Oh the...Humanity?

The greatest skill of the human race is manipulation. Through their physical and mental advantages over other species, humans have been able to manipulate their surroundings and create the world that we live in today, one dominated by our imprint. Over time, we have transformed the Earth from its pure, natural state into one covered at almost every square mile by some trademark of our race: a farm, a city, a streetlight, a road, and the list goes on and on. But as we've seen within the context of our own species' history, through the rise and fall of powerful empires like those of Alexander the Great, Mesopotamia, and Rome, it is possible that even the mightiest race of lifeforms - us - will one day fall as well. The speculation as to how that will happen, however, seems like it was started by someone that has seen I, Robot too many times.

A popular theory nowadays is that the human race will gradually be overtaken by a race of robotically-engineered humans, or cyborgs. According to proponents of this idea, the starting gun in our race to extinction will be the limited availability of performance enhancing technologies for humans. For instance, in the future, it is believed that we will have medicines and procedures that can help solve issues that are currently unsolvable in our modern day. Things like cancer will be as treatable as the symptoms of the common cold, and amputated limbs can be replaced by functional, prosthetic ones that allow people to normally go about their lives. People even go as far to suggest that technology developed to a point where the human mind can be downloaded to an implanted microchip of sorts in the brain, transmitting neurological information to a supercomputer that catalogs everything from it: our thoughts. Our dreams, our personalities, etc. would be stored somewhere for safekeeping. These miracle technologies, however, will come at a high price, affordable only to a small elite. At this point, the idea proposes that this small aristocracy would genetically modify itself to become overwhelmingly superior to the impoverished majority and begin their own race of cyborgs, leaving the real humans to a fate of either enslavement or genocide.

This theory is half-truth, half-fear. Do I doubt that the human mind is capable of producing such technologies? No. The human race is, without comparison, the most dominant species to ever walk the Earth. What we lack in strength to certain animals, we compensate for in an unmatched intelligence, and that intelligence, which has only been slightly tapped into at this stage in our history, is what propels our evolution. It is feasible to suggest that technologies similar to what I described are on the far horizon for the human race. However, some of them sound more like works of sci-fi then reason. Prosthetic limbs that function with the human body? Reasonable. A way of producing non-cancerous cells to overtake the cancerous ones? Probable. However, something like the brain microchip, for instance, doesn't make any sense to me. The human mind is an enigma that even the most respected cognitive scientists in the world have the most minimal grasp on. If we are unable to understand our own minds, do people really think that we would be able to develop a technology that could create an artificial copy of it?

I also have a huge problem with the speculation as to what would happen if these technologies were made available. The predicted results of this new technology are entirely rooted in fear. It's not unreasonable to say that the exclusivity of this technology to the affluent will widen the gap between the rich and the poor. However, it is totally unreasonable to say that the rich will all of a sudden kill and enslave the poor because they are now even more superior. It's entirely irrational and sensationalist. If I wanted to hear that, I wouldn't read an article or an essay written by some scholar; I'd just head over to Comic Con. Sure, societal ethics change over time, but genocide, especially in this hypothetical situation in which it would be happening to the majority of humans, has always been frowned upon. There isn't going to be some cyborg race that detaches itself from its human emotions and coldly murders its creators. Once again, new ideas always breed fear and exaggeration.

The idea that genetic engineering will dissolve our humanity actually defeats itself. Every species has its own skills that it uses to survive. Chameleons blend in with their surroundings to hide from predators, and opossums play dead to trick them into leaving to find new prey. Humans are different in the sense that they don't live to survive but to sustain themselves, but like the abilities of camouflage and playing dead, methods of extending life, humans use genetic engineering in order to better their health. So even though they may alter their natural state in order to fix an illness or imperfection, engineering itself is actually a very natural part of humanity.

In the end, people will play into the hand of fear and resist the idea of robotics becoming an accepted one, but as with all helpful ideas, the resistance will eventually subside once people see the benefits in action. The feared race of cyborgs will not look like this:

But rather like this: 

Hopefully one day, we'll actually have prosthetic robot arms and lightsabers like Luke, and maybe even superhuman strength and arm cannons like Cyborg, but I digress.

When it comes down to it, the development of genetic engineering will not bring about the end of the human race but rather the end of the chapter of this part of the human race, one still plagued by medical issues that are currently unsolvable. The next chapter of human life is unpredictable in all areas but one, and in that one area - health - I know our race will be even better off than before.

