Can Humanism Survive A Cybernetic Society?

by Nikolai Blaskow, Radford College.

Presented at the Manning Clark Symposium Science and Ethics: Can Homo sapiens Survive? Canberra, 17-18 May 2005

Introduction

My case for humanism is informed by my experiences as a displaced person. I owe everything to the kindness, the humanity of the Australian Government of 1952 for my being able to come to this country, unaccompanied at the age of 6, from Germany. If only the same spirit would prevail in the current administration.

 

Slide 1

Come with me. Let us look out to sea together, at the great heaving oceans and consider our origins.

Slide 2

Let us together call on evolutionary theory, to provide us with reference points that may determine what it means to be human.

Let us occupy the highest mountain and cast our eyes across the landscape of our history in search of those features that define who we are.

Let us fly above the clouds and from the vantage point of philosophy and the theology of the great faith traditions let us reflect on the processes that are at work in the world.

And then, let us together transcend the clouds, and with our eyes transfixed by the deep space oceans of more than 350 billion galaxies, let us evoke the sciences, including astrophysics and quantum physics, to examine the prospects for the future of humanism in a cybernetic world.

 

Slide 3

As we gaze out to sea, let us not be afraid to follow the line of the horizon where ocean meets sky, and let us listen to its beautiful, ambiguous, sometimes terrifying story. Perhaps it too begins with a question, the startling question posed by Dr Carol Christ, the feminist theologian:

 

Slide 4

The question we ask (of ourselves and other human beings) is: Would you rather be alive or not?…in the vast majority of cases the answer is: I would rather be alive. This is not an insignificant fact.

 

Slide 5

For out of the sea has come a dangerous notion, the ‘dangerous idea’ of Charles Darwin, dangerous because it appears to conjure up the spectre of a meaningless universe, of a cosmos that is devoid of any message other than the fact that the stream of life accidentally appears and evolves within it, and that the fundamental players in this game of life are not individual organisms, or even populations of organisms, rather they are genes, coded segments of DNA, compelled by blind necessity to achieve immortality at any cost, even if it means invading innocent organisms and exploiting these in devious and destructive ways. It is better for Darwin’s ichneuman wasp that the caterpillar should be alive, and therefore fresh when it is eaten, no matter what the cost in suffering. Genes don’t care about suffering, because they don’t care about anything, and if they don’t care about anything, by implication, they don’t much care about us either as human beings, so long as through our extinction their best interests for survival are served.

So who cares about humanism, anyway, whether it lives or dies?

And what if the watchmaker is blind as Dawkins contends, and deaf, to our entreaties: that this should make sense, and that we should matter, and what if the blind man like the sea, just keeps on flinging that flotsam and jetsam onto the beach of failed if noble enterprises? What will be our response? We who would rather live than die?

Premise 1: Despite the apparent cruelty and meaninglessness of life held up to us by the mirror of evolution, it is not an insignificant fact that we would rather be alive

 

Slide 6

Is it to rise from this other sea, the sea of change, as evolved, transformed cyborg revolutionaries who have caste off the rags of humanism, put on the enhanced, imperishable vestments of the new transhumanism, and who have finally won the last battle in the endless war against hostile genes and memes which for so long have entrapped us in their indifference and exploitation, in this all too physical flesh?

 

Slide 7

Or are these longings, this vision of utopia the figments of our hubris, Sirens in our heads luring us to dystopia and destruction?

 

Slide 8

And if secular humanism is defined by and built on ‘defiance’ as suggested by Evans (1989), a defiance dating back to ancient Greece, then such humanism will champion the cause of cybernetics, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering in the same manner as Prometheus championed the cause of humankind by stealing the fire of the gods, and bringing it down to earth for the betterment of humankind, despite the suffering it entailed. A defiance that resonates with the tenets and aspirations of the cyborg revolution.

