The Redoubt of the Soul

Our technology is about to give us the power to change human nature. If we do, then what happens to Natural Law as a basis for public policy? And will we even care?

Modern science and technology are 300 years young, willful adolescents running away on legs of internetworked computers. Because their parents, the philosophers and theologians, have remained largely ignorant of them, they are stumbling without moral guidance into hiding places of the human soul. How they may transform human nature must give us pause.

At the most superficial level, they will transform human knowledge. The internet will soon give nearly everyone instant access to the world’s knowledge. At the same time, computers are shrinking from laptops to palmtops to miniature belt-glove-glasses-and-earphones affairs worn by computer engineering students who call themselves "cyborgs." Access to knowledge is becoming not only instant, but constant, which is changing the very meaning of knowledge. Printing changed knowledge from memorization to remembering where something was written. The web is changing knowledge into knowing how to ask questions — how find out what you want without finding all the stuff you don’t.

To assist in this quest entrepreneurs are now selling "intelligent agents," software robots that roam the web in search of just the relevant bits of information. As computers and programming techniques grow more powerful, librarians and even teachers may be replaced by intelligent agents that guide each child into mastery of its computer enhanced world. The risk is that the "agents" will construct a biased view of human knowledge — biased by software writers, their employers, or their governments — of which the users are unaware. Even if such biases can be managed, and if users can maintain some commonality of worldview despite fragmenting into non-interacting online communities, the existential risk is the despair that comes from having knowledge without meaning.

Imagine being able to know any fact that has been discovered, but having no reason to know anything at all. Remember that Albert Camus in his Myth of Sisyphus proved that life without reference to God is absurd. He found meaning by reveling in absurdity, but that is cold comfort for the mass of humanity. To make the limit of human knowledge accessible to everyone, but without a sense of purpose, of destiny — of anything beyond — is to invite decadence, decline and despair.

Computer networks may also transform human communication. Even now a laptop computer gives voice to the paralyzed physicist Stephen Hawking. If neurologists seeking to "cure" blindness have their way, then computers may transform from wearable to implantable and interact directly with one’s visual cortex. That is, if scientists can ever understand the workings of the brain well enough for them to enable a computer to put images directly into the visual cortex, enabling a person to "see" without eyes, then they will be able to make a computer take images directly from the cortex as well. Add wireless computer-to-computer networking to this capability, and we have the possibility of people being able to transmit their mental imagery directly into each other’s brain. The same might be true for the auditory cortex, and other parts of the brain as well (including, for a doubtless illicit fee, its pleasure centers).

Using implanted computers and wireless networks, each person may someday be able to connect his or her mind directly to all the world’s knowledge and the minds of all the world’s people, even the recorded thoughts of the post-twenty-first century dead. If computer-enhanced people gain the ability to communicate by thought itself, speech as a time series of symbols (words) may disappear. People might communicate by exchanging much richer content, such as daydreams, instead. And if words disappear, so will all the world’s previous literature, including its scriptures.

As if transforming knowledge and communication were not enough, genetic engineering may transform our bodies and minds. People may want their children to be taller, more athletic, or smarter, and humanity may acquire the techniques to make them so. But genes tend to travel in groups, which means altering one gene may have unintended consequences. Just as breeding dogs for large size compromised their longevity, breeding kids for high IQ or some other cognitive ability may compromise them emotionally or spiritually. As a trivial example, suppose humanity decides to give itself the genes to sense one’s orientation and location continuously, like homing pigeons. How would a Christian Fundamentalist witness about being "saved" to those who are incapable of experiencing or imagining being "lost"? How will humanity sense the despair of having knowledge without meaning if it’s brains are genetically engineered to feel just fine?

