Dear Kind, Gentle Readers,
Much of what I write here is based on the premise that, like it or not, certain technological, medical, genetic and neurological inventions are on the horizon, whereby our choice is either to (1) work for legislation and international treaties to limit their use strictly to the treatment of narrowly defined medical diseases (such as sickle cell anemia, cancer, cystic fibrosis etc.), while legally forbidding the worlds' industrialists, militarists, dictators and other questionable actors from getting their hands on the technology (something I think, frankly, will be as ineffective as our efforts to control by law and treaty access to dirty bombs and bio-chemical weapons today, not to mention our nearly futile efforts to compel nation-states and corporate industrialists to act effectively on Global Warming by our writing weak treaties with countless loopholes), (2) let the industrialists, militarists, dictators etc. do as they wish with the technology, while we ignore the situation or write books, blog posts and letters to the editor about how terrible it all is, (3) simply lock the monastery doors, and pretend that this issue and the outside world do not exist, or ...
... (4) begin to call for the ethical use of such technology, respectful of civil and human rights and individual autonomy, in ways to do good.
I wish I saw other options.
That "good," I would define as changes to our present animal and otherwise carnal instincts to kill or maim in anger, rape, abuse children, to suffer substance addictions destructive to self and those around one, to harm objectified victims due to psychopathy, and otherwise to easily ignore suffering, homeless and hungry strangers due to low empathy. It may be possible. Hopefully, increasing empathy widely in society, and thus our inner drive not to hurt others, would itself be the medicine to change the hearts of many bad actors who would otherwise use the technology for harm instead. A small increase in empathy would cause many of us truly to be emotionally pained to witness and allow other human beings to suffer, especially due to some action or inaction at our own hands.
I believe that treating the tendency among some small percentage of the population to kill and do other violence in raging anger (alas, another school shooting today ... ), to be sexually attracted to children, coupled with a small increase in human empathy in large sections of the population (such that someone would be no more willing to see a stranger hungry or homeless than they would to see their own child or mother hunger and homeless) will have major impact to alleviate a variety of social problems that now impact this world.
I believe that our doing so, if with care, respect for rigorous clinical testing, and ethical procedures respectful of individual rights and personal autonomy, would make our doing so very different from medical abuses of the past (see photos below) ...
My book says ...
In adjusting the human personality via use of medicines, controlling mood and uncontrolled harmful drives, changing our DNA, regulating our hormones and the electro-chemical signals in parts of our brains, certainly, we must strive to avoid anything that is, in any way, like past misuses of genetics to create some fictitious “master race” (my own Jewish ancestors suffered because of such plans, relatives dying in NAZI concentration camps), to sterilize the unwanted, experiment on prisoners or to repeat the horrors of radical lobotomies reducing human lives to zombified states. All those crimes and abuses happened in recent human history, and nothing like that must ever happen again. Further, any changes must not benefit primarily those who command the vast majority of the world’s power, money and resources as a means to corner more. Instead, positive changes must benefit all, leaving all of us better, healthier and happier. Rather than a means to enslavement, taming and pacification (which is, arguably, what our current consumer economy is doing to us right now, as we are bought off and distracted with video games, junk food and the latest fashion trends), small changes to our personalities can leave us more vibrant and alive, more self-determining and free.
Of course, many believe that we should never meddle in any way with the instincts and personality traits that nature gives us. I would respond that leaving the course of events totally to nature, taking our hands completely off the controls, is the much surer ticket to unpredictable outcomes and eventual extinction of our kind, as all our vanished, predecessor species on earth can attest. It is “nature,” after all, that has bestowed upon us cancer, whooping cough, coronavirus, massive meteors falling from the sky, floods, and famine, to which human beings have rightly responded with medical treatments, dikes, anti-meteor missiles, and better farming techniques through science.
We already do meddle with human behavior whenever, for example, we pass laws that punish offenders acting on their latent instincts to kill, rape, and steal, when we reward good behavior with praise and recognition, when we try to teach our children to eat their vegetables instead of only candy, and when we administer medications to calm someone’s tendencies toward uncontrolled anger, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder or clinical depression. Future measures are but an extension of the same.