 

Slide 9

Why shouldn’t we intervene at the foetal stage to control our children’s destinies, if to do so means an improvement in the quality of life for future generations: the elimination of Downe’s syndrome, cancers, the enhancement of IQ and sporting prowess, the virtual indefinite prolongation of the quality of life? (Vardi: 2005) Why shouldn’t we give new hope to those who are paralyzed, when thoughts can be converted into radio waves, and those radio waves can create movement? Does it really matter that we become cyborgs, if in the process of adaptation we survive and leave our inferior status as humans behind? (Professor Warwick:2003)

 

Premise 2: And not just alive, but alive to the fullest potential, even if it means shouldering our destiny with resignation as creatures who must modify themselves?

 

Slide 10

And if we re-invent our cyber-selves in a humanist image a la Norbert Wiener, on the conviction that the purpose of a good human life is to realize the great human values, why not transpose these values to the new cybernetic world in such a way that ethical judgments and practice are grounded on such considerations as human purpose: in sum, to achieve the highest potential in variety and possibility of action; to espouse a justice based on the principles of freedom, equality and benevolence where society neither permits nor imposes unnecessary limitations upon individual freedoms; to uphold the clarity of concepts and rules, and precedent and tradition, where new ethical judgments and cases are assimilated into the existing body of cases, laws, policies and practices. Why not, indeed!

 

Premise 3: Creatures who will take with them into that modification the highest values of humanism?

However, we are “…here in the presence of another social potentiality of unheard-of importance for good and for evil.” And there lies the problem: that when we create a new order of machines, when we re-create ourselves as cyborgs, we create ‘us’ in the image of our own dividedness and dysfunctionality, and we bring to that creation perhaps a confusion about what it means to be human. Is the new cybernetic world, alas then, condemned to play out the flaws of the old world, or can we expect a utopia where trans-humans live out their immortal lives in lucidity, perfect freedom and moral integrity, environs in which humanism can breathe easy?

Or, as we contemplate the possibility that by 2050 we may begin the first irretrievable steps towards the merging of the human psyche with computerized machines, should Darwin’s view be a comfort to us in as far as even though our old humanity is now consigned to a ‘lower rung’ of the evolutionary order, and an ‘inferior’ position, that we are still accorded a status of dignity in the new regime, a dignity that resonates with the highest principles of humanism?

 

Premise 4: However, such a transfer brings with it the inevitability (?) of replicating the flaws and confusions of being human and raises the question, is this the only way?

 

Slide 11

Perhaps a view from a higher elevation will help to establish the perspective we seek. Split-Rock Mountain in the Warrambungles, NSW, Australia

 

Slide 12

looks out over a vista that has somehow retained its primitive aspect. You really feel as you stand at its summit that you have been transported back a million years: the scars, the fissures, the ancient flora mumbling the convulsions and trauma of a seemingly endless survival. They speak of the dreaming, of pre-history, the pre-conscious and the unconscious landscape of the human mind. They preside, tower over, our first conscious thoughts, our first spoken words, cover with dense vegetation our written histories and civilizations,

 

Slide 13

and question the very essence of their meaning.

 

Slide 14

Even standing on the roof of the world in the Himalayas would not dispel the impression: a primitivism rising still higher,

 

Slide 15

like Martian mountain ranges dwarfing our human pretensions.

Do we thus intimidated, cower and listen then, to those who say that we should forget history, because in its rational and dispassionate account of the past there is the smell of death, the death of our culture? And do we, in our desperate search for ‘a secure place to stand’, turn instead to sacred sites, sanctuaries built out of mythos where our ancestors speak, ancestors who promise to tell us who we are? And do we turn our backs once for all on the so-called humanist deification of reason whose logic replaces blood, and decries myth as superstition?

The answer must be a resounding ‘no’.

For just as we must come to terms with what evolutionary theory is telling us about what it means to be human, so too the wisdom of history imposes a logic which we ignore at our peril; for in the scars of its landscape, we see carved the illusions, the delusions and self-delusions of a ‘poetica’ and ‘mythos’ which Thucydides, the Athenian historian writing 2,400 years ago had so effectively exposed. As Edward Said has underscored,

“Not to see that the essence of humanism is to understand human history as a continuous process of self-understanding and self-realization…is to see nothing at all.”