Finally I must point out a consequence of John Archibald Wheeler’s realization that the Universe is pervaded by a "quantum foam" made up of so-called zero-point (or vacuum) oscillations of space-time itself. These oscillations take place on a scale so tiny that sub-atomic particles like protons and neutrons would seem enormous in comparison. Moreover, the intensity of these tiny oscillations is so great that a proton passing by would seem not only large, but insubstantial, like a vast cloud. Indeed, Wheeler and others have hypothesized that sub-atomic particles may be no more that standing patterns of these space-time oscillations. Now if quantum oscillations of empty space-time can be organized into standing patterns that comprise solid matter, might they not also be organized into other, less detectable, standing patterns that support some aspects of our consciousness? If so, then some future science may enable us to manipulate aspects of our souls.

Whether or not this last possibility is ever realized, one thing is certain: in the coming centuries human nature will be subject to unprecedented forces of change. Arthur C. Clarke’s vision of 3001 may have been too timid — people a millennium hence might seem alien to us if we could meet them, and we might seem subhuman to them. How in the midst of such change are we to preserve our human nature? How are we to affirm that we should do so? How shall we even answer the question, "What is our human nature?"

Scientific naturalism can give only trivial answers to the latter question. Human is what carries the human genome. But will we still be human if we change that genome? Scientific naturalism will only be able to ascertain our ability to breed with unaltered humans, if there are any left. To the questions of whether and how to preserve our human nature, scientific naturalism gives no answer at all. Scientific naturalism, which is no more than unaided reason, gives knowledge without meaning, technique without teleology.

Hence we must turn to faith. We take it on faith that we must preserve and build on our essential human-ness, rather than undermine it. We find that, as in the title of the feminist health manual, Our Bodies, Our Selves, what we collectively do to our material bodies, we do to our spiritual selves. The theological-moral debates over sexuality, fertility control, abortion, euthanasia, and execution are the first skirmishes of the gathering battle for human nature. People of faith, both liberal and conservative, must consider their participation in these debates not only in the context of keeping the commandments so as to build a wall around the scriptures, but of using ethics to build a fortress around human nature, a redoubt for the soul.

The core question in all these debates has been, "Is human life an essential good, or only a contingent good, to be discarded under certain circumstances when unwanted?" The value we place on human life ultimately reflects the value we place on human nature. If we devalue a violent criminal so much that we permit ourselves to execute him or her, will we devalue aggression so much that we engineer away part of our drive for achievement? If we devalue our fetuses so much that we perform abortion until the end of pregnancy, will we devalue childhood dependency so much that we engineer away part of our capacity to love?

In these and other debates, people of faith will steer humanity’s voyage into the 3rd millennium. The more conservative will witness against certain kinds of change by preserving traditional ways of being human. They will become God’s sea-anchor to slow humanity’s (and liberal religion’s) tendency to drift toward an abyss of meaninglessness. The more liberal faithful will witness within the changing culture, and become God’s rudder to guide its transformations. They will translate scripture into whatever form is necessary for it to remain a living cultural reality. The future may yet be bright.

For if our future is fraught with risk, it also brings hope. Consider that if people become enabled to exchange their thoughts and sensations, it may be more difficult to harm one’s neighbor. "I feel your pain," may become transformed from a political platitude to an immediate sensation. Thus, if the Word of God ceases to be written in our books, it may be because it will become written on our hearts.

The Future of our Past

Every middle aged writer has a commencement address somewhere inside. Here is part of what I would say to the class of 2000 at my alma mater.

The future isn't what it used to be. — Yogi Beara

...If the century now past has taught us anything, it is that to predict the future is to invite posterity’s ridicule. Little in the last hundred years turned out as anyone thought it would. In the words of Dickens, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." It was a century of miraculous promise, it was a century of despair. War, genocide, pollution, the politics of mutual assured destruction, and the politics of abandoning the already disenfranchised shattered the hopes that Machine Age wealth would establish an earthly Paradise. And yet, the discovery of antibiotics and new vaccines conquered many infectious diseases, the "Green Revolution" postponed Malthus' world famine, and people took to the skies and to the moon.

Now, for better or worse, the tools and technologies with which we built the last century have enabled us to create the even newer tools with which we will shape the next. It is my purpose in the remaining minutes to survey the equipment we have for constructing the future, rather than to describe my hazy vision of its blueprint.

