Man's Fate and God's Choice by Bhimeswara Challa (ereader for textbooks TXT) 📖

and is propelled by its own momentum. Not all, however, are alarmists, some are downright euphoric. The economist Paul Zane Pilzer (God Wants You to be Rich, 1997) wrote that technology is the chosen instrument which will make everyone rich and transform

 

 

 

 

309 Pierre Baldi. The Shattered Self: The End of Natural Evolution. 2002. The MIT Press, USA. p.46.

310 Ralph Waldo Emerson. ThinkExist.com. Accessed at: http://thinkexist.com/quotation/things_are_in_the_saddle-and_ride/157703.html

311 Jacques Ellul (Joachim Neugroschel, tr.). The Technological System. 1980. The Continuum Publishing Corporation. New York, USA. p.1.

 

the world into a land of plenty and prosperity. Similarly, Michael G. Zey wrote in his book Seizing the Future, that “humankind will extend its control over many of the forces of Nature that have stood outside its dominion since the beginning of time”.312 According to him, the human species in the present century is about to burst through the boundaries of Nature and unleash the power of its technology and ingenuity, hurtling itself to the next stage of evolution, and human life will be disease-free and its span will be doubled, deserts will bloom and man will colonize Mars. It is now believed that if a person’s cells can be extracted and saved before his death, that person could later be ‘recreated’ through cloning.

All these rosy predictions miss one central point: man and his mind. Together they make human responses wholly unfathomable, and that is why ‘the lessons of history’ have been of little value in predicting future events or shaping political, social, economic and ecological changes. We have a tendency to look back at the past as better than it was, look at the present as worse than it is, and the future with more apprehension than it warrants. And so often, we seem to know what needs to be done but find ourselves unable to do it. That is the endemic gap between ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’ that bedevils human life. Technically, pundits like Zey predict all that might be possible, but man is more interested in prevailing over another man and ravaging Planet Earth than in his own well-being. All that science can do is to somehow keep man alive when he is better off being dead; to somehow lengthen life with scant regard for the quality of life.

 

Limits of science, and the science of limits

Despite its virtuosity and immense creativity, we have to bear in mind that there are two frontiers that science cannot cross given the limits inherent in the human species. John Barrow points out in his book Impossibility (1999), that there are limits to scientific inquiry imposed by the deficiencies of the human mind, and that our brain evolved in such a way as to meet the demands of our immediate environment. He argues that much of what lies outside this small circle may also lie outside our understanding, that there are limits to human discovery, and that there are things that are ultimately unknowable, undoable, or unreachable.313 According to Eddington, instead of knowledge of substance, science gives us knowledge purely of structure, and instead of revealing a strict determinism in Nature, science has to be content with probabilities. It cannot ‘cure the disease of death’ and it cannot create ‘artificial consciousness’, or so it was assumed till the late 20th century. Scientists now say that they are on the ‘cusp of immortality’, or at least on the verge of extending the human life span to an extent that mortality loses its sting. Computer scientists like Raymond Kurzweil, forecast a growing convergence of humans and intelligent machines, leading to immortality and to humans existing as ‘software’ that can operate in various bodies. He predicts that by the year 2029, a $1,000 personal computer will be 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain, and that soon we will be able to reprogramme our body’s stone-age software to halt, then reverse aging; and then the power of nanotechnology will enable us to live forever. In short, death will also be brought under control, within the ambit of choice. If death does strike and if one wants to come back to life, the scenario would be like this: “…close-up of his right wrist, a red medical-alert bracelet instructs the finders of his dead body to act quickly, administer calcium blockers and blood thinners, pack his corpse in ice

 

 

 

312 Michael G. Zey. Seizing the Future: The Dawn of the Macroindustrial Era. 1998. Transaction Publishers. New Jersey, USA. p.9.

313 John D. Barrow. Impossibility: the Limits of Science and the Science of Limits. 1999. Oxford University Press, USA.

 

water, balance his pH and call the 800 number of a firm that will helicopter paramedics to begin cryonic suspension’314. The person would then be woken up from death when a cure is found for the disease that caused his death. Eventually, it is predicted, an all-powerful ‘God Computer’ will emerge, which will be the savior of mankind. This computer will have the ability to reach into the past and resurrect dead human beings, and create a paradise on earth. Champions of the God Computer theory include American mathematician Vernor Vinge (who predicted in 1993 that superhuman intelligence will arrive within the next thirty years and that the human era will end), and inventor Raymond Kurzweil. One more major proponent of the idea that a super God Computer will save mankind is physicist Frank Tipler, who spells out his theory in painstaking detail — including mathematical proofs — in his book, The Physics of Immortality (1994). When opinions come from such distinguished scholars, it becomes difficult to choose between being elated or alarmed, or amused — or marvel at how delusionary the human mind can be, or wonder if it is also a part of the Vedantic maya, the cosmic illusion. But the more intriguing, if not scary, question is: even if a fraction of such scenarios actualize, what kind of a human society will emerge from it? It is hard for us to visualize because there are so many imponderable and unknowable variables that would come into play.

