Bronze to Xenospace
Throughout the centuries humanity has undergone a grand quest for knowledge and truth. It has been a quest full of electric discoveries and cataclysmic catastrophes. From the days of prehistoric man who learned to harness nature’s powers, to the days of the ancient Greek philosophers who focused humanity’s attention on self-knowledge and reason, throughout the dark ages, after the Roman Empire fell and religious and superstitious practices reigned supreme, through the Enlightenment when reason and science began to flourish once again, all through modernity, postmodernity, and what some now even call, post-humanism. It has been an arduous path full of great perils and countless triumphs. Progress in philosophy, politics, and education have created pockets of humanitarian, liberal, tolerant people, somewhat free of superstition, and, hopefully, plastic ideals, while progress in the sciences has spiraled many men and women from the late 18th through the 21st Centuries into a great spiritual crisis. Luckily, much of this unfolding has been recorded for man to ponder, examine, and idealy, learn from.
Literature is the art of living leaves, an organic art, forever blossoming and changing before the eyes, falling, curling, dying, and burgeoning once again. Written upon her leaves are the living records of the progressive developments of humanity’s inner-being—recorded with a verve that few forces on earth are apt to be compared with. Some of man’s development is traced through Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, which addresses a world no longer at the center of the universe, up through the fears of radical scientific change in Shelley’s Frankenstein—a world in the grip of fear and at the cusp of massive technological and sociological change—to our present days of supersonic cyber-spaced communications, the internet, television, stem-cell research and Dolly. Virtual reality, cloning, bio-engineering and instant wireless global communications are just some of the branches stemming from the multi-millennia old Oak of scientific discovery. But this progression has raised difficult ethical and existential questions. What is progress if it is examined as more than just scientific advancement? What, in particular, is the price of scientific progress? The price of knowledge? And, ultimately, is it worth the pursuit?
In the middle of the 17th Century, just before the first novel was born, Milton sliced at the strings of the religious heart with a poetic bow of such a fierce iambic tension, that it chewed on reason as he poetically pontificated praise for faith and challenged knowledge. Just observe him ever so softly, like a clever doe, attack reason,
Reason, is free, and reason he [God] made right,
But bid her well beware, and still erect,
Lest by some fair appearing good surprised
She dictate false, and misinform the will
To do what God expressly hath forbid
(ln. 352-56; Book IV).
For Milton, reason is only good as long as it falls in line with religious doctrine, but if it is guided by science or some other force, then—beware! Beware! the poet suggests, it shall lead one astray. He attacks philosophy and its attempts at higher knowledge, which “interrupt the sweet of life,” and suggests that man should not plague his mind with such “wandering thoughts” (ln.187; Book VIII). “Prime wisdom” is to know what lies before one in life—practical knowledge—free of metaphysical inquiry. Do not overburden the mind with knowledge or its pursuit, Milton suggests, for
[…] knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain,
Oppresses else will surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly[…] " (ln.124-130; book VII; italics mine).
Of course the great calamity only occurs when man obtains moral knowledge. For now reason has gone too far, Satan has won through guile and trickery; he has used reason to turn man’s will against God’s laws. Reason has challenged the divine authority, swallowed moral knowledge, and consequently, paradise was lost. All of nature stormed down on humanity; wars, disease and death were brought into the world. In Milton’s world, knowledge is seen as dangerous in an apocalyptic sense. It is through this highly hyperbolic assault on knowledge that still echoes in the 21st Century, for knowledge, must be attended with great caution and care. An old adage whispers, “Careful what ye seek, lest ye also find,” and Milton provides an illustrious imagination to the demonstration of such an idea.
In 1818, Mary Shelley gave birth to one of the first modern novels, [i]Frankenstein[/i], a novel which highlighted the dangers in man’s quest toward knowledge. Very much like Milton, Shelley cautions her readers through Dr. Frankenstein’s words, at the beginning of his dreadful tale, that knowledge may have unforeseen consequences, "[…] how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow (35)." Dr. Frankenstein is speaking in retrospect, having already seen and experienced all of the terrible calamities that his pursuits have led to. He cautions against becoming, “greater than his nature will allow,” which means, that humanity should not strive for the super-natural. ‘Nature’ has a routine that she takes, which cannot be tampered with, especially, death, which is an inevitability that man must learn to accept, as it is the one aspect of nature that seems to be unconquerable.
