JUST BECAUSE YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND
DOESN'T MEAN ITS NOT REAL

By: Frederick Meekins

An old adage posits that what you don’t know can’t hurt you.  Whoever came up with that one obviously had little imagination to foresee the horrors about to be set loose upon the earth in the years and decades to come. 

In my column  “Scientists Suggest Bestiality”, I wrote about findings by MIT and Harvard researchers suggesting that millions of years ago ancient humans and chimpanzees engaged in interspecies liaisons resulting in fecund offspring, bolstering the claims by a growing number of geneticists and the like that the boundaries between the species might not be as set in stone (or at least DNA) as at one time thought.  It is deplorable enough some would interpret the data in this fashion (as frankly there aren’t that many interspecies pornos dating back that far to serve as irrefutable evidence) to further undermine the uniqueness of man in their attempt to bolster the Darwinian hypothesis that one form of life is essentially no better than any other.   However, things grow even more disturbing when one realizes that there are adherents of this particular worldview that believe that it is not enough that all species are the same morally but that they must all be merged into the same species ontologically. 

Also in the column, I pointed out the attempts whispered about in hushed tones through the pages of speculative history about attempts overseen by the devotees of perdition seeking to intermingle man and ape hoping to conjure an abomination synthesizing attributes of each such as Stalin’s plot to breed a hybrid ape-man solider, various Chinese experiments, and rumors about what went on behind the closed doors of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.  For daring to comment on the moral implications of the issue and speculating where it might be headed in the future, those of limited imagination accused me of being “mentally sick” and possibly being a member of the John Birch Society (though I am not as I seldom join membership groups for reasons similar to Batman’s one-time leeriness of the Justice League, philosophically, the JBS is not all that bad of a group to belong to). 

Call me a kook all you want as sanity is often overrated.  However, one cannot attribute my speculations to “having watched Tank Girl one too many times” as I was accused of by one sophisticate so sure of what he thinks reality will be like a few decades hence if the good Lord has not intervened to put a stop to it by then. 

If my prognostications are too much for you to handle as some have said at times I am “just too real”, perhaps more down to earth sources such as Albert Mohler (head of Southern Baptist Seminary) and the Boston Globe are more your style.    With considerably more to lose in terms of finances and prestige as a result of their writings if they are labeled a lunatic than I do, one will find their conclusions backed by current scientific speculation and academic theorizing. 

Both Albert Mohler, in “Listening To The Transhumanists”, and Cathy Young of the Boston Globe, in “Transhumanism : Yearning To Transcend Biology”, analyze a conference held at Stanford Law School titled “Human Enhancement Technologies & Human Rights”.  In an age where it is nearly impossible to keep track of the countless laws threatening both human life and liberty, the eggheads in whose hands rest our earthly fates have decided such confusion is not enough to keep them occupied as they endeavor to craft entire new bodies of law akin to as if Judge Judy had set up court in the bar scene from Star Wars. 

Employing typical postmodernist rhetoric, conference luminaries claimed to be offering liberation by attempting to prevent us from being seen as mere “biopower” and, in the words of the conferees as reported by Albert Mohler, from the “political struggles that structure the occupation of one’s embodied space (whatever that all means” .  But in order to deliver on the promise, postmodernism must cut off humanity’s nose to spite its face. 

Usually that statement is meant in a metaphorical sense.  However, according to Albert Mohler, the tenured loons to whom high salaries are paid to subvert our culture and brainwash the nation’s young are so unbalanced that they might very well take the adage literally as it was suggested at the conference that individuals should have the right to amputate healthy limbs to prevent themselves from being used as “biopower for the state”, no doubt instead being supported by the remainder of us not quite progressive enough to be ungrateful for an otherwise functioning body. 

The average person unaccustomed to the intellectual confusion that today passes as profound scholastic innovation would be shocked by such a proposal.  However, some lunatic with a hacksaw thinking he’s Vincent Van Gogh is actually quite mild when compared with the future being planned for us by these deluded technocrats. 

Those gathered at the Stanford conference waxed eloquent and no doubt grew misty-eyed about the moral obligation to uplift “non-human animals” (and they aren’t talking about making sure these critters have a full bowl of water, are brought inside on a cold night, or receive an occasional scratch on the belly or behind the ears).  Rather, what these theoretical futurists are suggesting is that we should tinker around with these organisms until they are on par with the rest of us in terms of intelligence and reasoning ability.  But then again, in light of those gathered at the Transhumanist conference, it wouldn’t be too difficult to engineer such a creature surpassing them in terms of common sense. 

Interestingly, while those at the conference speak of the moral obligations of human beings, these are often the very same raconteurs that get all livid about the prospect of one individual imposing morality on someone else, especially if the one being imposed upon happens to belong to a darling minority group.  Who, then, are we to assume that animals, even if they could be theoretically progressed to our level of intelligence, will abide by human standards?  What is to prevent them from retaining their similar kind of bloodlust while simply turning their intelligence against us? 

According to Albert Mohler’s commentary, there would be little ground for the Transhumanists to complain about a lion with a PhD going Hannibal Lector on us.  To James Hughes, author of Citizen Cyborg, such refusal to assume a position lower down the food chain simply because of our status as human beings is akin to racism.  And we all know how liberals just love to suppress all other rights in their grand crusade to eliminate even the last hint of “racism”. 

These technocrats do a good job talking the jargon of science fiction but obviously haven’t been watching the same movies and television programs as the rest of us.   From the various incarnations of the Planet of the Apes alone we learn of the potential horrors likely to result should humanity lose its monopoly on rational thought and written communication. 

Merging man and machine will prove no better if done so with a helter skelter, willy nilly philosophy seeking to violate traditional conceptions of what it means to be a person just for the sake of violating what it means to be a person.  It is one thing to swap a faulty organ with a replacement such as an artificial heart as such an effort would be undertaken out of respect for individual human life.   

But that is not what many of the Transhumanists are proposing.  For the spirit one discerns in pondering the ruminations of the Transhumanists causes one to conclude that what these thinkers propose is development progressing towards something along the lines of the Borg from Star Trek or the Cybermen or Darleks from Doctor Who. 

Transhumanist spokesman (or perhaps I should instead say “spokesbeing” for reasons that will be stated momentarily) claim they want to expand what it means to be human but in reality want to abolish many of those attributes that make each of us distinct individuals without having to rely on the superscience of the elites.  According to Albert Mohler, foremost on this movement’s agenda is the obliteration or at least the blurring of the innate gender distinctions that have characterized the human species throughout its history no matter how much cultural roles and expectations might change.  For if Transhumanists have their way, one day women might be able to inseminate themselves as well as alter physiology so that your daddy will also be your mommy.