Mice flee from serpents, antelope from lions, fish from sharks, and human beings from (or toward, rather) each other. Survival is the aim, and no fit organism—Darwin argues—strives to do otherwise. The fit continue, the unfit do not, and the means don’t really matter much. Of course, the self-reflective being asks why, and now the debate begins about what exactly humanity should do to survive. To what end should we abet technology? Shall we seek to eradicate Alzheimer’s, AIDS, and Cancer? What next: shall we work to extend the average human lifespan from the mid seventies into the two or three hundreds? Why not the 1000s? The capping question, finally, is if we should seek to achieve our own immortality.
Everyone dies, as cliché as it is to those wishing to jolt the depressed psyche of humanity for brief moments of purposeful action, is true, and as Kierkegaard rightly noted, should be approached with a special type of earnestness. But what if the question was undone and needed qualification? What if there existed two classes of beings—those to whom everyone dies is relevant, and those to whom it simply isn’t true? Ray Kurzweil says it’s possible. In fact, he has boldly predicted that by 2045, human beings will have merged with technology in such a way that renders them immortal. Humans will actually transcend themselves (as they cannot but do, Kurzweil argues) and overcome death. And it isn’t just a hopeful theory of his. Stephen Hawking, today’s superhuman Einstein, thinks it will happen as well.
The U.S. Bioethics commission has taken upon Kurzweil’s concerns and topics and made them a top research priority. Oxford University’s World Transhumanist Association follows suit, and even modern geniuses like Bill Gates recognize the direction bioethical technology is moving. Kurzweil’s 2045 prediction, though bold, is not really all that important unless one subscribes to his self-defined Law of Accelerated Returns or Moore’s Law regarding the exponential increase in technological capabilities. What is important, however, is that bioethical technology is oriented in the same direction as the mice, antelope, and fish. We want to survive, and for as long as possible. Immortality is the epilogue. The important question that I want to ask is should it be?
In this piece, I want to begin at a distant point in time in time where humanity has actually merged with its technology and become immortal. All disease has been eradicated, matter itself can be manipulated, laws of nature can be created or done away with, and “humanity” should really no longer have “human” as a part of its name, and will therefore be referred to as the “gods.” In this hypothetically proposed age of posthumanity, the human race has diverged into completely separate species (posthumans and humans). But unlike the differences between many species, the differences between god and human are similar to our current conceptual differences between beast and man—ones in which the very being of each is fundamentally different. Because of this ontological change (a change that will be described in detail in the coming pages), the somewhat obvious question of whether the remaining humans should change into gods arises (or if the gods should change back, if possible). In order to answer this question, it must be asked whether the gods and humans share one good, or if both have different goods. I will argue on the side of the latter by claiming that the good of a species is relative to its ontology. Any comparison of goods is therefore unfruitful. But there remains one objection to such a conclusion that needs mentioning, and it claims that any comparison of goods is unfruitful indeed, lest there be some being that has been/is in every sense of the word (quite literally is in a total sense). And such a being (I will argue) is the only being that can compare and offer an answer to the question of whether humanity should change its ontology (i.e. become gods).
Before delving into the crux of the argument, it will be necessary to set the scene in which the debate takes place in a bit more detail. In this prospective future, as mentioned, there exist two distinct classes of beings: humans and gods. Except for some extrinsic technological advances (not unlike things we currently have and use), humans are largely the same as they currently are. That is to say, their ontological properties are no different than ours. Humans exist spatiotemporally and are always already oriented towards death. Every human being will die, and this death is an individual experience (no person can die for another). Death is therefore fundamentally limiting and has substantial bearing on how one ought to live. As human beings drift forward in time, they are faced with certain possibilities. Such possibilities can include, but are certainly not limited to (Note: I am not seeking to engage ontology as Heidegger does at great length, I am instead spouting out some obvious existential features that are so familiar to us that they sometimes escape our immediate attention), career paths, identity formation, forming and sustaining relationships, and assimilating a compendium of knowledge. And since only a certain number of possibilities may be fulfilled in the relatively small number of years each human lives, a human may only live “one life” so to speak. They therefore live on a singular line (though it may branch many times in many different directions) with a beginning and an end, and any other possibility of what could have been accomplished or known is extinguished along with the last dying neuron (this is not meant to be nihilistic, but instead a characterization of what happens between birth and inevitable death regardless of the possible existence an afterlife). As each choice is confronted, only one direction may be taken. For even if the human turns around and wants to go in another direction (like multiple career paths, for instance), this may only be done so many times (even then no choice can be undone and tried again), as there is only so much time he or she has to act.