It is my contention that, overall, civilization is really not doing too badly, for now anyway (and assuming we don't self-destruct). Our problems are great, but our achievements even greater. Human society is, arguably, the most civil, just, and materially prosperous that it has ever been in history, certainly when compared to Ancient Rome, the European Middle Ages, life anywhere in the world in the 19th century, or even but 50 years ago [footnote: Pinkerton]. However, we still can and must do better. If we fail to do better, circumstances will not remain tolerable forever, because our current problems remain large, many are worsening and threaten our survival.
A few modest tweaks here and there will have positive effects far beyond their modesty. Let us start from the premise that most human beings, even today, are basically good, kind, and decent in their attitudes and actions. The vast majority do not commit crimes, throw bombs, torture, rape, or otherwise do violence to others. Most people (alas, not all) have the capacity to love and care for their children, maintain friendships, and the potential deep down to engage in great, magnanimous acts even directed toward strangers. Most people prefer peace to war, social harmony to tense social divisions, beauty to ugliness. The vast majority of the world’s citizens want the environment preserved, and only wish they knew how. Thus, even small adjustments to the extremes of human desire, and small enhancements in our already existing positive aspects, will have major positive effects. Changing people will change society, bringing a world that we can widely agree is good.
Because people will actually become, from within, better contributors to society, the objections of critical theorists like Slavoj Zizek will be rendered moot: Coming from a neo-Marxist perspective, Zizek argues that modern Western Buddhism, and the meditation it employs, have become tools to render people complacent, ambivalent and numb in our self-absorbed, soul crushing, consumption-driven lives. We chase after happiness and “inner peace” like we chase our next mall purchase. Zizek writes that Western Buddhism allows its followers to “fully participate in the frantic pace of the capitalist game, while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, that you are well aware how worthless the spectacle is -- what really matters to you is the peace of the inner self to which you know you can always withdraw." According to such criticism, modern suburban Buddhism and trendy mindfulness practices fool us into thinking that we are radically changing our minds, when all we are doing is perpetuating the conditions of suffering in capitalist society, making us better worker drones and soldiers.
In answer to Zizek, I note that the technologies of the future will allow a peaceful revolution within peoples’ minds and hearts leading to a peaceful revolution in society. For the first time, a true reformation for the benefit of the world’s citizens might have a chance to succeed where the imagined utopias and workers’ paradises of the past failed precisely due to their inability to repair the failings of human character. All the preachers and prophets, revolutionaries and social reformers of the past stood frustrated in their dreams and visions for paradise on earth, be it a heavenly paradise or workers’ paradise.
But this time, for the first time, we might have practical, effective tools to bring the needed changes to both our leaders and the masses, revolution not from the top or from the grass-roots, but coming from within the human heart and mind. If we alter human character, we will alter society, whereby, finally, we may all strive together for the commonweal and more, each to her abilities, nobody left behind, brothers loving strangers like hereditary brothers, swords turned to fully automated plowshares, the lion lying down with the lamb because the lion’s genes have been altered to love lambs.
But, of course, this leads to two further questions:
First, how can we get to such point and make the needed changes to individual bodies and brains in a purely voluntary and peaceful manner, fully respectful of civil rights and liberties? Is it possible? Violent revolution, entrapment, stealth or governmental compulsion at the point of a gun are not the way.
Second, just who is going to come up with the many fantastic medical and technological advances required for all these changes? Who will invent the actual “kindness algorithms,” “altruism pills” and “peaceful heart” implants of tomorrow?
Before addressing these crucial questions in later pages, in the next chapter I will first describe how we might begin with relatively small steps that will greatly reduce, or virtually eliminate, violent crime in the world. We can do so while preserving (so much better than we do today) civil rights and individual liberties via fair, open and humane judicial systems and the near elimination of our currently inhumane prison systems.
Whether or not the planet shall thus become a Buddhist “heaven on earth,” a pristine Pure Land, it sure will be a much nicer, kinder, less polluted and dangerous, more peaceful and pleasant place.
We may not create a world of non-violent Buddhas right away, but we will create a world filled with generally very nice people, and safe towns to live in.
(to be continued)
Medical abuses such as those of decades past must never be allowed to repeat ...
