A lot
of controversy has developed, as scientists have pushed forward research
involving the injection of animal embryos with human genes, in order to develop
human organs that can be harvested for use by humans in need of them. There are long waiting lists of humans who
need organs like kidneys, hearts and livers, and using organs created through
these animal embryos would shorten the wait significantly. However, it involves blurring the lines
between humans and other animals in ways that make many ethicists as well as
ordinary citizens feel extremely uncomfortable.
The name for any combination of two or more animals is chimera. It comes from a creature in Greek mythology
that was part lion, part goat and part snake.
To
me, the real problem is how these people may experience what the growing human
cells will encounter in these combinations.
It is as if the human cells are grounded in a biological living
environment where they don’t belong and can never truly feel grounded. It would be as if the higher consciousness that
could be attributed to the human cells is constantly being dragged down by the
animal embryo. That the animal embryo is
constantly trying to undifferentiate, to make more primitive, the higher
consciousness in the human cells in order to make it fit more easily in the
animal embryo. And, of course, the human
side of the chimera would be constantly trying to rise above, to transcend, the
animal embryo in order to maintain its integrity, its coherence. In other words, there really is no perceived merger
on the mind level, and creating a laboratory chimera would be seen as leading
to the creation of a creature with two warring natures where the human nature
is constantly threatened with being swallowed up and destroyed.
So there are two perceived threats to the
human side of a chimera: that of being trapped in an alien biological grounding
and that of being dominated by an alien more primitive biological will. Actually, there may be a third threat. The threat of the more primitive animal side
somehow exploiting the higher consciousness of the human side in order to give
greater power to the chimera as a whole.
The point is that with the animal side, although it’s built from an
organic entity that has an inferior state of consciousness to the human side of
the chimera, it nevertheless could invariably have some power to exploit,
almost enslave, the human side for its own purposes. At least, these are the kinds of thoughts
that could bother those people who are concerned about the blurring of the
lines between species in a human-animal chimera. And although there are those who accept and
approve the creation of chimeras in order to promote the medical possibilities
of creating donor organs, there are many who are really concerned about the
crossing of the lines between species in the creation of hybrid organisms.
In
addition, we have the situation that there has been work done on the
implantation of pig organs in people who need an organ transplant but can’t
find the appropriate organ from a human.
This implanting of animal parts in humans is called
xenoimplantation. This has a similarity
to the situation of the animals growing human organs but sort of in
reverse. Instead of human parts growing
in animals, we are dealing with animal parts placed in humans. It also is raising a lot of concerns about
blurring the lines between animals and humans.
Could some organic consciousness in the pig organ influence or ever take
over the consciousness of the human? Pig
heart valves are already used successfully in heart transplants.
With
all these concerns about human-animal hybrids, there seems to be far less
concern about a different kind of hybrid: the hybrid of humans and
machines. This is definitely not the
kind of hybrid that one would have found in Greek mythology. This is a hybrid that has been brought to the
forefront in today’s world as a result of modern technology. Initially, it has been a matter of adding or
replacing small components of humans.
Things like knee or hip replacements and pacemakers. But now we are implanting chips for all kinds
of purposes. And some people fantasize
about becoming part machine, so that physically they can become more durable
and perhaps even immortal. This is the
foundation of thinking for becoming a cyborg – a part human, part machine that
supposedly would be immortal and indestructible. The most famous fantasy cyborg in modern
times is probably the Terminator as portrayed by Arnold Schwartzenegger.
The
reason there seems to be less concern with human-machine combinations as
opposed to human-animal combinations is that there is the assumption that the
machine component in a cyborg will always somehow be the servant of the human
component’s needs and will never invade the integrity of the human component’s
sense of self and try to control, manipulate or take over the human
component. This, of course, is very
different from the expectation of many people with regard to chimeras or people
with implanted animal organs where the complex behavioral entity thus created is
composed of two distinct organic entities that potentially can be at odds with
one another, and where the animal component is perceived as being capable of
and disposed to somehow exert some control over the human component. Somehow the feeling is that the machine is
always the servant of the human even when they are merged together in a
cyborg.
But
what if this vision of the machine component isn’t always correct. As machines become more and more complex due
to technological advances, they become increasingly capable, as a result of
human directives, of developing behavior relatively independent of the commands
and controls of their human creators and managers. This pattern can be seen in Artificial
Intelligence (AI). This pattern could
also be present in cyborgs. What if some
advanced cyborgs are created in the future, where the machine component emerges
from relative complacency to become a domineering controlling entity? Just as with the chimeras, where the animal
component could become a controlling model for the human component, gradually undifferentiating the human
component into a more primitive version of itself, the machine or robot
component could become a controlling model for the human component in a cyborg
and make the human component more robotized.
So we
would have to say that creating cyborgs can be seen to be every bit as
threatening to the idea of human integrity as creating chimeras. In both cases, there is a perceived
undifferentiation of the human component by the non-human component to a more
limited version of what it means to be human.
The balance between figure aspects and ground aspects in the human
hybrid is thrown off. In the case of the
chimera, a human component immerses itself into a more primitive overly
grounded environment (the animal embryo), where it tends to lose its
transcendent well-defined sense of self.
In becoming more primitive, the human component becomes more enveloped
by natural forces which blur its boundaries.
And the human with a transplanted animal organ could become
undifferentiated by more primitive internal natural forces. On the other hand, in merging with a machine,
the human component in a cyborg develops a rigid external self-definition, but
tends to lose its flowing blendable continual coherence because of a void of
organic grounding. The sense of self
becomes a simpler almost digital version of itself, with a more delimited
infinity of possible stimuli it can receive and a more delimited infinity of
possible responses.
Up
until recently, the history of humanity has consisted of expanding our
consciousness, expanding our reflexive awareness and our sense of self in order
to be able to dominate and control the phenomena that surround us, in order to
be able to make and preserve our organic imprints, so we can prepare for death
with a strong surrogate immortality. But
by creating human-animal chimeras, humans with implanted animal organs and
human-machine cyborgs, we are creating complex behavioral entities that have
human components, but that potentially have diminished human consciousness and
a diminished human sense of self. Right
now chimeras are only used for specific situations. The implantation of animal organs in humans
is still in its very early stages of development. Humans that have metal and plastic parts are
becoming more common, but true cyborgs, where much of the body and brain have
been mechanized by the addition of machine components are still themes for
science fiction. But what happens if the
chimeras somehow get into the general population? What happens if implantation of whole animal
organs becomes more successful? What
happens if we succeed in creating true cyborgs?
In these cases, the more common presence of these hybrid complex
behavioral entities could possibly, in the long run, represent a diminishing of
the special place of human beings in the animal kingdom. And to be in the presence of these human
hybrids could lead to unconscious mirroring for what we would have to call pure
non-hybrid humans. These hybrids could
be like bridges for behavior that would be a step down for the unique behavior
of humans. And ultimately, there could
be a subtle transformation of the human sense of self. This would not bode well for the future of
humanity.
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