[extropy-chat] C.S. Lewis's Answers to 21st Century Transhumanism

[Hughes, James J.]

Focuses on Max, Natasha and Anders - J.

http://www.staustinreview.com/jan06/beiting_article.pdf

Christopher Beiting

The following is an abridged version of a presentation originally given at the Oxford portion of the C.S. Lewis Foundation's Oxbridge 2005 conference.

C.S. Lewis's Answers to 21st Century Transhumanism

It is now the twenty-first century, and we
did not get the future the futurians and science-
fiction writers predicted: there are no
interplanetary spacecraft, colonies on the
moon, or flying cars. Instead, the future we
got is not large, but small, and the revolutions
that have come and are coming deal
with the infinitesimal rather than the
expansive. Many authors predicted flying
cars, but almost none realized that we
would have computers so small that each
household would have at least one, if not
several. And from the information technology
revolution we pass into what many
believe will be the revolution of the twentyfirst
century: the biotechnology revolution.

The future appears to lie not with manipulating
the very large, but with manipulating
the very small, and while there are many
potential benefits to this new science, there
are also many potential problems. In particular,
this article will focus on one ideology-
transhumanism-which stems from this new
technology, and examine how remarkably
prescient C.S. Lewis was both in forseeing
it, and providing some ways by which lovers
of the Permanent Things can respond to it.1
This new biotechnological revolution
depends on the manipulation of very small
units of matter, which can be done in two
chief ways. One way is nascent science that,
while still experimental, may produce
extraordinary results: nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology is a complex topic which
cannot be well-treated in such a small space,2
but suffice it to say that it is a fusion of a
number of different processes: microtechnology
to build smaller machines, chemistry
to synthesize more complex molecules, biology
to manipulate the changes in living
organisms more effectively, materials science
to construct solids more efficiently, and
manufacturing to construct products more
efficiently. The ultimate goal is to be able to
manipulate or construct things on an atomby-
atom level, which, although it seems like
science fiction, has been possible for over a
decade now.3 Should this field develop, it
has possibilities that appear to be nearly endless-
and dangers that appear to be correspondingly
grave, as well. In a future with
developed nanotechnology, problems of
scarcity would vanish, and it would be possible
to make nearly anything, atom-by-atom,
out of anything. But if it becomes possible to
manipulate matter on the tiniest levels possible,
it becomes trivially easy to manipulate
human genes, and the question arises: what
should one do with this ability? While there
are few objections to curing human ills, how
far should we go towards "improving", or
even redesigning ourselves?

However, even if nanotechnology does
not fulfill its potential, the problem of
manipulating human genes remains. For
some time now, germ-line engineering, in
which the DNA of an egg is deliberately
altered by a variety of means, allowing the
subsequently-developing organism to manifest
a desired trait, has been commonly-practiced,
routinely with plants, and now successfully
with animals.4 While germ-line
engineering has great promise, it also holds
great challenges, challenges which will grow
greater as the technology grows more sophisticated
and procedures become more complicated.

Once upon a time, talk of human
cloning was confined to science fiction
tales; today, it is the stuff of headlines.

However it comes to us, the biotechnology
revolution will generate significant moral
questions, and more than a little hesitation
about its use.

As the recent debates over human
cloning indicate, most people look on the
new biotechnology with some hesitation.

However, not all do, and there are some
groups which not only do not view the new
biotechnology with hesitation, but rather
rush forward to embrace it and push it to its
extremes. Such individuals are known by a
variety of names, but they are most commonly
called transhumanists. What does
transhumanism seek? The president of the
Extropian Institute, Natasha Vita-More (née
Nancie Clark), explains:

Transhumanism is a commitment to
overcoming human limits in all their
forms including extending lifespan,
augmenting intelligence, perpetually
increasing knowledge, achieving complete
control over our personalities and
identities, and gaining the ability to
leave the planet. Transhumanists seek
to achieve these goals by reason, science,
and technologies.5

The transhumanist goal, in short, is a
life without limits, involving the endless perfection
of the human being through a variety
of means. Indeed, transhumanism is
something of a misnomer, since the ultimate
goal for many is posthumanism, in
which human beings have so modified
themselves that they are no longer even
remotely human. For an extreme example,
consider the ideas of Dr. Anders Sandberg,
one of the directors of the Extropian
Institute:

As humans redesign themselves after
their values, new forms of humanity
will develop. Many of these posthumans
will diverge radically from us.

