- Joined
- Aug 24, 2014
If someone had the technology to rewrite your DNA, rewire your brain, or digitalize your consciousness, wouldn't you be worried about him installing a rootkit / trojan in your mind, so he can rewrite your mind at leisure without you even having the slightest clue? Your self will slowly be stripped away, until you become a mindless drone at the service of the Ideology du jour -- and you have no way of knowing, much less resisting it.It never ceases to amaze me how the transhumanist crowd just glosses over the massive ethical concerns that come from making radical changes to the human body. There have been countless pieces of media over the years that attempt to grapple with these questions, and it's a basic tenet of the cyberpunk genre once you get past all the neon lights and incessant rain. Turning yourself into a cyborg, rewriting your DNA, or uploading/duplicating your consciousness: all would call into question the basic concepts of self and humanity.
(Aside: I am reading Rowan Williams's Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life. Williams gives an absolutely brilliant, modern and topical analysis on the Christian concepts of Faith, Hope and Love. He thinks Hope is rooted in our memories and our intact sense of self. Much has been made about the fragmentation of selves in the modern era: people feel a mismatch between their memories and their present selves, and -- here's Williams's brilliant insight -- if the past feels somehow irrelevant and alien, how can one hold out hope for the future? It is only through the belief that God carries our histories in His hand, that He sees us as coherent selves even when we can't see ourselves thus, can we restore our hope. There are pathological conditions, such as stroke, that erode our memories and sense of selves, and devastating despair is indeed common. I predict Transhumanists' fucking around with the human consciousness will engender a pandemic of despair. A Superior Future that stripes people of hope -- hope for the future itself -- cannot remain superior for long. Transhumanism is doomed to be self-defeating in more than one sense: it defeats the human sense of self, and it defeats its own self.)
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