 

Slide 16

So what truths of self-understanding and self-realization does humanism define as emerging from history?

There are many. I choose to focus on two, with roots going back to ancient times.

They are the truths of Hitler’s bunker, 1945, and the truths of September 11.

 

Slide 17

Hitler would have it that the truth which emerges from the bunker is that all of life, including human life, is based on the strength of will, and when the will fails and a people’s strength succumbs, there can be no compassion, no tears, only the fate (Schicksal) it deserves which is, by an implication falsely drawn from evolutionary theory, its dismemberment and extinction.

This is the truth and the light of National Socialism which Goebbels claims in his last will and testament will stand supreme, a truth and light without which Goebbel’s wife could not live, and without which her five children would not be allowed to live.

 

Slide 18

For humanism, by contrast, the self-realization which comes from the bunker must be that all of life including human life, is sacred,

 

Slide 19

that the strong have an obligation to look after the weak, and that under no circumstances can the desecration of life ever be justified on the basis of one form of life being apparently inferior to another. Whilever humanism abides by this doctrine, it will, all things being equal, survive.

 

Slide 20

Thucydides recognizes exactly what humanism would see in the process of history, that while the struggle for power indeed lies at the heart of the processes of life, it is the overreaching of power that causes it finally to fail.

I find it astonishing for a man who did not actually believe in the gods, that Thucydides would nevertheless structure his account of the decline and fall of Athens around the religious formula which pervades all of Greek tragedy: that hubris begets the overthrow of self-restraint, and that the ‘overstretch’ of such arrogance, leads ultimately to downfall, or nemesis. It is as if despite his atheism he recognizes that there is some moral order at the core of the universe. The dictum ‘Might is right’ may win a battle or two, may overpower the poor inhabitants of the island of Melos, with their stupid gods, but such Might will ultimately lose the war.

Of course it is not the gods who overwhelm Athens; it is a principle deeply embedded in the processes of history, that when power overreaches itself, it eventually destroys itself, a principle poignantly demonstrated in Shakespeare’s nihilistic landscape of King Lear. Edmund’s conviction that the evil and deception he perpetrates in the name of being hardly done by, will be tolerated by an indifferent moral world controlled by chance and luck, is smashed with his body on the battle field as the forces of order reestablish themselves.

September 11 is chosen by Professor John Carroll as the climax of his thesis that humanism is to blame, not only for the destruction of the Twin Towers, but of Western Culture itself. The destruction of the Twin Towers he sees as the symbolic destruction of a ‘modern metropolis’ created by humanist will and reason’ Humanism, he maintains, has transgressed the two sayings written over the portal to Apollo’s temple at Delphi: ‘Know thyself’, ‘Nothing too much’ by enacting its greed and self-misunderstanding.

Carroll argues that Nazism and communism “… took the technological genius of humanism, its industrial and organizational power and wedded it to fundamentalist rancour”.

He sees science and technology as the concrete manifestations of the humanist imagination, and the opulence of material power and comfort as causing people to follow their animal needs thus creating a “twentieth century parody of humanism”

 

Slide 21

The human individual is not a highly evolved super-charged fish, he asserts, but concedes, dryly, that if a fish were endowed with consciousness, you would get “…the modern individual whose material life is spent in terror of the inevitable future, which is death…” For Carroll the story is told, its purpose simple, to shout that humanism is dead. He calls for the burial rites to be performed, “…honoring what was good, and understanding what went wrong and why” so that we will never again fall to its charms. A commentator in The Guardian newspaper has described Caroll’s analysis as ‘Overblown, utterly misguided… sometimes dangerous (not to mention half crazed)’ but adds the qualifier, “What if he’s right?”

Well is Carroll right? Has humanism not only misread human events, but also corrupted them, and so stand guilty as accused, and condemned in the dock of history?

For Professor Carroll the principal culprit is humanism’s deification of reason and technological achievement, a deification which brings death. I believe Carroll’s thinking is in fact misguided and quite crazed if not downright dangerous.