Some humans will likely develop themselves
into something quite like Greek
gods: long-lived, possibly immortal,
physically and mentally almost perfect
humans (at least from their point of
view). Others may develop far more
radically, perhaps into digital lifeforms
swimming through the information
networks or transcendental superminds
among the moons of Jupiter.6

The transhumanist movement is meant
to be upbeat and positive, embracing
technophilia with a fervor that approaches
mania. Similarly, it is strongly libertarian,
opposing any kind of roadblocks placed on
human action and development by societies,
governments, or prominent individuals.

All is to be permissible, and there must
be no limits.

Transhumanism preaches vehemently
against one limit in particular, and tries
more than anything else to overcome it.

Extropian Institute co-founder Dr. Max
More explains:

Science, technology, and reason must
be harnessed to our extropic values to
abolish the greatest evil: death. Death
does not stop the progress of intelligent
beings considered collectively, but it
obliterates the individual. No philosophy
of life can be truly satisfying which
glorifies the advance of intelligent
beings and yet which condemns each
and every individual to rot into nothingness.

In the transhumanist ideology, death is
the greatest evil, followed closely by suffering.

Both are to be avoided at all costs, and
transhumanism seeks a variety of ways to
overcome death: through biotechnology,
nanotechnology, or, at a more extreme end,
through "digital uploading", wherein a
human consciousness is encoded into a
computer program, to exist forever in a virtual
world.8 Since none of these sciences
have developed yet, many transhumanists
plan to have their bodies frozen at death
until future science finds a way to revive
them, and cryogenics is an important
option for many transhumanists.

But what of the human race as a whole?

If there must be no limits to human growth,
there must be none to human locale.

Transhumanity must expand into space, not
simply because it is there, but also for the
reasons of species survival. This begs the
question of where humans will live, since
there is nowhere habitable in our own solar
system, and the achievement of interstellar
"warp drives" looks unlikely. What, then, to
do? One can build colonies in space, or try
to live on the inhospitable planets of our
solar system, and some transhumanists are
interested in such plans. Others, however,
advocate trying to adapt man to try and live
in any niche environment in the solar system
possible. Is the planet Mars frigid with
an atmosphere composed mostly of CO2?

Reengineer man for fur or a thickened skin,
redesign the lungs, and create homo martianus,
man adapted to live unaided on the
surface of Mars. One technical neologism
for this practice is pantropy, adapting man
to be able to live in any environment,
although, strictly speaking, they would no
longer be men, but transhumans.

But transhumanism does not seek to
shape only the body. It also seeks to be able
to control the mind. One method of doing
this is through something called memetics, a
nascent "science" of thought. Memetics presumes
that ideas have a quasi-organic reality
to them, and operate like genes, passing
from mind to mind.9 Any sufficiently developed
ideology is defined as a collection of
memes, and it functions like a virus: it can
be transferred from one person to another,
can be "caught", and can even be "killed" by
another meme. Memetics would be not just
the science of understanding the transmission
of these ideas, but also a science for generating
them, or combating them. To transhumanists,
though, some memes are better
than others, and some are to be opposed
and defeated through "memetic warfare". It
will probably not be a surprise to the reader
to discover that transhumanists like Max
More follow Richard Dawkins in singling
out one particular meme for destruction:
God was a primitive notion invented by
superstitious people, people only just
beginning to step out of ignorance and
unconsciousness. The concept of God
has been oppressive: a being more powerful
than we, but made in the image of
our crude self-conceptions. Our
own process of endless progression
into higher forms should and
will replace this religious idea.

Humanity is a temporary state along
the evolutionary pathway. We are not
the zenith of nature's development. It
is time for us to consciously take charge
of ourselves and to accelerate our transhuman
progress. No more gods, no
more faith, no more timid holding
back. Let us blast out of our old forms,
our ignorance, our weakness, and our
mortality. The future belongs to
posthumanity.10

And what might that future be?

Unlimited growth. With no overbearing figure
of God to limit us as a species, our
future would be boundless. One end some
transhumanists entertain, in a future where
human beings could shape matter at will
and digitally upload themselves into pure
information, would be to transform all of the
matter of the universe itself into a colossal storage
site for human digital life-forms. Those
familiar with bad Christian ideas might not
be surprised at the name they give to this
goal: "Omega Point".

For the rational Christian, it is tempting
to dismiss these individuals as nothing
more than the lunatic fringe.

Transhumanism itself has been characterized as the ultimate geek cyberfantasy future, the kind of thing engaged in by affluent white males with sophisticated computers but poor social skills.11 Obviously there are real-world limitations involved with all of these ideas (over and above the technological) which transhumanists ignore. It does not admit to the idea of human evil, and presents no plan for restraining human behavior, beyond regurgitating the usual wooly platitudes about "not hurting other people" and "being nice to each other". 