Prometheus, whom Shelley alludes to in the beginning of her novel, taught man to control fire and was eternally punished by the ancient Greek gods for the offence. Dr. Frankenstein like Prometheus, endures a harsh and bitter fate for obtaining something that is deemed to be un-natural: the ability to make life out of inanimate matter. Shelley, ignoring some of Milton’s drivel on moral knowledge, picks up on the idea that knowledge, more specifically, the pursuit of knowledge, can destroy a human being’s life. Her readers observe how Dr. Frankenstein, in his relentless struggle for knowledge, ends by destroying his personal life in the process. He virtually has no real relationships with anyone, lives in a solitary, lonely, unhappy state, to the point that his health deteriorates, and, even, his mind. His ambition drives him into sickness and madness. In retrospect, he has understood the errors of his ways, as he openly states, “If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind (37).” Unfortunately it is an epiphany that occurs too late. Milton had believed metaphysical inquiry was such a study, and Shelley voices caution to science, in particular, science of the un-natural.
One fault with Shelley’s and Milton’s approach is that they believe that they know what nature is, that is, they have a definition or an idea of what is natural and what is un-natural. In the 20th Century, the very idea of what nature is, of whether or not we can know what nature is, is raised into question. Even a little after Shelley’s time, Friedrich Nietzsche produced arguments that stated that humanity can never know nature, that all man can ever have are interpretations.
In Kazuo Ishiguro’s contemporary dystopian novel, Never Let Me Go (2005), readers are confronted with a strange world that is faced with the question of what it means to be a human being. Are clones, for example, un-natural as they are products of science as opposed to “nature?” The “natural order of things” is broken—science has rocketed humanity into an age of post-humanity, an age where the very meaning of what it means to be human is under question. Humanity’s progression in the natural sciences has led to a world challenged by grave ethical questions, to the point that, “Nature,” with a capital N, must be re-interpreted as Nietzsche suggested—what it means to be human, must be re-interpreted, and possibly, redefined. More importantly, humanity must take a lesson from Milton and Shelley in this post-human age, having advanced to the point of genetic engineering, to the point of producing super-human beings—people that can be genetically engineered to be superior athletes and the like as the 1990s film Gattaca excellently portrays—humanity, then, must vigorously ask herself, is this progress? Will this make people happier? Or is this technological manipulation of nature, this mechanization of man, ultimately, dangerous and detrimental? What is the price?
Jean-Paul Sartre in the middle of the 20th Century made a very famous remark, “Existence precedes essence.” Sartre is very specific in what he means by essence, as essence for him is akin to purpose. A calculator, for instance, has a purpose before it obtains its existence. Its purpose is in the idea and definition of a calculator’s functionality (what it is meant to perform); in other words, a calculator has an essence before it has its actual, physical presence (or, existence). Human being are the exact opposite. First they exist, and only after do they define themselves, or have some person or some entity like a corporation, religion, culture, et cetra, define them. Humanity possesses the power to mechanize individuals, to define their essence before their existence. But once again, what is the price of such power?
To go back to Ishiguro’s dystopian novel, Never Let Me Go, clones enter a world with a certain purpose to fulfill (to function as organ donors for “human beings”). They are defined before they exist, and in this sense, they are much more like calculators rather than beings worthy of “natural endowments.” Scientific progress has created a new capacity to do monstrous things to human beings; it has granted man with a power which has created pressing sociological dilemmas. Are clones different from human beings? Are they, really, post-human? Should they be treated differently? How are they to adjust, and how is man to adjust, to their being? More relevantly, what are the ramifications of man’s possession of this “unholy” knowledge?
Man’s ambition to control nature has reversed, it has turned in on itself—technology has provided man with the ability to modify himself, to alter his own genetic code, to breed in a Petri dish, yet, Sartre still echoes in the ears, for he very likely would remind man, that such a power costs a small sum, a modest fee, oh, just a tin-pin price, freedom. The freedom to be able to define oneself, to create one’s own purpose, to write, to the degree that one is able and history and circumstance allow, one’s own destiny (to drive toward a self-determined desti - nation).
