Today's world can probably be best described as risky. Regardless of your position on global warming - whether you carry a sort of apocalypticism, you just don't accept the evidence, or whether you've joined the growing trend of accepting global warming as a simple fact and carrying on as usual (see The New York Times' "The Greening of Greenland" and it's celebration of the opportunities global warming will unearth) - humans are being understood more and more as a geological force involved in risky behavior. That is, the Holocene has given way to the Anthropocene, an epoch in which humans have become a natural condition. Aside from existing within an ecosystem, we also have a profound impact on the ecosystem which will have lasting effects for ourselves and so many other species.
German sociologist Ulrich Beck and English sociologist Anthony Giddens dubbed modern society a 'risk society', meaning that we are increasingly involved in low probability - high consequence risks. That is, our interactions with nature are becoming increasingly irreversible and their effects are not entirely known as they are implemented. They are implemented in hopes of gaining something for some interested party (or parties) and we work to understand their effects once we've gone too far. Perhaps the most alarming thing about such manufactured risks is the lack of accountability. We can't simply point the finger at some Big Other such as Fate, a Government, or God. With multi-national corporations looming and no dominating world governmental regulatory body making decisions, we live in a world where nobody is in charge. Take synthetic biology: while we in the United States debate the ethics of stem cell research and set limitations to the degree to which we can intervene into the human genome, China has already completed the fourth human genome to be sequenced and is planning to use it to solve problems related to Chinese-specific genetic diseases. That is, as Slavoj Zizek notes, "they are pressing ahead without restraint, in a model example of smooth co-operation between state agencies (such as their Academy of Sciences) and private capital" (341). The Chinese are adding to the plethora of manufactured risks (remember, low probability, but high consequence) already existing in the world, and there is nobody to stop them (as there is nobody to stop BP from drilling in the ocean and nobody can force Chevron to clean up their mess in Ecuador's Rainforest). We are then in the situation of falling behind China in the development of synthetic biology which is bad for business and our standing as a world leader. When assessing possible risks associated with synthetic biology, consider that, historically, inventions are always presented as a brilliant way to solve a debilitating disease or a legitimate social problem, but they then work their way into other fields with potentially devastating results such as developments in biological warfare. We are in that old ethical dilemma of: if we don't act without restraint, someone else will, so my actions won't make a difference in the world anyways. (If China continues unabated in manipulating the human genome, won't we fall behind? And if, God forbid, they do apply their research to biological warfare, well, we can't fall behind them! We must put our ethical concerns on the shelf because there is nobody in charge to regulate this globally.)
This risk society is responsible for one of the apocalyptic visions today, which Zizek terms the "techno-digital-post-human". Alongside Judeo-Christian-Islamo fundamentalism, which purports the End of Days, and New Age apocalypticism which purports a coming shift in 'cosmic awareness', the techno-digital-post-human sees the human species as evolving into a 'post-human' which will combine the physical world and the virtual world together. Zizek writes, "the alternative 'either physical reality or the virtual screen world' is replaced by a direct interpenetration of the two" (338). He's not here talking merely of our increasing dependence on technology for understanding the world (a coming age when the world will be one giant touch-screen, already being developed by the MIT Media Lab), but literally an age when, through synthetic biology, living organisms will have implanted prosthesis which will help govern their self-experience. This will be the 'post-human'.
Zizek notes that in most post-human apocalyptic fantasies, as the one famously depicted in Blade Runner, transhumanist writers still assume that there will remain in such a world a free autonomous individual, such as Deckard, hunting down the evil replicants. But a more nuanced trans-human vision would consider how the very definition of humanity would be redefined in such a world. With the potential of enhancing lifespans and improving memory, concentration, and other human capacities, one must consider to what extent an enhanced human being's nature will change and they will stop being 'human' (at least in the way we understand that term now). Consider how such a world would have no need for Nietzsche's 'overman', a commonly assumed model for heroic humanity. Zizek writes, "In contrast to Nietzsche's notion of the 'overman' aiming at a 'moral and cultural transcendence' (a select few endowed with strong willpower and great refinement would throw off the shackles of traditional morality and convention, and so rise above the rest of humanity), the transhumanist idea of the 'post-human' aims at a society in which everybody will have access to enhancement technologies" (346). The 'overman', a model of radical autonomy and individuality, will be replaced with the person who can afford enhancement technologies so that they might have power. That is, the autonomous overman who reached from within and found the strength and courage to radically re-imagine their purpose in the world would, in the trans-human world, save up enough money to purchase a prosthetic implant that would do that work for them. It's not entirely clear that the two can co-exist. Zizek writes, "Both transhumanists and their critics unproblematically cling to the standard notion of a free autonomous individual - the difference is that transhumanists simply assume that it will survive the passage into the post-human era, while their critics see post-humanity as a threat to be resisted" (347).
A book I read several months ago, written by Margaret Atwood, provides an example of such a techno-digital-post-human apocalyptic vision. Oryx and Crake, set in a dreary future following the last man on earth, named "Snowman", provides a grim look at a world gone awry by highly risky synthetic biology. It's a world consisting of human clones that, true to the nuanced understanding of the transhuman, are not what we'd call 'human' by today's understanding. Also are lurking predators, like 'pigoons' - pigs with bodies shaped like balloons that are bred to provide human organ transplants, and 'wolvogs' - a mix between a dog and a wolf. The highly secretive, profitable, and risky work of companies like OrganInc ends in the low probability but nevertheless possible outbreak of a manufactured virus capable of wiping out the entire human population, and who's vaccine was maliciously destroyed by an evil mastermind company exec. The aftermath leaves Snowman alone amidst surviving post-humans, who he cannot relate to at all. They are the true post-human - engineered, cloned, biologically modified, and Snowman is just a remnant from the past. When he dies, so does humanity. In the end, you'll find in the book a tiny trace of the humanism Zizek criticizes in transhumanism. The reader is left with hope that the human will survive the biogenetic apocalypse when Snowman discovers a small group of ragged humans, but it remains unclear if he will approach them with open arms or murder them to protect the human clones, dubbed 'Crakers'. Ultimately, the logical conclusion of Atwood's vision probably lies less in Snowman and his dying breed, and more in the biologically enhanced Crakers, who are not often talked about because, realistically, we can't relate to them.
The Transhuman apocalyptic vision develops out of the imagination of a risk society. It helps us make sense of the world we live in, and it makes sense that most visions will retain something ultimately human in them. They're written, it seems, with nostalgia. I'll leave the discussion with a quote from Oryx and Crake: "On the eastern horizon there's a greyish haze, lit now with a rosy, deadly glow. Strange how that colour still seems tender. He gazes at it with rapture; there is no other word for it. Rapture. The heart seized, carried away, as if by some large bird of prey. After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? Because it is... He takes a few deep breaths, scans the ground below for wildlife, makes his way down from the tree, setting his good foot on the ground first. He checks the inside of his hat, flicks out an ant. Can a single ant be said to be alive, in any meaningful sense of the word, or does it only have relevance in terms of its anthill?" (371).
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. New York: Random House, Inc. 2004.
Zizek, Slavoj. Living In The End Times. New York: Verso. 2010.
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