The gods, on the other hand, are humans who have merged with technology in such a way that has made them immortal. But they are not just immortal, as if they were merely “undying human beings.” Rather, they are existentially different insofar as they are able to cope with and exist throughout eternity. While a human being’s memory is degenerative, the memory of the gods is unlimited, and despite such infinite boundaries, is stored in memory banks smaller than quarks for rebooting into new bodies should one be destroyed. While humans have five senses, the gods have a number increasing towards an undefined slope/singularity (more are constantly developed), which are wholly indescribable in the same way as describing “purple” to the blind or “loud” to the deaf is impossible. So it is not as if the gods are stuck in eternity for better or for worse—they are rather equipped to exist in eternity. But the way in which they are equipped may not be fully understood from a human perspective, because human beings existing for eternity would not arguably be good. To some, it is the content of nightmares. And this is where our focus should narrow—on the distinction between the good of humanity and the good of the gods as being relative to the ontology of each. For while humans are, ontologically speaking, always already oriented towards death and fundamentally limited in myriad ways, the gods are not. The gods are always already oriented towards potential—a literally infinite array of possibilities. They do not exist as a scattered line, but instead as a shaded plane. They can experience everything and are poised to experience the always-extending plane of such future possibilities.
At the same time, however, there are many similarities between gods and men, which will need to be recognized and analyzed. Beasts and humanity, for instance, share the same world, exist concurrently, spatiotemporally, and in time. Both need sustenance to live, the lives of both are finite, both have an intrinsic desire to survive, and both share many of the same behaviors like seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. But humanity also has language, self-reflection, identity formation, complex societies, creative instinct, and reason and freedom (as opposed to mere “determined instinct”). And it is through these additional features that humanity has come to discover things like meaning, morality, discourse, and purpose.
As human beings, we dare to ask “why” and come up with theories that attempt to get at truth. More pertinently stated for the purposes of this essay—we come up with theories that strive for a correct conception of our good—how we ought to live. How truth is properly arrived at, or what the best moral theory/approach is, or why we seek to do any of these things in the first place, however, is not directly relevant, except for the fact that the way in which we can engage in such disciplines, ask such questions, and reflect upon experience is wholly limited by our existential features (our “ontology”).
Such existential features, then, are like tools, though this is an admittedly crude analogy, as the use of tools is volitional and concatenational, while being is an uncontrolled, always-already-all-at-once-ensemble. And at the same time, there is volition within some existentially distinct features like language and reason, and so this is where the analogy should be applied. Hence, our ontology is like a bag of existential hammers, nails, nuts, and bolts by which to discover truth and meaning and to ask what the good of humanity is.
A second, albeit more passive, analogy that may prove helpful to some is existential features being like a window, as opposed to something external, like tools. Viewed as capabilities, a species’ ontology is a window by which to view the good. But such a window is narrow, may only be viewed from afar, thus revealing only a sliver of the good beyond, and is incomplete and even slightly distorting. This sliver of the good should then be conceptualized as our good, as it is our specific window and vision. A tree’s window is some place else, as is a bear’s or a god’s. Hence, it would be foolish for the human or god to claim that their sliver is appropriate or somehow better than another’s. They are all good, but they are also all incomplete.
Moreover, it is possible for an individual or species to come to a false conception of the good, which would be analogous to using a hammer for measuring or putting one’s ear up to the window to see the deer in the field. For to use these analogies is not to say that morality or the good is what each one makes it—no—to use these analogies, as I will argue, is to say that the good has objective bearing over all within an ontology: what it is to be a good human—what a god ought to do.
Beasts, in contrast to humans, have a more limited set of existential features by which to “discover” their own good, which we most often claim to be survival and procreation (whether we can discover or even understand the good of another ontologically different species in the first place will be addressed later). It would be absurd to say that the good of beasts is to enter into discourse, via language, with fellow beasts and humans in order to discover universal maxims, because beasts lack the necessary equipment to realize such a good.
This contrast between beasts and humanity can be applied to humanity and the gods. While they too have shared, existential qualities, they too have distinct ones. And as was noted before, the good of a species may only be actualized through one’s ontology. But this situation is more delicate, because the differences themselves are understood by both. That is, it is possible for me to understand that the gods live forever and can manipulate the foundational features of gravity or light on a whim. Similarly, the gods can understand that humans inevitably die and live their lives with this in mind. But just because such differences may be understood does not mean that they may be compared.
This point may be illustrated by examining the difference between a widower and a married man. Both men are asked to compare whether it is worse to lose their spouse or their daughter. For the sake of argument, it will be the case that the widower has also lost his only daughter, while the married man has only lost his daughter. In this situation, the married man certainly understands the idea/possibility of losing his wife. He may imagine what it would be like and he could try to predict what getting through it might entail. But he will still not know what it is like unless it actually happens. The widower, by comparison, knows exactly what it is like to lose his wife, and also knows exactly what it is like to lose a daughter, because both have happened to him. It would not be unreasonable, then, to ask him which loss caused him more pain. In an analogous way, it does not seem unreasonable to ask the god which “good” is better, since both have been experienced, as opposed to merely understood in a linguistic way.