But before humanity even found herself situated in a time where she can potentially enslave and mechanize beings, F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrated through The Great Gatsby, that grim portrait of modernity, just how enslaved humanity has become following the first major turn of the 20th Century, the years succeeding The Great War. He may have labeled it the Jazz Age, but how cold and empty it feels and looks to contemporary eyes, where Reason dethrones God, and spirituality is replaced by materialism. Atop the sky-scraping peaks of American life, Fitzgerald poignantly portrays the sad emptiness hidden behind the eyes of a man looking out from the heights of the plastic Empire; no longer is Heaven in the clouds in this age of material love and endless striving, for Heaven is transfigured into a plastic dream where it seeks refuge in a new, plastic ideal called, The American Dream.
Upon Fitzgerald’s caviar canvas is a rich portrait of a sad romantic the likes of which the world will likely never forget. Jay Gatsby, like Dr. Frankenstein, led a life that was dominated by a single ambition, but the difference is that he sought to obtain knowledge of another order, that of love. In particular, the love of Daisy. The old sport’s imagination and ambition, indeed, most of his adult life, is spent pursuing one girl’s affections. Through Gatsby, Fitzgerald continues to teach his readers about the pitfalls of revolving one’s entire life around the whims of another person—living in the hope that happiness is in the hands of an other… If a person rests his or her entire happiness on a single, imaginary ideal, what happens if it is not obtained or turns out to be different from what one imagined? Or worse, as in Gatsby’s case, what if the person turns out to not be worth a single thought?
Science has led to bionic people, technology has brought man to the stars and the stars to man, knowledge continues to stretch as the edges of the universe expand, and somewhere between the skyscraper and the doctor’s office, the talk show radio host’s voice in the car-ride home and a lover’s whisper under the covers of night, somewhere between the fear of nuclear annihilation and the bold headlines screaming tomorrow’s news, somewhere between the computer chair, the board room, and the nervous tension of a college classroom, is a human being saying yes—somehow making do with the world inherited; still seeking and searching, pursuing and hoping to understand the manifold mysteries flying through the sky or swimming under a microscope in the Bio. lab. It is by this very fact that humanity proves its ability to cope, heal, and adapt to the current world. Through humanity’s ability to reflect and communicate, change, grow and educate, value and re-evaluate old values, there is still a chance to reconcile binary oppositions and mend the city’s jagged edges that cut up the sun. While cursing the shadows of the day, so many forget the way the city looks from the top of the Empire State building at night, and how many forget the ever emanating romantic waves being transmitted from the Eiffel tower into the wandering dreams of those still courageous enough to believe in amour.
For all the monstrous deeds Dr. Frankenstein’s creature has unleashed on the world—the death and psychological torment that his deeds have produced—with no alternative left but to accept the reality with which man is presented, somehow, man must find reconciliation. By no means is the efficiency and laborious help that technology provides for man ever compensation enough for the havoc it has unleashed internally and externally—psychologically and materialistically—by no means is it proposed that there is an equal or near equal exchange of qualitative value. But there is the possibility to heal psychologically and make peace with the creature. To find a mean, as Aristotle would suggest, between materialism and spirituality. To adapt and refine what it means to be human, for, after all, ‘human’ is but a word with a definition, and language in the right hands lives like a coral reef in the tropics.
While technology, science, and even reason, continue to inflate like the universe expands, they need not stretch blindly, for their inflation can be accompanied by an equal expansion in language, definitions, values, ethics and philosophy. Now the space-piercing and coaster frenzied thunder of contemporary life with hand-held Pacman flitting through convoluted digital mazes as one sits in the waiting room, where just on the other side are the cellular morphing abilities of men and women in white robes with doctorate degrees in human bodies but not human souls—microchips, and datafields full of stock reports, there, the whole creature may be cast into an artistic cauldron where technological juices freely mix with spiritual alloys to produce for those brave and desperate enough to still struggle, metals that will make titanium feel like copper, through the still enduring literary arts.