Günther Anders on Promethean Shame (Part 2)

We used to think that we humans were free and the machines we constructed determined and unfree. But this is no longer so. Today, in a curious contortion, we are the ones who appear unfree, and the machines enjoy the freedom that we lack. Increasingly, we think of ourselves as being shackled by our own nature, which, we believe, has not changed very much, if at all, since the stone age. (And aren’t we indeed constantly being told by proponents of human enhancement that the forces of evolution have shaped us for a world that no longer exists and that in order to catch up with the world we have created we need to recreate ourselves?) It is our physical body that, in our own perception, makes us unfree, that ties us to the past and makes us unfit for the future (and indeed the present). From the perspective of the machines, human nature is nothing but a nuisance: “conservative, unprogressive, antiquated, irrevisable, a dead weight in the rise of the machines”. We could achieve so much more if it weren’t for us and our defective nature. We see ourselves, as Anders puts it, as the saboteurs of our own achievements, and we are no longer willing to put up with this. So something needs to be done: we have to find a way to become more machine-like, to mould ourselves as we now mould things to assimilate them to our needs and wants. Our Promethean shame makes us embrace and promote the idea of “human engineering”, which now appears as something that we owe both to our machines and to ourselves. After all, we wouldn’t want to be judged a disappointment by our betters. In relation to our machines we are like children, and growing up, in this new interpretation of Schiller’s “education of humankind”, means leaving behind our being human. (Compare Nick Bostrom’s “Why I Want to be Posthuman When I Grow Up”).

Machines are our heroes. We yearn to be like them. We see ourselves as “scandalous non-machines”. Yet machines always have a certain purpose. They are highly specialised. Human engineering aims at making the human more specialised, at perfecting a particular ability or capacity to which the human is a mere appendix, at best tolerated, but no longer of central importance. Thus the superhuman that human engineering is meant to create is at the same time a subhuman.

This sounds familiar. Similar concerns have been raised by Leon Kass. Yet Anders denies that he is what today we are used to call a bioconservative (he uses the term “metaphysical conservative”). The point is not that everything that is, is good simply because it is (or that human nature is good and should remain what it is simply because it is our nature) – which would be an untenable position –, but rather that we are willing to change ourselves for the sake of our machines, that we measure ourselves by their standards, instead of our own, and that, in doing this, we limit or even relinquish our own freedom. The aspiring human engineer may well suffer from hubris (as a common objection has it), but he also suffers from misplaced humility, which is not a contradiction. “The ‘human engineer is in fact both: arrogant and self-deprecating, hubristic and humble. His attitude is arrogated self-abasement and hubristic humility.”

So when we compare ourselves to machines, in what way exactly do we find ourselves wanting? One of the gravest defects seems to be our perishability. We grow old, we die. In comparison, the things that we create seem to be immortal, at least potentially so, because very often when they are not it is because we want them to stop working after a certain period of time (so that more products can be sold). But even those things are immortal in the sense that they can always be duplicated and replaced. Our products partake in a new version of immortality: “industrial re-incarnation”. They have a serial existence. This light bulb or washing machine may give up its ghost after a few years, but then we can easily get a new one that is exactly like the old one, or at least one that does exactly the same job, if not a better one. Their very reproducibility and replaceability guarantees their immortality. How lucky they are! We on the other hand, their creators, go bad very quickly and we cannot be replaced. How shameful that is, how unbearable! Again, something needs to be done. We feel that it cannot, it should not stay like this. (And indeed, isn’t that what some life extension enthusiasts imagine we will achieve in the future? Mind-uploading, for instance, to a computer or to a new body, is the achievement of immortality by making the body replaceable. Others envisage a periodical cleansing of the mind of all memories to prevent mental ageing and the boredom of an overly prolonged existence, which creates a different kind of serial existence.)

Anders’s great insight is that the human enhancement project is motivated by shame. We are ashamed of our body, our physical nature, our mere-humanness, our vulnerability and perishability, and not despite the fact that none of this is our fault, but precisely because it is (or has been for a long time) beyond our control and not the result of a conscious decision. It is the very givenness of our nature that we resent (which explains why Michael Sandel’s argument from giftedness is so often ridiculed and received with so much hostility by proponents of radical human enhancement.) It is the fact that we cannot do anything about it that we are ashamed of. It belies our claims of autonomy, freedom and control. That is also the reason why we tend to be ashamed of our sexuality. Sex is a “pudendum” precisely because it makes us lose control and voices our dependency. It shows us in the grip of nature, of that which lies beyond and before us, and reminds us that the “I” (the individual in control of herself) is a rather fragile construction on the back of a powerful “It” (the nature that controls the doings of the self). And we don’t like that one bit. So what we are trying to do is regain control over ourselves, and that means to gain control also, and perhaps even primarily, over our sexuality, without realising that the only thing we can hope to achieve by this is that we manage to replace one It by another: the natural It of the body by the artificial It of the machine.

