Ok, I am back to the book Radical Evolution after a hiatus. My hiatus was actually more of a sight-seeing trip. I have also been reading the Annals of Western Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin, but I was at the Library two weeks ago and walked by a novel that caught my eye. Fire-us. I misread it as Fire-ups and thought it was one thing but it turned out to be a book about a virus wiping out the world. It didn't kill children because it targeted part of the metabolism related to sex hormones. This left children struggling to survive in a world that had no adults. It was a pretty good book. The first volume was very good and I don't exactly agree with a lot of the reviews I read about it which said they were disappointed with the ending. I was more surprised at the "who" of the ending than the actual result. It also left the final status of the kids who had formed a family a little unresolved.
What struck me as interesting as I started back into Radical Evolution is that this book is an example of a "Hell" scenario as described by Garreau. The book describes what might happen if any of the major technologies gets out of control. Technologies he describes as the GRIN technologies:
- Genetics
- Robotics
- Information/Intelligence
- Nanotechnology
But what I also found interesting today was the gentleman Garreau is quoting and discussing: Francis Fukuyama. He asks the very pointed question what happens when we can breed some people with saddles on their backs and others with spurs and boots? (paraphrased but closely paraphrased) He goes on to pose other sticky problems. He points out an idea that resonates with my personal beliefs. We want to build a more empathic world, a world where people care more for each other, but how can that be if we therapuetically remove all pain and suffering? How can I empathize with the suffering of children in sweatshops with no point of reference. If I have never suffered long dibilitating and difficult work how do I see those children as fundamentally like me with the same fullness of emotion, hope, longing and capacity for suffering if I am so far removed from those things as to have no common understanding. Fukuyama seems to see this as a potential problem with technology. We could literally breed children that don't view their parents as the same race. I have often thought about this in terms of evolution or even animal husbandry. The Great Dane and the Chihuahua are the same breed, and I could begin breeding Great Danes back down to the size of chihuahuas. If I started only with Great Dane stock it would take a fair bit of time, but at what point does the dog I am breeding stop recognizing its offspring as Great Danes and start recognizing them as Mini-Danes. Or stated in reverse, at what point does the offspring look back at it's parents (or more likely it's grandparents) and say, "You are not me"
Well, we are reaching, or have possibly reached when within just a generation we could alter our future evolution so much as to make my own Grandchildren unrecognizable to me. Not only physically, but potentially, emotionally and psychologically as well. Another great Novel that speaks to this is Scott Westerfelds series: Uglies. In the books the heroine gets physically altered by surgery, gene therapy and technological implants, but as the concern usually is, the evil scientists, the ones with the power, they want to keep that power, they want the Utopia of their vision to come to pass, and in this case have the power to bring it to pass, the mess with the brains and psychology of people too.
This potential for intentionally or unitentionally, altering the fundamental nature of humans is what lots of people see as a risk. Radical Evolution highlights some of the best thinking on this.
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