Undoubtedly humanism by virtue of being an ‘ism’, an ideology, lays itself open to the possibility of extremes of left and right, of the polarization of religious and secular points of view, and has by the very nature of its openness in the past made itself vulnerable ‘…to every sort of unruly individualism, disreputable modishness, and uncanonized learning, with the result that true humanism has been violated if not altogether discredited”

But as Edward Said points out, “…it has been the abuse of humanism that discredits some of humanism’s practitioners without discrediting humanism itself.”

Premise 5: Humanism, quite contrary to the opinion of its detractors and critics, is allied to history, and we ignore it to our own peril

Kenneth Phifer strikes the right note when he points out that ultimately humanism is at its best when it tells us “…that whatever our philosophy of the universe may be, ultimately the responsibility for the kind of world in which we live rests with us.” On this score Dr Carol Christ, arguing from a process philosophy perspective is adamant:

“… the reason for hope is the creative process of life itself. If human beings have created many of the problems that limit and threaten the possibilities of life on this earth, then we have the capacity to solve them as well.”

Despite its redeeming features, if contemporary humanism is to survive in a cybernetic society, it will need to re-define itself, perhaps even re-invent itself. If not, it may be too inflexible (unlike Darwinism) to accommodate the cybernetic transfiguration of humanity, if such a metamorphosis is in fact desirable.

 

Slide 22

Let us first break through the clouds into the stratosphere of the perspectives of the great faith traditions, and head for the stars, 350 billion galaxies and more, to contemplate what wisdom religion and science might impart.

Hans Kung, in his Theology for the Third Millenium, an ecumenical view, puts forward a powerful argument that really science and theology struggle with the same challenges: that there is in both an inherent resistance to anything that might lead to the alteration or replacement of the established model of understanding or paradigm; that both are confronted by a continual need to search for new rules and methods when old ones fail; in both, the transition to a new model cannot be rationally compelled, but may be described as a conversion; in both, it is hard to predict, amid the great argument of the day, whether a new model of understanding will be absorbed by the old one, or the old one replaced or stored in the archives, and if it is accepted the innovation in turn solidifies into tradition. Instead of a stand-off against each other, science and theology/religion and humanism should converse. While this may be impossible for fundamentalism, progressive, open and flexible minds will not find it a great imposition. There is increasing evidence that science, theology, humanism and ethics may once again be on speaking terms after countless years of alienation. It is a conversation that will be needed in a cybernetic society.

 

Premise 6: If humanism is to survive into the 21^st and 22^nd Century, and a cybernetic world, it must throw off the shackles of its self-imposed limitations, including its prohibition on spiritual perspectives

 

Slide 23

It is not just the methodology of science and theology that is creating common ground, it is also the breakthroughs in thinking in scientific circles that is opening the door to change.

Andrew Glikson in a paper entitled A MoralBio-Friendly Universe? sggests that evolutionists are not obligated to follow the incoherent, materialist line. Borrowing from Murphy & Ellis (1996), he argues for a continuum that encompasses all the material world with its electromagnetic constants, its bio-molecules right up to more complex forms of life, and human and social ethics in an ever spiraling upwards motion of sophistication of consciousness and awareness, which the amorality of nonhuman species, and inanimacy cannot cancel out.

Glikson goes on to remark, that as the universe’s intelligent eyes, we are meant to be here, and that our thankfulness for a moment, day or year of awareness of the world around us, puts paid to the idea that reality is only so much dead and incoherent matter. Dr Carol Christ argues for a similar holistic approach through process philosophy stating that “…unlike atheism or humanism, process philosophy believes that human beings are supported and sustained in their efforts to enhance the flourishing of life by a divine power that profoundly desires that all individuals enjoy life as much as possible.”

Humanism without either a ‘moral-bio friendly universe’ perspective or a holistic view, will struggle in a cybernetic world by excluding itself from a conversation that will naturally arise. In Battle Star Galactica the latest mini-series, the Cylon replicas not only discover emotional intelligence, they preach to their human overlords the possibility of a creator that they may have forgotten about.