Much of what I write here is based on the premise that, like it or not, certain technological, medical, genetic and neurological inventions are on the horizon, whereby our choice is either to (1) work for legislation and international treaties to limit their use strictly to the treatment of narrowly defined medical diseases (such as sickle cell anemia, cancer, cystic fibrosis etc.), while legally forbidding the worlds' industrialists, militarists, dictators and other questionable actors from getting their hands on the technology (something I think, frankly, will be as ineffective as our efforts to control by law and treaty access to dirty bombs and bio-chemical weapons today, not to mention our nearly futile efforts to compel nation-states and corporate industrialists to act effectively on Global Warming by our writing weak treaties with countless loopholes), (2) let the industrialists, militarists, dictators etc. do as they wish with the technology, while we ignore the situation or write books, blog posts and letters to the editor about how terrible it all is, (3) simply lock the monastery doors, and pretend that this issue and the outside world do not exist, or ...
... (4) begin to call for the ethical use of such technology, respectful of civil and human rights and individual autonomy, in ways to do good.
I wish I saw other options.
That "good," I would define as changes to our present animal and otherwise carnal instincts to kill or maim in anger, rape, abuse children, to suffer substance addictions destructive to self and those around one, to harm objectified victims due to psychopathy, and otherwise to easily ignore suffering, homeless and hungry strangers due to low empathy. It may be possible. Hopefully, increasing empathy widely in society, and thus our inner drive not to hurt others, would itself be the medicine to change the hearts of many bad actors who would otherwise use the technology for harm instead. A small increase in empathy would cause many of us truly to be emotionally pained to witness and allow other human beings to suffer, especially due to some action or inaction at our own hands.
I believe that treating the tendency among some small percentage of the population to kill and do other violence in raging anger (alas, another school shooting today ... ), to be sexually attracted to children, coupled with a small increase in human empathy in large sections of the population (such that someone would be no more willing to see a stranger hungry or homeless than they would to see their own child or mother hunger and homeless) will have major impact to alleviate a variety of social problems that now impact this world.
I believe that our doing so, if with care, respect for rigorous clinical testing, and ethical procedures respectful of individual rights and personal autonomy, would make our doing so very different from medical abuses of the past (see photos below) ...
My book says ...
~ ~ ~ ~
In adjusting the human personality via use of medicines, controlling mood and uncontrolled harmful drives, changing our DNA, regulating our hormones and the electro-chemical signals in parts of our brains, certainly, we must strive to avoid anything that is, in any way, like past misuses of genetics to create some fictitious “master race” (my own Jewish ancestors suffered because of such plans, relatives dying in NAZI concentration camps), to sterilize the unwanted, experiment on prisoners or to repeat the horrors of radical lobotomies reducing human lives to zombified states. All those crimes and abuses happened in recent human history, and nothing like that must ever happen again. Further, any changes must not benefit primarily those who command the vast majority of the world’s power, money and resources as a means to corner more. Instead, positive changes must benefit all, leaving all of us better, healthier and happier. Rather than a means to enslavement, taming and pacification (which is, arguably, what our current consumer economy is doing to us right now, as we are bought off and distracted with video games, junk food and the latest fashion trends), small changes to our personalities can leave us more vibrant and alive, more self-determining and free.
Of course, many believe that we should never meddle in any way with the instincts and personality traits that nature gives us. I would respond that leaving the course of events totally to nature, taking our hands completely off the controls, is the much surer ticket to unpredictable outcomes and eventual extinction of our kind, as all our vanished, predecessor species on earth can attest. It is “nature,” after all, that has bestowed upon us cancer, whooping cough, coronavirus, massive meteors falling from the sky, floods, and famine, to which human beings have rightly responded with medical treatments, dikes, anti-meteor missiles, and better farming techniques through science.
We already do meddle with human behavior whenever, for example, we pass laws that punish offenders acting on their latent instincts to kill, rape, and steal, when we reward good behavior with praise and recognition, when we try to teach our children to eat their vegetables instead of only candy, and when we administer medications to calm someone’s tendencies toward uncontrolled anger, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder or clinical depression. Future measures are but an extension of the same.