The necessary criteria for judging whether it is worse to lose one’s wife or daughter, then, is having experienced both. Shifting back to gods and men, if two goods may be compared and judged, then there must be some objective criteria by which to judge the two. Such criteria, then, would need to be recognized by both the gods and humans in the same way. So if the gods, for instance, examined both goods according to such an objective criteria and found that the good of humanity is better than the good of the gods, then the gods should therefore “change back” into humans in order to take part in the better good. The same may be said of the converse. But it seems to be impossible for such an objective criteria to be viewed/realized at all by either species as it currently is, because it cannot be known if every aspect of such a criteria is even being realized because of the limited ontologies of each. In the case of the widower and married man, the criteria is confined to a specific ontology, but in the case of ultimate goods, we are going beyond ontology to find/access the necessary criteria. Humanity can only “use” its own existential features to try to access it. It can only look through it’s own window. It could be the case that there are further components or nuances to the criteria that cannot be accessed by humanity or the gods. Of course, it cannot be speculated on how this might be so, because if I could adequately describe an area of the criteria that cannot be accessed by humanity, I would, in effect, be accessing it. The same may be said of the gods. Nevertheless, how it is exactly that such an objective criteria is accessed, or how it is that one can even know that he or she or it has accessed it seems to be problematic (for gods and humans). In short, in order for a human or god to say that he or she or it has discovered the criteria appears to beg the question by assuming that their own ontology is a sufficient method of approach.
What we then have is the proposition that the good of any individual species is relative to its ontology, and cannot be said to be better than another’s (so far). This rids the need for an objective criteria altogether, and gives rise to the somewhat surprising conclusion that morality is indeed relative (though certainly not in the individualistic or cultural way most moral relativists assert). Nonetheless, perhaps the most important problem that arises now is how humanity should decide when it comes to changing its ontology. After all, it is this very question that is at the center of the entire debate surrounding posthumanism—whether we should seek to become gods or not.
If we stop at the above conclusion—that morality is relative, and no two goods are better than the other (but are instead merely different), then the question becomes as pointless as asking whether I should step out of my bedroom in the morning with my left or right foot. So in response to the question, I must admit that if I claim that humanity either should or should not change, then I am implying that the two goods may be compared by me, which has already been shown to be impossible. The seemingly obvious answer, then, is that one does not know which is better. But it needs to be noted that such an answer is also problematic, because it presupposes that there is some kind of objective criteria by which to judge goods, and the argument so far has dismissed the possibility of either humanity or the gods being able to access such a criteria. So a better answer might be that the question is fallacious—it may only be said that the goods are different—do what you please. But the argument so far has assumed that neither species has ever changed. So while the argument holds for two independently arisen species (as opposed to one evolving out of the other in a single moment), it does not necessarily hold for existing gods that were once humans. In order to sufficiently address the transformation question, therefore, the implications of transformation must be addressed.
As was argued, relative goods are realized via existential “tools,” and as such are arrived at through experience. By “experience,” however, I do not wish to say that goods are realized empirically, because it is much more basic than that. Not all existential features are strictly empirical (reason, for example is not). But if “experience” is defined as the employment of existential features (the only way we can and always already engage the world), then I certainly mean to say that experience is how we arrive at the good. So if an individual has experienced two ontologies, it would seem to be the case that she may compare the two. How the comparison is performed, however, may not be speculated on, because I can only speculate according to my own ontology’s limits. Who knows what kinds of existential features the hybrid being (the god, in this case) may have at her disposal. Nevertheless, a comparison by the god is still necessarily incomplete, because it could be the case, logically, that while one ontology’s good is deemed worse than another’s, it could be a necessary step towards yet another, better ontology. Unlike the widower example, this is not a matter of preference, but a matter of what ought to be done. It would not be unlike a child going through the often-unpleasant adolescent phase towards the better end-phase of adulthood (assuming adulthood is better than childhood). While adolescence is not as pleasant or “good” as childhood, it is a necessary step towards adulthood. So no matter how many ontologies an individual has “had,” she would need to have experienced all possible ontologies (presumably infinite) in order to come to a conclusion as to which is best—she would need to be in a total/infinite sense. For without having experienced all possible—even if infinite—ontologies, the species claiming that its ontology is superior (or inferior) could just be in an “adolescent phase” necessary for transformation into a better ontology.
The experience of all possible ontologies, therefore, is the necessary “objective criteria” touched upon earlier. What would therefore be required for one to make a meaningful decision to change his or her or its ontology is the instruction/advice of a being that has experienced all ontologies/whose ontology has expanded maximally. Such advice could arguably be communicated, though this can only be said if the ontology of the being is such that includes commensurable language. However, it would be impossible to know if the being is who it says it is, as there would be no way of knowing to what extent its wisdom or knowledge or experience ranges. Ultimately, accepting the advice of the only possible being who could offer it could only be made by faith—faith in the idea that such a being actually had our best interest in mind in leading us along the good path. But no matter which way we choose to act we are acting in faith, because we have already said that without the existence of the final being, we cannot make a meaningful decision regarding changing our ontology. A step of faith, even by those who have none, must be taken.