The first of the future building tools is Artificial Intelligence, or AI. The growing capability of machines to work with ambiguity, to recognize patterns, to draw inferences, to learn from experience, and to communicate with humans in natural languages is reshaping the very definition of knowledge. Rather than to know a subject in detail, it may become more useful to know about many subjects, and to leave the details to your computer. At best, we may have an unmanageable explosion of creativity, with every person an inventor, or rather, a manager of invention — and if nanotechnology lives up to its promise — a manager of production. At worst we have the possibility of automata built for terrorism or war — intelligent machines of all sizes created to inflict devastation faster than thought — giving a macabre ring to John von Neumann’s prediction that computers would become more important for war than bombs.

The second tool is provided by Physics. Modern theoretical physics may be on the verge of understanding the source of space and time, of matter and energy, of gravity and inertia. The possibility of Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘inertialless drive’ seems somewhat less fanciful now than when he first described it in the 1950’s. At best, such near lightspeed travel would bring people together in a real global village (apologies to Marshall McLuhan), and perhaps take humankind to the stars. At worst, the knowledge of how space-time is put together may enable us to take it apart, creating planet-shattering technologies that may make us long for the comparative safety of nuclear weapons. And the true global village itself may strain our endurance. As George Herbert observed in 1651, ‘Love your neighbor, yet pull not down your hedge.’

The third tool for shaping the future is Biotechnology. In its infancy, biotechnology conquered bacterial disease, and in its adolescence it is making inroads on viral and genetic disorders. Now the emerging capability to engineer the genome of somatic and germ cells may enable us to eradicate the class of inherited diseases, of which what we call aging may be a member. At best we may ‘improve’ the human species, if we are wise. At worst, we may de-stroy it through biological warfare or ill-considered ‘improvements’ upon the human genome, if we are foolish.

The fourth and final future making tool I mention today is the set of disciplines I call the Study of Humankind. In these I include Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology, Linguistics, and the like. These are the sciences (some say the pseudosciences) of human minds and societies. At best these disciplines may improve our collective judgement, liberating humanity from self-imposed bondage. At worst, they may permit the fashioning of ever more refined practices of deception, disinformation, manipulation, and oppression.

Such are the four implements for creating the coming century. Without sufficient wisdom, they may be a high-tech version of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

From where will the wisdom come? For all practical purposes, Philosophy has succeeded only in making itself generally inaccessible, while Religion has sought mainly to avoid rather than to answer questions, and to negate the human spirit by denying the validity of personal and historical experience as bases upon which to reshape Religion. Political Economy has done no better: Capitalist democracy impoverishes even as it rewards, and disenfranchises as it empowers, while obsolete Communism merely legitimized a criminal ruling class, and reduced everyone else to a common level of mediocrity. Finally, the now popular human potential movement merely profits charlatans at the expense of the gullible. In short, our values have not kept pace with our technologies and techniques. But one thing is certain — we must discover, or re-discover, some sacred aspect of ourselves and our existence, lest we destroy ourselves spiritually or even physically.

Will we survive this next century? Well, we survived the ten thousand centuries before it. But we humans, we tool-making animals, are now forging tools of exceeding subtlety and power, which will remake our economies, which will remake our societies, which will remake ourselves. Such effects are familiar to us in our myths — as when Prometheus brought fire from Olympus. Thus, if humans do survive (and I believe they will), they may become unrecognizable to us, the people of former times, and we and our history to them.

And so I think Prometheus may be about to burst his chains. In some of you he may even be graduating from college today. "Use well thy freedom." I congratulate you all.

Apocalypses Now

Nuclear war, overpopulation, global eco-catastrophe, asteroid impacts, exhaustion of the sun, the final crunch, rip, or heat-death of the universe. Science holds that ultimately, we are doomed. Christian Fundamentalists seem to gloat, judging from the apocalyptic "literature" in bookstores. But "eco-guilt" and religious end-game fantasists1 may be in for a disappointment. The end may be rather dull. Here are some possible scenarios.

