a species can survive as a set of ‘disembodied attributes.’ And anyhow, little available if it could, perhaps – certainly not in the enhanced, human-connected Vita-More sense. This last point opens the general question of the relationship between humanism and transhumanism. According to Bostrom, transhumanism ‘agrees with humanism on many points but goes on beyond it by emphasizing that we can and should transcend our biological limitations’ (1998: 25). Indeed, argues Burch (1998: 1): “The word ‘transhumanism’ consciously evokes the tradition of humanism, i.e. the secular view of man as the “center” of the moral universe. However, transhumanism goes beyond humanism, because it does not accept some immutable, fundamental “human nature” as a give, but rather looks to continuing – and accelerating – the process of expanding and improving the very nature of human beings themselves.” Max More (1999: 1) argues that like humanists, transhumanists ‘favour reason, progress, and values centred on our well being’ rather than on an external religious authority. However, they take humanism further by ‘challenging human’ limits by means of science and technology combined with critical and creative thinking. Thus, transhumanists … “… see humanity as a transitory stage in the evolutionary development of intelligence. We advocate using science to accelerate our move from human to transhuman or posthuman condition” (ibid.). For Burch (1998: 1), ‘transhumanism’ evokes the tradition of humanism: wo(man) at the “centre” of the moral universe, the ‘measure of all things’. Transhumanism, however, does not accept some immutable “human nature” as a fixed item. There is no “essence” to the human – fixed by genetic, psychological, social or any other dimension of existence. Transhumanism seeks to continue and accelerate the ‘process of expanding and improving the very nature of human beings themselves’, argues Burch (1998: 1). Thus: the ‘transhumanism is the modern heir to the humanist tradition, in fact transhumanism carries on the torch of the “humane” culture into an era of ultratechnology’ (Burch, in Burch and Toth-Fejel, 1999: 1). As Ust (und: 3), notes, labelling posthumanism as inhuman merely begs the question regarding what the ‘human’ is. Ust argues that there no necessary conflict between posthuman existence and some of the finer qualities we pin on humans. Indeed, argues Ust: “… posthumanism will expand upon those things that humanity prides itself on, such as intelligence, courage, curiosity, and inventiveness. Other qualities are there, but I don’t see any conflict between, say, better eyesight, a longer life-span and more intelligence on the one hand and tenderness, compassion and you-name-it on the other” (und: 3). The ‘death of the human’ in the transition to a posthuman existence does not necessarily man the death of all the finer ‘human’ qualities. Together with the scientific, medical and technological developments of the previous section, this section raises serious questions – especially on some posthuman possibilities – concerning the future of the ‘human’. The ‘human’ appears to be ‘at risk’. Next Page - Print Friendly - Print Friendly with links |
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