Furthermore, it is clear that much of transhumanism
has as its core a naked selfishness
and egotism, taken to extraordinary
levels.12 The Nietzschean arrogance combined
with naïveté is amusing and frightening,
at the same time. But the whole ideology
has, at its core, a hatred of reality, of life
as it is. After all, a person who is happy with
themselves has no desire to change themselves,
and people who change their outward
appearance because they are inwardly
unhappy often find cosmetic surgery or tattooing
addictive (pop singer Michael
Jackson being a good example). Yet it is also
worth noting, strongly, the fact that so many
of these transhumanist plans for genetic
modification or reproduction are
autonomous, that is, they do not involve a
direct contact between the sexes. On some
level, they are more than just "white flight";
they represent a masculine rejection of
the feminine, and constitute a great new
form of sexual and social
sterility.

I think it is a little dangerous to dismiss these individuals as nothing more than the lunatic fringe. A number of rather prominent people are involved in aspects of this movement. Digital uploading of the self is being touted by Hans Moravec, who is the head of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Carnegie-Mellon University, and memetics is a creation of Richard Dawkins at Oxford, who is one of the more influential biologists in the world. Also, while one may be skeptical about some of the technology, there is no question that biotechnology is advancing at blinding speeds,13 and nanotechnology may do so as well. Finally, let us consider the problem of demand. The cosmetics industry is a $160 billion-dollar-a-year business worldwide, and cosmetic surgery amounts now to a $20 billion-dollar-a-year business worldwide, with astronomical increases since 1997.14 Clearly these statistics are what they are because a substantial number of people are unhappy with themselves, and seek to make themselves feel better by modifying themselves in some way. 

There is thus a ready market for the transhumanist
ideal of self-modification and
self-improvement, particularly if science
advances enough for them to deliver on any
of their promises. The history of the twentieth
century offers us several chilling examples
of what happens when ideological
extremists find support amongst a disaffected
majority, but it is possible that the threat
for the future will not be tyranny, but rather
a Brave New World-style consumerism.

Transhumanism may not be forced upon
us; rather, we may pay for it ourselves, and
do so gladly.

How does the believing Christian handle
all of this, particularly when the future
shock value is so great? On the one hand, it
is evident that this "new" problem isn't so
new at all. Consider the assumptions of
transhumanism regarding knowledge and
longevity: they are, in fact, as old as Eden,
as Genesis 3:4 and 3:22 indicate. As the
temptation is old, I believe we may be justified
in seeking answers from a source from
the past: C.S. Lewis, whose Space Trilogy is
rendered amusingly less and less plausible
every year by its science, and chillingly more
and more plausible by its themes.

Consider the idea of a "science" of
memetics, the notion that ideas propagate
like genes. No one speaks in such terms in
order to understand ideas; rather, they do
so to control them, creating an ultimate
social science capable of predicting and
controlling human thought and behavior.

Lewis's ideas on the subject are neatly summarized
in That Hideous Strength by the
interaction of the sociologist Mark
Studdock and the physical chemist William
"Bill the Blizzard" Hingest (loosely based on
William Kirkpatrick, Lewis's boyhood
tutor). Although an atheist, Hingest is a
true scientist, and knows the limits of his
discipline. One can apply the scientific
method to his field, physical chemistry, but
not to anything as complicated as human
beings. "I don't believe in Sociology
myself," he says very pointedly to Studdock.

"There are no sciences like Sociology....

[W]hen you study men; you find mare's
nests. I happen to believe that you can't
study men, you can only get to know them,
which is quite a different thing."15
Hingest here illustrates the point Lewis
makes in his other works about language:
there are different ways of knowing things,
and other languages preserve this distinction
far better than English does.16 What
Lewis here says about sociology also applies
to fantastic disciplines like memetics: the
very idea is a non-starter, since the scientific
method cannot be applied to the human
person. Science attains glories in its proper
sphere, but is useless or terrible outside of
it. Indeed, it is possible that a grievous
harm is inflicted upon people when the scientific
method is applied to them, as a
lower method is used to treat a higher
being. Inevitably it assaults the dignity of
the person, as is seen when the members of
the NICE use Mark's sociological knowledge
to help destroy the village of Edgestow
and the lives of the people in it.