See/hear also REM's TEOTWAWKI

Coyotes, Mosquitoes and Rats, Oh My!

Mr. Speaker, I smell a rat. I see him floating in the air. But mark me, sir, I will nip him in the bud. — Boyle Roche: Speech in the Irish Parliament, c. 1790

Every now and then I read in some magazine (most recently Natural History at the optometrist's office) about a wonderfully adaptable species that has managed to thrive despite the onslaught of human numbers. This time it was about the coyote;, an adaptable predator that, it turns out, doesn't kill cattle, but takes smaller prey. It seems that coyotes have made a determined comeback in the west, and have now spread east into Vermont and New Hampshire, with the eastern coyotes being noticeably bigger than their western cousins.

Why go east, young dog? Lured by the call of the tamed? Nobody knows yet, but it is certain that the coyotes are not moving into the ecological niche left by wolves. The wolves disappeared from most of this country because their niche disappeared -- moose, deer, and other large game lost their habitat to farmland, and were hunted heavily besides. No forests, no game, no wolves.

No, the coyotes are moving into a new niche, one created by us. They eat the discarded carcasses of the 10% or so of calves that don't make it every spring at dairy farms and cattle ranches. (The ranchers take the dead meat out to the back forty and dump it. The coyotes just couldn't leave it to rot.) They also eat rabbits, squirrels, mice, voles, and the occasional domestic cat. In addition, coyotes have learned to use abandoned cars as dens, and to trot calmly along the sides of major highways.

Now human overpopulation, pollution, deforestation, and plain old inefficient land use are causing species to go extinct as fast as they did when the dinosaurs vanished. We are becoming a force of "natural selection" as powerful as an Ice Age. At this rate, only those species that adapt themselves to us, like coyotes, will survive. On the other hand, those that adapt themselves to us like pigeons, cockroaches, lice, and rats; will thrive. And in a world in which parasitism of human civilization is the only key to survival, God forbid that any of these parasites should become intelligent!

My fear is not that we may destroy all life on this planet. I'm afraid that we're turning the entire natural world into the equivalent of a giant smart rat, who can't wait to figure out new ways to get us. Imagine a picnic in a really hostile environment -- no big, dangerous things, just little annoying ones like clever mosquitoes who always bite in well-coordinated teams and who've learned to love insect repellent. Everywhere you go there will be a myriad creatures absolutely delighted to see you!

But so far it's still a wonderful world out there, with all sorts of intricate life and death struggles going on that we're not part of. Let's keep it that way. Let's leave more of it alone.

Birth of a Species

And they shall no more teach one another saying, know the Lord: for they shall all know me... —Jeremiah 31:34

Imagine the consternation of Oog and his fellow early modern humans at the strange new behavior of their teenagers. They no longer give a good old fashioned threat scream before a status or mating fight. They make little noises among themselves, and then act as a group, overcoming even the strongest Old Ones. The old ways are forgotten, the old order destroyed. It is the end of the world. Or at least it may have seemed to be the end of the world to the early humans, when some small group first started speaking true language;.

Much later, when the wasichus overran North America and displaced the original inhabitants, the world ended for many Native American tribes. They measured their humanity by adherence to their cultural values (some of which were nice, some of which were nasty -- they were neither more nor less saintly a people than anyone else). Thus when their cultures died, they believed there would be no more real people left on earth.

Now human culture seems pretty well entrenched. What could possibly make it die without tremendous upheaval? A change in perception, perhaps? Remember Oog?

