Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age is a book more concerned with the future of the “human spirit” than the future of the human species, focusing on the endangerment of human life’s meaning more intently than physical differences in the future. With the purpose of the book being the preservation of human meaning, it is then obviously important to address the question “What is the meaning of human life or the purpose of our existence?” Rationally, there is no positive consequence of attaching any special meaning to human existence beyond an evolutionary perspective, and perhaps none for life in general. Nonetheless, author Bill McKibben argues that meaning is determined by experiences, a sense of one’s self and the “power and the frailty” of the human body (3). In fact, McKibben goes to the extent of indirectly (and possibly unintentionally) linking a person’s life’s meaning to their genetic lineage, and it is here where his logic is flawed.
He first gives an example of parents wishing to manipulate a child’s life course first with behavioral modifications, then again with genetic ones. He then argues that a child with genetic modifications would have lower meaning in his or her life because they will have been subjected to their parents predispositions, and that any specific activity enjoyed or skill possessed would have lower meaning because these would arise from genes preferred by their parents rather than personal choice (59). However, this is where his argument becomes muddled. Of “normal” or non-genetically engineered children and genetically engineered children, neither group has the ability to decide which genes they receive, thus there is no significant difference between the lives of the groups. Only that the aptitudes of the latter group would match the preference of the parents rather than the aptitudes (or lack thereof) being quasi-randomly given to them by traditional means. Hence the quality of life and the meaning McKibben attaches to it are not changed by germline engineering in the sense he conveys.
From a scientific perspective, questions on the meaning of life or the purpose of human existence, good or bad, are of a trivial nature. The only completely objective answer to give is based on observable facts: humanity is driven by the desires to procreate, to exert an increasing control on the surrounding environment, etc. Fundamental concepts such as love, joy, fear and sorrow can all be logically linked to a more basic will to survive and spread an individual genetic lineage, and biologist Lee Silver would likely agree. In Silver’s Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality, he comments on Francis Fukuyama’s struggle to define the notion of “human nature,” eventually saying that his attempt to ascribe human nature to a “factor X” belongs with the many other essentially secularized religious ideas that, in his opinion, are irrational (121). Thus, the only meaning that can be attached to human existence by a positivist or scientific mind is evolutionary and concrete.
Of course there are also other fronts in Enough in which McKibben attempts to confront human meaning. Most notably he mentions a future that is to him meaningless because of germline genetic engineering and robotics creating consciousness that is more than human, and that this creation will endanger humanity as a species and all the meaning he attributes to specifically “human” life. McKibben’s sentiment is apparently that there is no connection between current humanity its probable future robotic or genetically-enhanced offspring, saying, “they look into your faces […] they will, in fact, be staring into a mirror […] but 2050 may be very different indeed. Perhaps so different that […] a book from our time will be of historical interest only, the record of a different creature” (64). McKibben is more interested in the continuity of the species as it is now rather than embracing the possibility that humanity, in the near future, may be able to actually control and accelerate its own evolution.
Against the intuition of McKibben and most others, there would be continuity between the species as now known and whatever it may be in several hundred years, regardless of the physical differences, would still be the direct descendants of current humanity by a minimum of consciousness. An evolutionary leap forward can and will happen in this manner not because human life isn’t presently comfortable or exciting enough, but because the species as a whole is unconsciously drawn to ensure its survival. It is the ultimate irony that the future of humanity is not to be humanity as now known, but to ensure the survival of beneficial genes, of the collective consciousness, by destroying its current face. Darwin’s evolutionary theory actually implies this. Thus once again the only meaning that can be obtained is that humanity’s only purpose, only true meaning, is to maximize its chance to survive, to exist.
Silver, Lee. Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality.
New York: HarperCollins, 2007.
McKibben, B. (2003). Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York: Times Books.
1 comment:
This is a good short essay. I would have liked to see your own point of view foregrounded a little more from the beginning; you write a good essay by reacting to McKibben, but it might have been even better if you had focused a little more on articulating your own view explicitly in relationship with his.
Maybe the most impressive part is where you lay out the fundamental apparent contradiction in McKibben's argument; for what it's worth, I completely agree with you, particularly on the matter that he slips, seemingly without meaning to, into asserting that meaning=genetics.
One criticism, or at least question, that I have, though, is this: why are you so certain that he is ultimately spiritualistic and not materialistic? Are you completely convinced that he isn't locating a specific, materialistic form of meaning in the randomness of DNA? I think you dismiss the possibility a little too easily.
I also think, incidentally, that Silver would disagree with you on the question of whether life has meaning or not - but that would be a long and complicated argument, way beyond the scope of a 3 page paper.
Good, thoughtful work, even if imperfectly polished.
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