Consider next the dizzying array of transhumanist
goals to upgrade humanity and
eliminate death, from cryogenics to genetic
manipulation to digital uploading. The selfloathing
and Gnosticism implicit in many
of these ideas (digital uploading and cybersex
in particular), should be obvious. At
their core, these ideas represent a deep-rooted
hatred of the natural, and in particular a
masculine hatred of certain aspects of
nature, such as femininity, fertility, and natural
reproduction. One can see their ultimate
expression in That Hideous Strength in
the character of NICE scientist Filostrato,
who goes beyond a hatred of natural sexuality
and a desire to replace it into a fullbore
loathing of the natural world itself,
and desire to sterilize it. "And why not? It is
simple hygiene,"17 he maintains. His ideal
world is Sulva, the Moon, which has been
deliberately sterilized and rendered lifeless.

Sulvans live under the surface of their dead
world, and they are of two kinds, the common
people and the Masters. In a world
that is sterile, unnatural, and lifeless, sex is
also sterile, unnatural, and lifeless: the common
Sulvans never make intimate contact
with each other, but rather copulate with
artificial simulacra of other Sulvans, whom
they need never meet in person. Seed is harvested
from the simulacra to breed the next
generation of Sulvans, who are conceived
and raised artificially. However, even this is
too much like life for Filostrato, who prefers
the existence of the older Sulvans, the
Masters. They are, for him, a "pure race,"
almost "broken free from the organic":
They do not need to be born and breed
and die, only their common people,
their canaglia do that. The Masters live
on. They retain their intelligence: they
can keep it artificially alive after the
organic body has been dispensed
with...They are almost free of Nature,
attached to her only by the thinnest,
finest cord.18

The Sulvan form of immortality is the
goal for humanity for which the NICE
secretly strives, one which has been already
reached by their Head, Alcasan, who in reality
is nothing more than a severed head
kept alive by artificial means. For some, this
goal is approached with religious overtones:
the NICE's resident renegade clergyman
Straik considers it the "creation of God
Almighty", the "first sketch of the real
God," who will "ascend the throne of the
universe, and rule forever."19 But such a
privileged existence will not be for everyone;
rather, immortality will be meant only for
"a number-a select number-of individual
men."20 The rest of the human race does not
matter, and "will always remain animals,
looking at the world through the haze of
their subjective reactions,"21 destined for
domination or extinction.

Finally, let us consider the transhumanist
desire for the conquest of space to secure
the immortality of the human species, particularly
through the practice of pantropy. If
for Lewis the desire for personal technological
immortality is a sin, then the desire for
racial immortality is likewise a sin. As people
are meant to die, so, too, are races
meant to die; Lewis criticizes more than just
Devine's cupidity and interplanetary imperialism
in Out of the Silent Planet; he also
criticizes Weston's desires for racial immortality
through planetary resettlement.

Weston's desires are made worse by the fact
that he acknowledges what the
Malacandrian planetary guardian Oyarsa
tells him: "Yet you know that these creatures
would have to be made quite unlike you
before they lived on other worlds." In the
end, Weston does not love the reality of
humanity, but only some ideal of it, and
would accept any altered version of humanity-
no matter how monstrous or inhuman-
as long as it came from humanity originally.

His views are contrasted with those of the
Malacandrians themselves, who faced this
very temptation in their own past: to leave
dying Malacandria, adapt themselves, and settle
on another world-Earth. But they did not
do so: while Weston declares in favor of the
Bent One, the Malacandrians stayed with
Maledil, and in return for a high price-the
eventual extinction of all life on Malacandria-
gained a higher benefit, as Oyarsa explains to
the uncomprehending Weston:
...one thing we left behind us...fear.

And with fear, murder and rebellion.

The weakest of my people do not fear
death. It is the Bent One, the lord of
your world, who wastes your lives and
befouls them with flying from what you
know will overtake you in the end. If
you were subjects of Maledil, you
would have peace.22

Not only is it wrong to pursue racial
immortality through space colonization,
says Lewis, but it is deeply wrong to do so by
the forced genetic modifications to the race
that such a project would involve. In the
end the project is a phantasm, since the succeeding
race is not the old race at all.

In short, nearly five decades before the
establishment of the Extropian Institute,
Lewis had already seen the inevitable consequences
of their lust for life by any means,
and the parallels to the ideas of NICE and
Weston and the transhumanists are chillingly
obvious. For all its protestations of
human freedom, transhumanism has, in
memetics, a disturbingly totalitarian undertone.

For all its celebration of life, transhumanism
has the same hatred of the natural,
and refusal to accept life as it is, as Filostrato
does, particularly with regard to sexual congress
and reproduction. How different are
the practices of the Sulvans from the artificial
wombs and the cybersex of the transhumanists?

