Whom And What To Fear

     One who writes about politics, economics, social trends, cultural currents, faith, the family, possible futures, et cetera ad nauseam infinitam will occasionally get an inquiry from a reader of this sort: “How do you decide what to write about?” It’s not an easy question to face – not because I can’t answer it, but because the answer itself frightens me.

     My principal motivator is fear.

     Ten years ago, I wrote a piece about my fears as an aging man in a deteriorating republic. To my considerable surprise, that piece was cited by a number of other commentators as a milepost for those interested in tracking the progress of our nation toward collapse.

     But it isn’t just my op-eds that are propelled by fear. A lot of my fiction is, too. In particular, my Futanari Saga, despite its fanciful premise, arose principally from my worries over advances in genetics and bioengineering. I hoped that others would come to share those worries, though I can’t be sure anyone does.

     A lot of ingenuity, effort, and money has gone into the quest for ultimate control over the stuff of life. Such control must start from the genes, for it is they that determine our anatomy, how well it will function, and – to a large extent – for how long. We’re not yet able to predict the characteristics of an unborn baby to an arbitrary degree of precision, but we’re steadily getting closer. As we advance on that front, others are striving toward a related power: the power to genetically engineer a child to its parents’ specifications.

     Virtually no one has combined the contemporary phenomenon of sperm and ovum banks with the prospect of genetically designed babies. Virtually no one has pondered what government records of citizens’ DNA could portend. Virtually no one has thought seriously about research into the creation, from ordinary skin cells, of “totipotent” stem cells capable of reproducing human organs.

     But of course, someone has – other than myself, at that:

     I am considering what the thing called ‘Man’s power over Nature’ must always and essentially be. No doubt, the picture could be modified by public ownership of raw materials and factories and public control of scientific research. But unless we have a world state this will still mean the power of one nation over others. And even within the world state or the nation it will mean (in principle) the power of majorities over minorities, and (in the concrete) of a government over the people. And all long-term exercises of power, especially in breeding, must mean the power of earlier generations over later ones.

     [C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man]

     Clive Staples Lewis, that great Christian evangelist and friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, possessed a foresight that would have paralyzed most of his contemporaries with terror. (It very nearly paralyzed me.) Moreover, he dramatized that vision in a great novel:

     “It is the beginning of all power. He lives forever. The giant time is conquered. And the giant space—he was already conquered too. One of our company has already traveled in space. True, he was betrayed and murdered and his manuscripts are imperfect: we have not yet been able to reconstruct his spaceship. But that will come.”
     “It is the beginning of Man Immortal and Man Ubiquitous,” said Straik. “Man on the throne of the universe. It is what all the prophecies really meant.”
     “At first, of course,” said Filostrato, “the power will be confined to a number—a small number—of individual men. Those who are selected for eternal life.”
     “And you mean,” said Mark, “it will then be extended to all men?”
     “No,” said Filostrato. “I mean it will then be reduced to one man. You are not a fool, are you, my young friend? All that talk about the power of Man over Nature—Man in the abstract—is only for the canaglia. You know as well as I do that Man’s power over Nature means the power of some men over other men with Nature as the instrument. There is no such thing as Man—it is a word. There are only men. No! It is not Man who will be omnipotent, it is some one man, some immortal man. Alcasan, our Head, is the first sketch of it. The completed product may be someone else. It may be you. It may be me.”

     That is not a vision of Heaven but of Hell.

     Today, courtesy of Mike Miles, we have this:

     There is no difference whatsoever between Harari’s ambition and that of Professor Filostrato in That Hideous Strength. Harari is a cheerleader for Re-Engineered Man, a creature who might have some resemblance to Man as he walks the Earth today… or might not. No doubt he sees himself as in the vanguard of that movement. There’s no doubt of this either: it is a wholly morality-free, ethics-free, conscience-free vision.

     They who are the masters of the technologies of bioengineering would be the masters of all that lives. Truly, some men would have absolute power over all others. The human future would be what they decree it to be. Their “products” would not get a vote.

     Perhaps I’ve provided you with something to fear. Not for yourself, of course; you’re already what and who you are. But if you care for the future of our race, the above is something to reflect on. As I wrote in the Afterword to Innocents:

     It’s the same with genesmithing. We’re at the leading edge of that development just now. No one can reliably foresee what will come of it, but its possibilities are limitless. One of them is the elimination of genetic defects such as trisomy-21, which produces Down’s Syndrome. Another is the deliberate creation for profit of beings whom rational people would regard as pitiable…or as monsters.
     There’s no reason to assume that none of those pitiable or monstrous beings will be derived from human stock. There’s also no reason to think that they won’t have souls just as valuable as yours or mine.

     All research and experimentation with life envisions its eventual application to Man. And with that, I believe I’ll get back to work on Dreams of Days Forsaken.