That pregnant probability is for the future, but now we have to grapple with the ethical and social implications of human cloning, and of supermodels “selling cells from their bodies to make hundreds of ‘perfect’ human clones for tomorrow’s parents.”315 It has been reported that humans have acquired the capacity to create headless mice through removal of genes in the embryo that control the development of the head. But the body would have the capacity to keep the organs functional for use as transplants.316 Would that ‘body’ have a life as we understand it to be? A ‘headless body’ is said to be a step towards ‘curing death’ and ensuring immortality! At least Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein had a head and a ‘feeling heart’! In another ‘exciting’ direction, maybe science will implant an ‘organic computer’ in the place of the missing head! Slowly but surely, what once used to be ‘science fiction’, seems to be fast becoming dead serious stuff.

Yet mankind cannot turn its back on science and technology and turn the world into a Luddite Land or an Amish Enclave, just as we cannot stop wearing clothes. We cannot stop making tools, but we can stop making horrendous weapons that often fail to kill the targeted enemy, but instead, kill thousands of innocents. We cannot put biotechnology back into the bottle, but we can certainly stop messing with the basics of life and genes. While in earlier times, there was a long intervening time lag between scientific discovery and technological and commercial or practical application, which allowed time to assess the impact on the human personality, that chain of events is now telescoped. What used to take several decades or centuries, barely takes a decade or even less today. And the greed for quick profits overwhelms the need for proper technological and ethical assessments, which should be as important as the traditional techno-economic assessment.

While the threat of a nuclear Armageddon has somewhat lessened but has not entirely vanished (as long as it is within human reach, so long that threat will remain), biotechnology now threatens to change the fundamentals of life and Nature. We read about the extremely

 

 

 

314 Cited in: Michael Dirda. Wake Up and Dream. [Review of the book “Generosity: an Enhancement” by Richard Powers]. The New York Review of Books, USA. 14 January – 10 Febraury 2010. p.50.

315 The Future of Human Cloning. GlobalChange.com. Accessed at: http://www.globalchange.com/clonech.htm

316 The Deccan Chronicle. Hyderabad, India. 30 October 2004. p.13.

 

rapid degeneration of the genetic patrimony of humankind, with a potential for hereditary illnesses, which already is increasing in tandem with the cure of certain diseases; and also about ‘direct gene control’, imminently possible production of ‘mechanizing and de- mechanizing’ bacteria for the ‘biologically induced’ modification of human behavior and intervention in the processes of the human psyche; and of many other unsettling and unintelligible research agenda. The problem is that science can often start a journey but it has no control over where it ends; there is no knowing which dynamic gets initiated and how it unfolds and impinges on earthly life. Time and again, we have seen that ultimately discoveries have little to do with the initial intent; they are often unintended byproducts or products of chance and coincidence. We may be thus far lucky but not for too long. That is why one gets uneasy when we read predictions that are not too far removed: for example, in futurist Michio Kaku’s words, man might be able to, from now onwards, ‘alter and synthesize new forms of life… and to attain control over matter itself.’317 It also assumes that there is no force in the Universe other than human will and no law besides human law.

The nub of the problem is three-fold. One, the human mind has not evolved, and may never do so in a way that it can wisely exercise the power that science and technology have placed in human hands. In that sense, the very invention of science might have been a deviant, an aberration in human evolution. In another sense, human cognitive creativity, meant to enhance the human condition, has outstripped human emotional capacity. The mind is monopolistic, defensive, distrustful and divisive, and these are not the qualities one should have while wielding such power. And the human institutions man has fashioned to handle that power are ill-equipped to provide him with the needed restraint, farsightedness, and wisdom. Two, society is substantively shut out from exercising any influence on the direction of and the priorities for research and development (R&D). Three, it is the startling differences that persist within the scientific community, on ‘scientific facts’, that confuse the common man and stretch the credibility of science. The differences are not nuances but contradictory conclusions on the same ‘basic facts.’ Take climate change, for example, a matter of gravest importance. Some like the American environmentalist William McKibben warn of possible catastrophic consequences from phenomena like global warming caused beyond any reasonable doubt, by human behavior. For instance, greenhouse gas emissions have dramatically grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of about 70 percent between 1970 and 2004, triggered by human activity and chiefly through the release of carbon dioxide. Since the end of the 19th century, the earth’s average surface temperature has increased by 0.3-0.6°C. Over the last 40 years, the rise has been 0.2-0.3°C. Recent years have been the warmest since 1860, the year when regular instrumental records became available.

According to the report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 30 percent of animal and plant species will be vulnerable to extinction if global temperatures rose by 1.5 to 2.5°C. It says that the world’s economically underdeveloped societies would be the worst hit by climate change, and warns that the increasing levels of greenhouse gases would change rainfall patterns, intensify tropical storms, hasten the melting