And how different is the state of
immortality and "life" of the Sulvan
Masters from the dreams of the transhumanists,
particularly when one considers
that the chief form of cryogenic preservation
currently engaged in involves preserving
only the severed head? For all its desire to
expand into space, transhumanism has, at
its core, the same lust for human racial
immortality at any cost that Weston's ideas
have. And, finally, for all its purportedly
life-affirming ideals, how different is the
transhuman attitude of homo superior toward
homo sapiens from the attitude of the members
of the NICE toward their non-enlightened
fellow humans? Man 2.0 has no need
of Man 1.0, after all; will Man 1.0 suffer the
same fate at the hands of the transhumanists
as the village of Edgestow did at the hands of
the NICE? In the end, given their thoughts
on God, is it any stretch of the imagination
to wonder whether the transhumanists have
made the same choice of master that Weston
does in Out of the Silent Planet?

Whether in a science fiction tale like the
Space Trilogy or up against a science-fictionstyle
ideology like transhumanism, we are
not at the beginning of a new age. Rather,
we are back at the beginning of time, facing
a temptation as old as Eden. Then as now,
we live amidst a cosmos at war, where our
only true freedom is the freedom to choose
our masters. In the face of the temptation of
biotechnology, I greatly fear that the majority
of humanity will not make the correct
choice. Yet I take comfort from the fact that
in Out of the Silent Planet the Malacandrians
were saved by the intervention of their planetary
governor Oyarsa, and greater comfort
from the fact that in That Hideous Strength
the forces of evil are destroyed by an outraged
nature, as the lords of the NICE are
by the savage laboratory animals that maul
them, or the town of Edgestow is, by the savage
weather that devastates it. Lewis
reminds us that a love of God and of Nature
is the most powerful choice we can make.23
Christopher Beiting is Professor of History at Ave
Maria College in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

References

1 I will confine my examinations to Lewis's
Space Trilogy; the interested reader should not
overlook his Abolition of Man for a further treatment
of these themes.

2 For a positive view of the field, see the following
websites:
http://www.nanomagazine.com/i.php?id=tiham
ertothfejel or
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/9609lego.ht
m; or the numerous books of nanotech pioneer
K. Eric Drexler.

3 See:
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/gallery.html for a gallery of artworks constructed entirely at the atomic level.

4 When an average person uses the term
"genetic engineering", this is the process to
which they are referring.

5 Natasha Vita-More, "Definitions of
Transhumanism",
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Intro/definitions.h
tml.


6 Anders Sandberg, "The Transhuman
Vision",
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Intro/vision.html.

7 Max More, "Transhumanism: Towards a
Futurist Philosophy",
http://www.maxmore.com/transhum.htm.

8 In which one could enjoy any programmed
sensation, though transhumanists seem to focus
disproportionately on cybersex.

9 The term "meme" was first coined by biologist
Richard Dawkins in chapter 11 of his 1976
work The Selfish Gene, to refer to a "unit of cultural
transmission."

10 Max More, "Transhumanism: Towards a
Futurist Philosophy", op. cit.

11 Author and critic David Skal has castigated
the notion of digital uplift in particular as
"the most extreme example of 'white flight' imaginable";
see: Screams of Reason (Norton, 1998),
300.

12 Wanting to improve oneself is not bad per
se; wanting to upgrade one's body from Man 1.0
to Man 2.0 through technological means smacks
of hubris; wanting to use tailored nanoassemblers
to convert the entire planet Jupiter into circuitry
and then upload one's consciousness into
it-well, where does one begin the critique?

13 One scientist has concluded that biotechnology
will advance faster than computer technology
and outstrip Moore's Law; see: Randall Parker,
"Will Biological Technologies Advance as Rapidly
as Electronic Technologies?", http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/000002.html.

14 See: "Pots of Promise: the Beauty
Business", The Economist, May 24, 2003.

15 C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
(Macmillan, 1965), 71.

16 Where English has "know", German has
kennen and wissen, French connaître and savoir, and
so on; there is a world of difference between "Je sais
que Jean est un homme" and "Je connais Jean".

17 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 173.

18 Ibid., 176.

19 Ibid., 179.

20 Ibid., 179.

21 Ibid., 259.

22 C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
(Macmillan, 1965), 140.

23 For more Christian critiques on transhumanism,
see: C. Christopher Hook, "The
Technosapiens are Coming", Christianity Today,
Jan. 2004, 36-40.; Bernard Daly,
"Tranhumanism, a Brave New World", America,
Oct. 25, 2004, 18-20; and the recent Vatican
International Theological Commission
"Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons
Created in the Image of God" (available in
Origins, CNS Documentary Service, Sept. 23, 2004).