Elsewhere I have conjectured that there may be more to the mind than the brain, and that some of our (un)consciousness may reside in patterns imposed directly on the quantum (gravitational and other) vacuum oscillations of the "empty" spacetime within and around us. If that were true it might be possible for some of us to learn to perceive or communicate via these oscillations -- which might amount to something like so-called telepathy. If such telepathy became the preferred mode of communication among a group of people, and if the talent for it were inherited, it could provide the basis for what would at first be a sub-culture of people for whom ordinary language might be lost. Eventually, since communication plays an important role in human relationships, and therefore in human reproduction, such an ability could provide the basis for the division of humanity into distinct subspecies -- the telepathers and the talkers. If the telepathers had enough other abilities going for them, or if telepathy enabled them to outwit us sufficiently, they might eventually supplant us talkers. But rather than build on our historical achievements, they would start over, because our history would be irrelevant and incomprehensible to them. The new Adams and Eves would begin as a tribal community, not knowing where they came from, and perhaps never discovering who we were. Rather than being a glorified version of ourselves, the Superior Race would be completely alien to us.

It wouldn't be the end of the world. Just the end of our world. Of course, once a new door of perception is opened, who knows what may enter -- a more direct awareness of God, perhaps? Don't panic, it's only a scenario and a ridiculously far-fetched one at that (I don't actually believe in telepathy -- but so many science-fiction writers speculate about it, that it's hard for me to resist). The point is that the extinction of our species, just like our own individual deaths, may come in a manner and at a time other than we expect.

But then, life is like marriage - you get into it for how it is, rather than how it ends.

That White-Hot Morning, Revisited

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope. — Martin Luther, 1569

It looks like dawn, but the sun comes in the wrong direction, blinding bright, flashing the wallpaper opposite the window into flame. Your heart sinks, you grab your loved ones and dash for that protected closet. As you close the door the blast wave hits, a sound so loud it's more like silence. The building leans and shudders, the beams crack, and then tense stillness, waiting. Suddenly the walls reverse their lean, shaking under the impact of flying debris. Again stillness, except for beams groaning as the building settles. You open the door to thick dust clouds, which clear to reveal torn roof and walls, empty window frames, broken crockery, shredded books, smashed furniture. The power is out, the phone is dead. You find your portable radio, miraculously in working order, but no one is broadcasting. You search the rubble for some blankets, which you find smeared with blood -- yours. Just a cut on your hand from broken glass, but you know how you're going to die now. Weakened by hunger, thirst, and radiation sickness, and without antibiotics, you're going to die of infection.

Impossibly, the phone rings. You pick up the receiver, but your tongue is so thick you can't speak. The voice on the other end says, "This dream has been brought to you by Nuclear Nightmares, Incorporated. It's TIME to wake UP."

Fairly accurate effects, I thought. Just like they taught us in the Nuclear Weapons Orientation Advanced Course. The NWOA is a week long training session conducted by members of the Armed Forces for a number of organizations. At my National Laboratory, it is part of the orientation program for new employees. The lectures on Blast and Thermal Effects ("The Shake 'n' Bake Lecture") and Medical Effects were given to us by a Marine who seemed to evaluate his effectiveness by the dent he made in the cafeteria's business that day. So the concerned public needn't tell us about nuclear weapons effects. We know, even those of us who didn't write the book on them.² Nuclear world war, if we have one, will make movies like "The Day After" and "Testament" look like a party. Even "Threads" will seem mild. Our species will probably survive, but our culture won't -- it's too complicated to be maintained by people with short lifespans.

As it says in the dream, it's time to wake up. Passivity just encourages bullies, while aggressiveness encourages us to become bullies ourselves. It's time to use our relationships to enfranchise and empower others, and to be assertive in deterring them from abusing us, should they try. It's time to include everyone in "us" rather than to pretend that some of us are "them." It's time to use our religions to open ourselves to God rather than to close ourselves to each other. It's time to engage in management as a human enterprise rather than a dominance/submission ritual. It's time to trust what little we know and yet to admit how little it is, and to open ourselves to the new. It's time to turn from making war on war to making peace. Or else time will run out for us sooner rather than later, whether or not I do research related to weapons which, thus far, are only a reflection of ourselves.

Notes

1. I think the apocalyptic tradition in the Bible is provided for us to take comfort in tough times, rather than for us to treat as some sort of sorcery for making specific predictions of the future (an activity which Scripture condemns).
2. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd edition, edited by Samuel P. Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, US DOE and DOD, Washington, DC, 1977.