The World As We Grow It

          “Oh the times they are a-changin'.” Bob Dylan sang this in the year 1964, a notch in the decade of social unrest known as the 1960’s. Though Dylan wrote the song as an anthem for the civil rights movement, his words are unspecific enough to transcend his intended meaning and cause people to create new interpretations, which attributes to his talent as a songwriter. Times have indeed changed since the 60’s. The collapse of the Soviet Union, 9/11, and the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States are just a few major events that have occurred within the last fifty years that would have been inconceivable in Dylan’s time. But there is an underlying theme that connects these three pieces of history: globalization. Though its roots stretch back to the First World War, the impact of globalization on the Earth became noticeable during the formative years of the Information Age. As technology advanced, connections between nations became stronger, leading to more efficient trade, communication, and development as well as the global mixing of cultures. Because of globalization, democracy clashed with communism and dismantled the Former Soviet Union, terrorists hijacked American planes and crashed them into major U.S. buildings, and the first African-American was elected to the Oval Office. It is apparent that there have been advantages and disadvantages to globalizing our world. Many will argue that the negatives outweigh the positives, but I will argue otherwise.

         There are two major complaints about globalization. The first criticism of globalization is that it has produced tensions between cultures that wouldn’t have ever fought had they not known of each other’s existences. The most notable example of this feuding is the constant conflict between the United States and the Middle East. The first U.S.-involvement in Middle Eastern battles dates back to 1988. Since then, the U.S. has deployed its troops to the Middle East on several more occasions and still retains active military presence in many Middle Eastern nations. In his article-turned-book Jihad vs. McWorld, writer Benjamin Barber speaks of the clash of two cultures – East and West - that cannot be synthesized and the possible consequences that could ensue from it. It is a fair point to make; if globalization never occurred, the U.S. and the Middle East would have continued on existing singularly without any disturbance, and the current world stage wouldn’t be anywhere near as bloody as it is today. If the U.S. and Middle East had never met, the terrorists involved in 9/11 would have never even been on those planes. That is the main inherent fault of globalization; though its intention is to bring the world together, it also naturally produces even more conflict than there was to begin with.

         The second main complaint is that the seemingly positive idea of cultures mingling with one another is actually harmful to their identities. Many fear that if our world becomes globalized, borders would be null and national individualism would be extinct. They believe that we would become one giant Earth state with a single culture instead of a planet that is comprised of hundreds of unique countries and cultures (Essentially, the basis of Brave New World).

         So was the world a better place when the only people that we knew were our next-door neighbors? I completely disagree.

         Firstly, the idea that the Earth could ever become a World State is not a ridiculous idea. As the world grows and as nations become more intertwined, there may be a need for an efficient world government to regulate certain affairs. It's the basis of the establishment of any government except on a global scale. However, the idea of us becoming the feared dystopian society where everybody is just a number is a little too ridiculous for me to understand. For example, look at America, which is the smaller-scaled version of the world. If you look at America's history, as it became more and more of the melting pot that it's known as today, individual identities did not become suppressed but rather highlighted over time. Though our people are known collectively as Americans, there are still distinctions that people are unafraid to point out: whites, blacks, Asians, Latinos, etc. The politically accurate term for an ethnic American involves adding "American" to the end of their ethnicity, but if you go up to anyone on the street and ask them what they are ethnically, they'd leave out the "American." I believe this shows that people still value their roots despite living in a society where all of the roots are intertwined.

         True, there has been much more death and destruction in the world since globalization began, but that is just a natural result of this expansion as well as a combination of human pride and resistance to change. Instead of thinking about the inevitable conflicts, we should be thinking about all the good that has come from being connected with the rest of the world. For instance:

•       Trade has become simplified and made more efficient due to advancements in technology and communications, and nations have found business partners on the opposite end of the world, an infeasible idea in the pre-globalization era.

•       The spreading of culture as a result of increased trade has arguably increased racial tolerance. Barack Obama’s election is an example of the change in America’s opinion of racial minorities from the pre-globalization era to our modern day. While racism has not been totally eradicated to this day, the idea of an African-American becoming the President of the United States was a laughable idea in pre-expansion times, showing that our nation has socially-evolved since those days.

•       With the help of the United Nations and the leadership of a few prominent countries, the overall attitude of our world has become less bloodthirsty and more Samaritan. Many nations are actually willing to coexist and aid each other, as opposed to earlier times when nations had few allies and many enemies and when charity was a joke.

               Does our world still have some kinks to work out with the whole globalization thing? Obviously, but like any new idea, it takes time to smooth out its edges and give it perfect form. The Jihad vs. McWorld debate presented by Barber is very real. It is very possible that these two cultures will never be able to combine and will forever be in conflict, but the idea that conflict is inevitable and everlasting is nothing new. Our world will always be at war somewhere. It’s been happening for millennia. However, one thing has changed since the times of Mesopotamia, Alexander the Great, and the Roman Empire: the thirst to conquer. No longer are all nations constantly paranoid of invasions and initiating attacks on others before they themselves are hit. We’ve reached a point where everybody is out on the world stage and talking about the issues. We have our differences, but we’re in a time in which talking it out is preferable to duking it out. That is the greatest gift of globalization: the cognizance and appreciation of others. So Bob Dylan was right; the times are a-changin’, but they’re changin’ for the better.