It is my contention that, overall, civilization is really not doing too badly, for now anyway (and assuming we don't self-destruct). Our problems are great, but our achievements even greater. Human society is, arguably, the most civil, just, and materially prosperous that it has ever been in history, certainly when compared to Ancient Rome, the European Middle Ages, life anywhere in the world in the 19th century, or even but 50 years ago [footnote: Pinkerton]. However, we still can and must do better. If we fail to do better, circumstances will not remain tolerable forever, because our current problems remain large, many are worsening and threaten our survival.
A few modest tweaks here and there will have positive effects far beyond their modesty. Let us start from the premise that most human beings, even today, are basically good, kind, and decent in their attitudes and actions. The vast majority do not commit crimes, throw bombs, torture, rape, or otherwise do violence to others. Most people (alas, not all) have the capacity to love and care for their children, maintain friendships, and the potential deep down to engage in great, magnanimous acts even directed toward strangers. Most people prefer peace to war, social harmony to tense social divisions, beauty to ugliness. The vast majority of the world’s citizens want the environment preserved, and only wish they knew how. Thus, even small adjustments to the extremes of human desire, and small enhancements in our already existing positive aspects, will have major positive effects. Changing people will change society, bringing a world that we can widely agree is good.
Because people will actually become, from within, better contributors to society, the objections of critical theorists like Slavoj Zizek will be rendered moot: Coming from a neo-Marxist perspective, Zizek argues that modern Western Buddhism, and the meditation it employs, have become tools to render people complacent, ambivalent and numb in our self-absorbed, soul crushing, consumption-driven lives. We chase after happiness and “inner peace” like we chase our next mall purchase. Zizek writes that Western Buddhism allows its followers to “fully participate in the frantic pace of the capitalist game, while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, that you are well aware how worthless the spectacle is -- what really matters to you is the peace of the inner self to which you know you can always withdraw." According to such criticism, modern suburban Buddhism and trendy mindfulness practices fool us into thinking that we are radically changing our minds, when all we are doing is perpetuating the conditions of suffering in capitalist society, making us better worker drones and soldiers.
In answer to Zizek, I note that the technologies of the future will allow a peaceful revolution within peoples’ minds and hearts leading to a peaceful revolution in society. For the first time, a true reformation for the benefit of the world’s citizens might have a chance to succeed where the imagined utopias and workers’ paradises of the past failed precisely due to their inability to repair the failings of human character. All the preachers and prophets, revolutionaries and social reformers of the past stood frustrated in their dreams and visions for paradise on earth, be it a heavenly paradise or workers’ paradise.
But this time, for the first time, we might have practical, effective tools to bring the needed changes to both our leaders and the masses, revolution not from the top or from the grass-roots, but coming from within the human heart and mind. If we alter human character, we will alter society, whereby, finally, we may all strive together for the commonweal and more, each to her abilities, nobody left behind, brothers loving strangers like hereditary brothers, swords turned to fully automated plowshares, the lion lying down with the lamb because the lion’s genes have been altered to love lambs.
But, of course, this leads to two further questions:
First, how can we get to such point and make the needed changes to individual bodies and brains in a purely voluntary and peaceful manner, fully respectful of civil rights and liberties? Is it possible? Violent revolution, entrapment, stealth or governmental compulsion at the point of a gun are not the way.
Second, just who is going to come up with the many fantastic medical and technological advances required for all these changes? Who will invent the actual “kindness algorithms,” “altruism pills” and “peaceful heart” implants of tomorrow?
Before addressing these crucial questions in later pages, in the next chapter I will first describe how we might begin with relatively small steps that will greatly reduce, or virtually eliminate, violent crime in the world. We can do so while preserving (so much better than we do today) civil rights and individual liberties via fair, open and humane judicial systems and the near elimination of our currently inhumane prison systems.
Whether or not the planet shall thus become a Buddhist “heaven on earth,” a pristine Pure Land, it sure will be a much nicer, kinder, less polluted and dangerous, more peaceful and pleasant place.
We may not create a world of non-violent Buddhas right away, but we will create a world filled with generally very nice people, and safe towns to live in.
(to be continued)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Medical abuses such as those of decades past must never be allowed to repeat ...