The Kenyan Scholar

I cautiously albeit hesitantly submit that, Biotech, Big Pharma, social media, and Gameplay Tech like VR Goggles are all in tandem bringing us to a brink of a dystopic reality!

I do not mean to alarm. I only wish to point out some worrying patterns of our civilization’s progression based on correlation to some renowned dystopic literature. Could Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We have spelled a prediction of humanity’s doom? I suppose that is unlikely. But, are their acutely-familiar writings a coincidence? Absolutely not!

 Reading Brave New World reveals that Huxley's creation is a portrayal of a dystopic reality created by genetic engineering. In Huxley's universe, the defining characteristic of a technologically inspired dystopia is the habit of relegating all intrinsic human characteristics, such as the natural process of procreation and life development towards death. In Huxley's dystopian future, where babies are born in laboratories and given physiochemical alterations, the practice of giving birth naturally is seen as archaic and even barbarous. The activity of sustaining singular individual identities among all people by cultivating simple desires and complacency, culminating in a behavioural collective of uniform sexual orientation and even promiscuity, is another trait exhibiting dystopic features. In this dystopia wherein personal bonds are unheard of, mass consumerism that is not constrained by the commercialization of human life is an additional dystopic characteristic. Lastly, Huxley's world is dystopic due to the usage of the drug soma to eradicate basic human passions and feelings, such as boredom, pain, insecurity, and jealousy, which result in unpleasant emotions.

 Okay! By now I believe the succinct review has sunk in and I would like to call your attention to the highlighted statements and words. Don’t they sound eerily familiar?

 Just off the bat, I am sure many know of the strides that In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) has made in the world of assisted reproduction. The sperm and the egg are combined outside the woman’s body to form an embryo, which is then either cryopreserved (frozen) for future purposes, or implanted in a woman’s uterus, but not always the biological donor of the egg. Yes, I am talking about surrogacy.

 How many times do we come across the subject of surrogacy in today’s films and TV shows? Many and they are increasingly becoming common depending of course on your binge-habits. Even in real life, we know of some famous couples like Dwayne Wade and Gabrielle Union who sought assistance from surrogacy. Hey, don’t get me wrong, I know full well that surrogacy has helped create loving families for couples who were unable to conceive naturally. My borne of contention is however directed to vainness and the vanity that is forged and nurtured by the reckless abundance of superficiality of some western cultures.

 It wouldn’t be long, if it hasn’t already begun, before some rich, healthy couples find it untenably cumbersome, or heavens forbid, bothersome to opt for a natural conception yet with a mere $50,000 – Yes, mere – they can be delivered their progenies. This is without ever having to go through morning sickness, swollen feet, mood swings, getting fat, the risk of accident for 9 months! How appealing it must be to never face glaring stretch marks, to maintain that delicate figure, and prolong one’s youth, and stepping into glorious motherhood without skipping a beat. Talk of having you cake and eating it too.

 Unfortunately, this is the better side of the story. It only gets worse from here. Beyond the promise of cryogenics in preserving embryos, we know cloning has been possible since the time of Dolly, the sheep. Stem-cell research is making astronomical leaps in biotech right now, while genome editing has been with us for several decades. We have been lingering on the peripheries of fringe sciences for a while now, and this is out in the light. Now imagine what goes on in the dark! Beyond the regulatory restrictions and ethical blockades, what are the mad geniuses of our era tinkering with and what could possibly go wrong now that biohacking is effectively becoming decentralized?!

 You see, when we begin commodifying human life, we are cast onto a slippery slope whose end is total moral apathy. It starts with paying someone to carry your child while you perfectly healthy, just because you ‘can’t afford’ to tarnish your beauty of diminish your youth. Before we know it, babies will be grown completely in test tubes. Not long after, parents will be editing their offspring’s genome to retain the best physical and intelligence traits, and eliminate unfavourable traits.

 Do you see where I am going with this?

 Yes, immortality.

 The strive for immortality will advance alongside these unnatural schisms of assisted reproductive therapy (ART) madness. At such a juncture, the best-case scenario will be the insurmountable inequalities that will be reigned upon the less fortunate, the vulnerable, the lower-class citizens, the poor. That is me and you. You see, since the advent of the consumerist, capitalist age, value is created through scarcity and control of that scarcity. Few must have, while most lack. The haves and the have nots must exist, side by side. Now imagine the current social inequalities on steroids! For how can you compete with a group of people who are better than you in every conceivable way. Stronger, taller, fairer, healthier, and for the cherry on the top, perhaps 10 times smarter than you could ever hope to be! They will be gods among men as they who have made the genetic leap become the much more superior species than the Homo sapiens sapiens. Then, the truest, most unfair form of bourgeois-proletariat class struggle will be borne, and Karl Marx will surely weep in his grave. 