 

Premise 7: There are two powerful paradigms for humanism to follow if it is to survive in a cybernetic world: ‘the solidarity of the shaken’, and the ‘dialogue’ paradigm

The model I propose for a humanism of the 21^st century that will ensure its adaptability and survival is based on two paradigms: Kung’s ‘dialogue’ paradigm, and the ‘solidarity of the shaken’ model of Jan Patocka (see also Vaclav Havel), with a case study based on the Inter-Faith Dialogue at Sydney University centered on ‘Grieving and Cancer’.

Solidarity of the shaken grew out of the Charter 77 movement in Czechoslovakia in the 70s. By ‘shaken’ Patocka meant the ‘experience of great historic trauma, out of life ‘within a lie’, or in general out of the unquestioned prejudices of their culture, into a genuinely open-minded thoughtfulness., not the thoughtfulness necessarily of scholarly expertise, though this is to be found at all levels of scholarly sophistication, but a deeply grounded openness to transcendence., also marked by a determination to rethink one’s whole moral attitude to the world, as it is called into question by those experiences and to reconstruct one’s life accordingly. Patocka is careful to distance himself from any misunderstanding here: “(we) do not want to be a moral authority, or the ‘conscience’ of society, [nor] do (we) raise ourselves above anyone or pass judgment on anyone.” The appeal to a higher authority is fascinating. It is the authority to which all shakenness bears witness, the common ground I imagine of experience itself: “the authority of that which shakes…”

Such common ground is reached through dialogue, where opposing parties sit and listen to one another, really listen to one another knowing that they are heard, that their shakeness is understood, and that together they can, without compromise, find new ground upon which to stand. The Charter 77 movement proved that this could be done, drawing together people of widely differing convictions: Catholics Protestants atheists agnostics, all equally welcome. There were reform minded ex-Communists in the movement, anarchists, social democrats, liberals and conservatives.

The experience of Muslims, Jews and Christians meeting in the Great Hall of Sydney University drawn together by the common experience of human grief will live with me to my dying day…. This must be the way of the future. The adversarial model must be set aside, and dialogue must replace debate and warfare if this planet, never mind humanism is to survive into a cybernetic future.

Thomas M. Georges’ allusion to Star Trek, The next Generation, crystallizes the issues that we have been grappling with:

Read

Orwell of 1984 fame attributes his conversion to the middle ground, the ground of ‘thoughtfulness’ to an experience in the Spanish Civil War…

Slide 24

Ladies and gentleman, a time of great shaking is upon us. The cosmos, like a pregnant woman is shaking with anguish, knowing that something new is being born. Will it be a cybernetic world, or will it be a new cosmos in which all things are renewed and transfigured in the twinkling of an eye, this remains to be seen.

Bibliography

Bynum, Terrell Ward, The Foundation of Computer Ethics, Keynote Address at AICEC99, Melbourne Australia, July 1999, Norbert Wiener’s Foundation of Computer Ethics

Carroll, John, The Wreck of Western Culture, Humanism re-visited, Scribe Publications, 2004

Christ, Carol, She Who Changes, Re-Imagining The Divine In the World, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003

Dawkins, Richard, River Out of Eden, The Blind Watchmaker, cited in Haught, John F.

Evans, Frederick, What is Humanism? Drawn from Humanist cite on the net

Georges, Thomas, M., Digital Soul, intelligent machines and human values, Westview 2003

Glikson, Andrew, A Moral-Bio friendly Universe (article given to me by the author)

Haught, John F., God After Darwin, A Theology of Evolution, Westview Press, 2000

Kung, Hans, Theology for a Third Millenium (1988)

Said, Edward W., humanism and democratic criticism, 2004

Shanks, Andrew, God & Modernity, a new & better way to do theology, Routledge, 2000

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Penguin Edition

Vardi, Peter., Genetic Engineering, A Talk given 10^th March 2005 at Daramarlan College, Canberra

Wiener, Norbert, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, John Wiley, 1948

 

For further correspondence: nikolai [dot] blaskow [at] radford [dot] act [dot] edu [dot] au