Transhumanism redux
O.k., as much as I would love to be the once-Schaefferian creature who clearly 'knew it when I saw it' e.g. line of despair, I'm beyond the binary, the line is gone, and I'm wandering through an acid trip where I can't be sure of what 'is' and how to tell, and what it means to be 'is'...
So, to recap... "whatever happened to the human race"? good question. one, what does human mean? I'm not sure I know... If it means an ethic of non-interference with the laws of nature to benefit an individual member of the species, then, Christianity has not answered correctly for some time now. Medicine, technology, and all sorts of man v. nature answers are accepted as good things by the Christian church. So then, the question of which man v. nature answers are acceptable, is the divisive one, begging the question of "what is 'the good'", good for whom, and into the quagmire of social philosophies.
Seems that the answer to the question always ends up tautological. Why are we here? The universe is tuned such that we are here and didn't burn up in cosmic turmoil (yet). Why are we here, because our religious and social systems and resources allowed some to survive, thrive and stay alive.
My mentor just recently comforted me about the fundamentalism still rampant in my denomination, "Sometimes in order for a paradigm shift it is necessary for the adherents of the old one to die." (he admitted it was a physicist who said this originally, and he possibly mangled the quotation.)
We have now unencrypted the Human Genome, at least a few of them in totality. It does seem that technologies have proliferated to the point that the tautological question "Why are we here" will have a consciously chosen answer. I wanted blonde, blue eyed, pleasantly tempered babies. For a few generations it may look like that, the engine of capitalism fueled by market solutions to genetic wants. Then, it becomes compulsory, (if there are still private insurance and not publicly mandated and funded health care), that insurance will not cover a downs-syndrome baby, a waste of resources right. And, if they have the right to refuse coverage of some, then their arm will reach far to reject treatment for many.
I previously blogged about how it doesn't seem right to have governments deciding which substances from nature can be used, developed, or who has the right to do so. Well, if they can decide what can't go in, they can decide what must go in. e.g. in the future, classes and individuals that are prone to addiction vaccinated by something which blocks nicotinic, dopamine or other receptors, to suppress highs that one experiences that subvert the healthy instincts of humans toward eating, procreating, etc. Or, furthermore, mandate or deny the use of pharmacotherapy.
In other words, in the next few generations, we will be collectively deciding what sort of humans we want to become. We will hasten these micro-augmentations into something that eventually is not the thing that we are currently. Or, said another way, tiMSHoL.
Over the holidays, I tried explaining my 'beyond binary' revolution to my dad. I started with Heraclitus, and with why the West rejected this and clung to the law of the excluded middle. Then added that postmodernism, heisenberg, and in every sphere the both/and answer has helped solve traditionally difficult problems. His answer, "that's like saying, 'I am a female, and I have a penis.'" To which, I said, well... XY female. Which instead of being evidence of systems having difficulty accounting for things in the margins of that which they are trying to account for, he took as some statement of a 'gay agenda'.
No, just biology. No agenda other than to say that systems designed to handle binary, handle binary quite well, but when binary is not the reality, then the system cannot account. So we find, among people dealing with the question of 'what is gender', the question of which rules? - phenotype or genotype? What is God's message in sending a bearer of a male genetic code with a female form? I dunno, but I'm sure confused by these anomalies, and what they mean existentially, socially, and ethically.
So, to recap... "whatever happened to the human race"? good question. one, what does human mean? I'm not sure I know... If it means an ethic of non-interference with the laws of nature to benefit an individual member of the species, then, Christianity has not answered correctly for some time now. Medicine, technology, and all sorts of man v. nature answers are accepted as good things by the Christian church. So then, the question of which man v. nature answers are acceptable, is the divisive one, begging the question of "what is 'the good'", good for whom, and into the quagmire of social philosophies.
Seems that the answer to the question always ends up tautological. Why are we here? The universe is tuned such that we are here and didn't burn up in cosmic turmoil (yet). Why are we here, because our religious and social systems and resources allowed some to survive, thrive and stay alive.
My mentor just recently comforted me about the fundamentalism still rampant in my denomination, "Sometimes in order for a paradigm shift it is necessary for the adherents of the old one to die." (he admitted it was a physicist who said this originally, and he possibly mangled the quotation.)
We have now unencrypted the Human Genome, at least a few of them in totality. It does seem that technologies have proliferated to the point that the tautological question "Why are we here" will have a consciously chosen answer. I wanted blonde, blue eyed, pleasantly tempered babies. For a few generations it may look like that, the engine of capitalism fueled by market solutions to genetic wants. Then, it becomes compulsory, (if there are still private insurance and not publicly mandated and funded health care), that insurance will not cover a downs-syndrome baby, a waste of resources right. And, if they have the right to refuse coverage of some, then their arm will reach far to reject treatment for many.
I previously blogged about how it doesn't seem right to have governments deciding which substances from nature can be used, developed, or who has the right to do so. Well, if they can decide what can't go in, they can decide what must go in. e.g. in the future, classes and individuals that are prone to addiction vaccinated by something which blocks nicotinic, dopamine or other receptors, to suppress highs that one experiences that subvert the healthy instincts of humans toward eating, procreating, etc. Or, furthermore, mandate or deny the use of pharmacotherapy.
In other words, in the next few generations, we will be collectively deciding what sort of humans we want to become. We will hasten these micro-augmentations into something that eventually is not the thing that we are currently. Or, said another way, tiMSHoL.
Over the holidays, I tried explaining my 'beyond binary' revolution to my dad. I started with Heraclitus, and with why the West rejected this and clung to the law of the excluded middle. Then added that postmodernism, heisenberg, and in every sphere the both/and answer has helped solve traditionally difficult problems. His answer, "that's like saying, 'I am a female, and I have a penis.'" To which, I said, well... XY female. Which instead of being evidence of systems having difficulty accounting for things in the margins of that which they are trying to account for, he took as some statement of a 'gay agenda'.
No, just biology. No agenda other than to say that systems designed to handle binary, handle binary quite well, but when binary is not the reality, then the system cannot account. So we find, among people dealing with the question of 'what is gender', the question of which rules? - phenotype or genotype? What is God's message in sending a bearer of a male genetic code with a female form? I dunno, but I'm sure confused by these anomalies, and what they mean existentially, socially, and ethically.