RoboRoach: the First Commercially Available Cyborg

The small startup company Backyard Brains is looking for people willing to fund the launch of a new learning tool: cockroaches with an electronic device on their backs connected to the neurons in their antennas, which allows the user to control their movements with a mobile phone: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/backyardbrains/the-roboroach-control-a-living-insect-from-your-sm

“When you send the command from your mobile phone, the backpack sends signals to the antenna, which causes the neurons to fire, which causes the roach to think there is a wall on one side. The result? The roach turns!” This will work only for a few minutes, though. The roaches quickly wise up and ignore the literally misguiding information. Hailed as the first commercially available cyborg, the roboroach is claimed to be very useful to teach students “how our brains work”. However, the main insights to be gained here are, first, that you can actually manipulate animals by messing about with their sense organs and brains and thereby tricking them into believing that things exist which in fact do not, and if that is possible, we may reasonably infer, then it may also be possible to trick the human brain into believing in the existence of things that do not exist. But does that really come as a surprise? Didn’t we know that already? And aren’t there easier and more direct way to demonstrate this?

The second, and by far more interesting, insight to be gained from the experiment is that it doesn’t take the roaches long to realise that they are being tricked. How the hell did they figure that out? Their senses tell them there is a wall, but after a short while they know there isn’t, while (presumably) their senses still insist that there is. Remarkable little buggers! So what have we really learned from this? How our brains work? Hardly. What we have learned is rather that even the brain of a cockroach – or more simply: a cockroach - is far more complex than our customary disregard for these creatures prompts us to believe. And also perhaps that reality has a way of reasserting itself.

However, my guess is that most people will use the technique not to gain or generate that insight, or to learn anything at all, but rather because they are fascinated by the prospect of actually being able to remote-control a living being. To subject its will to our will, directly, without recourse to physical violence, that is an experience many will be quite willing to pay for. It’s a kind of mind-control, which is more complete than any other kind of control. It is a vision of ultimate power, which promises an excellent opportunity to satisfy what Michael Sandel has dubbed our drive to mastery. Thus we are probably much more interested in the few minutes during which the cockroach actually does what we want it to do than we are in the power of agency that only all too soon allows it to free itself from our reign. That alone may be a good reason not to promote the widespread use of roboroaches.

Are there any other concerns that we should take into account? The RSPCA has complained about the project, saying that encouraging children to “dismantle and deconstruct” and “deliberately harm” insects was “inappropriate”. In principle I would agree, except that in this particular case it is rather doubtful whether those insects are deliberately harmed, or even harmed at all. Neither are they dismantled and deconstructed. In fact the company takes so much care to make sure that the animals are not harmed that it borders on the absurd. Given that we live in a society in which mammals and other clearly sentient animals are not only being slaughtered every day in their millions to satisfy our appetite, but also used in countless other ways, many of which inflict suffering and distress on them, it is hard to see why we should worry so much about the well-being of cockroaches. We are, after all, talking about beings that most people would not think twice to swat or poison when they find them in their kitchen. We cannot even be reasonably certain that they feel anything at all. And now we are suddenly worried about their well-being? Come on. I’m not saying that the well-being of cockroaches should not matter at all to us (although I do believe that such a view would be defensible). My point is rather that it seems hypocritical to make such a fuss about it, especially since Backyard Brains really seem to go out of their way to make sure that the insects are not harmed in the process.

Just look at the detailed surgical instructions they helpfully provide:  http://wiki.backyardbrains.com/RoboRoach_Surgery “Adults have wings and will no longer molt. Therefore, affixing a connector to their heads permanently is fine. NOTE: if you glue an electrode connector to a juvenile cockroach (no wings), it will not be able to split its exoskeleton when molting and will die. Do not do this surgery on juvenile cockroaches.” And the various things you then have to do to get the cockroach ready are all supposed to be reversible and done while it is anesthetized (by being dunked in ice water for a few minutes), and once it has done its job and the experiment is over, you are instructed to carefully, very gently remove the device and the wires, clean the cockroach, and then take care of it until it dies peacefully of old age: “You can now retire your RoboRoach from active duty status and allow it to spend the rest of its cockroach life eating organic lettuce, playing in toilet paper and work scraps, and raising a family.”

It seems clear to me that if we really take the instructions provided seriously and are being taught to follow them to the letter, then, although the cockroach is clearly used as a means, it is never used merely as a means, but always also as an end. And if we are thereby constantly reminded that they really are such ends and not merely means, then there may well be something that the RoboRoach can teach us: not how our brains work, but that even cockroaches have a life and a will of their own and deserve to be respected.