 You probably wondering how is this the better scenario? Apologies dear reader, it gets even grimmer.

 The worst-case scenario is the ultimate loss of humanity. I mean the loss of that which truly makes us human. That which defines us. The human dignity, our vulnerability, our very basis of existence, which sets us apart from other life forms on earth, perhaps even in the universe. Our capacity to conjure nothingness into something of true greatness - our creativity, the power of pure thought. Our sense of individuality, uniqueness of personality, the separation of one from the other within – that is – the conscious reality, the awareness of our internal and external existence. Our capacity for hope will dwindle as well because, it takes courage to hope, but there can be no courage without fear.

 Please, don’t confuse bravery with courage. Bravery is instinctual, it is a reaction without thought. Courage on the hand is acting despite the threat of fear, here go, it takes courage to believe things can or will get better even at the worst of times. That now, is being human. So, without fear of bodily or emotional harm, without fear of death, without fear of loss, we cease to be human. And the that is the folly of transhumanism.

 Transhumanism, which is the strive to transcend that which is defined to be human, seeks to eliminate fear from the human condition. But is this not exactly what is described about Huxley’s dystopian world.? The maintenance of singular personal identities among all people by fostering simple desires and complacency, resulting in a behavioural collective. With a singular personal identities, human thoughts, desires, and behaviours become predictable. With predictability, every one knows what to expect; hence, everything can be planned for and none is left unprepared. Every contingency is put in place to ensure all iterations of change are predicted and managed, and that is all in service of eliminating fear from the string of unwelcomed human emotions. Therefore, it seems logical for Huxley’s world to cultivate complacency and simple desires for they generate a comfortable routine, which again eliminates any surprises. Furthermore, personal attachments have been relegated to antiquity and this again is owed to the drive to exterminate fear since without getting emotionally attached, we become free from fear of loss and grief. This is why at the height of the transhumanist agenda in Huxley’s world, the drug soma is used to exterminate fundamental human passions and emotions, especially those that lead to negative feelings.

 My greatest fear, which is cherish dearly for being a part of me, is that the match towards such dystopic future has already been initiated. Biotech has begun foundations for a genetically engineered civilization through genome editing, stem-cell research, and assisted reproductive therapies or ARTs. The contemporary world has welcomed its machinations of genetic engineering by popularizing IVF and surrogacy. I admit there are positive sides to ARTs, but I am not a half-full-glass kind of a guy enough not to point out that the risks of moral degeneration and total ethical anarchy are simply too great to ignore.

 Moreso, Big Pharma has overly-medicated the current world. Many of us seem to be on something nowadays, whether to suppress physical or emotional pain, or to maximize the joy during the fun moments. We apparently do not want to feel the bad feelings or be distracted by them from seeking pleasure. The hooks of escapist predilections and tendencies might be far too deep than we realize. This especially with the proliferation of social media platforms, which of course have their beneficial attractions, but they seem to either rile our temperaments and twist our psyches to a point that we seek various means to escape reality or use the same platforms as channels for escapism. So, I can imagine the role that VR technology could perform in beckoning a dystopic reality closer. VR could facilitate a higher level of escapism through the virtual world that is curated with everything one requires to keep their body intoxicated with adrenaline and dopamine, hours after hours, and days after days. Now, what happens when VR technology advances far enough to be almost indistinguishable from actual reality (evidence for a simulation model of existence – I digress). In a reality that you can do anything, you can be anyone, and free of all emotional burdens of the human condition, at least when plugged in, which reality do you think many will choose???

 In conclusion to this odyssey of a deservedly melodramatic retrospection, I leave you dear reader with a review of another dystopic literature, one that begins with the guise of a utopic existence, just like our own world today, but steadily and surely descends into a dystopia. I locate the very signs and features of dystopia in Zamyatin’s world, and I ask you to see if you can trace them to some beginnings of dystopic tendencies in our own, current civilization.

 In We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, the dystopic tendencies depicted in the text include the depiction of a world in which the concept of love is a distant memory, having evolved into existence based only on logical rationale in an effort to eradicate the worst aspects of human emotions. Despite the fact that love is a fundamental human emotion, its loss is the first symptom of a dystopian existence, which was exacerbated by the tremendous isolation the characters in the narrative experienced. Zamyatin proposes a society in which individuals live behind a glass wall, protected from the elements and their usual stresses. The protagonist's perceptions of the outside world, which he saw as irrational and chaotic but felt like a happy place in compared to the inside, were the first to reveal the book's dystopic nature. Second, the transformational choice of the people appears to have been abolished; hence, independent rational decisions cannot occur. Therefore, the transhumanist ideals of eradicating the inherent characteristics that make us human and shape the human situation result in a dystopia, notwithstanding any initially altruistic resolve to eliminate all forms of human misery.