(This essay was originally published
in Thomas
Robbins and Susan J. Palmer, editors, Millennium, Messiahs, and
Mayhem:
Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements (New York: Routledge, 1997),
pp.
139-158.)
Technological
Millenarianism in the United
States
John Bozeman
"It
is essential to be absolutely
modern."--Rimbaud
INTRODUCTION
Apocalyptic ferment is
no novelty to America; neither is a fascination with scientific and
technological innovation. However,
aside from literary and cinematic visions from the sub-genres of
science
fiction and utopian (and dystopian) novels, concepts of scientific
post-millennial kingdom building have largely been ignored by recent
scholarship and the popular press--at least as a subject worthy of
critical
reflection.
This article will
examine several such groups that have existed during the twentieth
century in
America. The first, the American
eugenics movement of the 1910's and early 1920's, was a movement which
promised
the ultimate establishment of a biological utopia through the selective
breeding of eugenically "fit" individuals. The
second is the cryogenics movement, which promised a form of
immortality through the freezing of the terminally ill for revival at a
later
date. Thirdly, the space colonies
movement of the 1970's to early 1980's will be examined; members of
this effort
desired to encourage mankind's emigration into the "final frontier"
of space. Finally, a cursory
examination will be made of current efforts toward present
computer-oriented
efforts to move into yet another frontier, that of virtual reality and
"cyberspace."
* * *
Commentators have noted
that widespread frustration within a culture frequently gives rise to
revitalization movements (Wallace, 1956).
Such revitalization movements may take any of a variety of
forms, such
as a move toward fundamentalism (i.e., a "back-to-basics" or ad
fontes approach); alternatively, if enough of a society's basic
presuppositions are called into question, sectarian groups and new
religions
may form or, if present already, may experience radical growth. Such revitalization movements are frequently
accompanied by notions of millenarianism, the idea that a new,
more
perfect age is beginning, breaking radically from the past--and/or chiliasm,
the belief that the movement is a divinely ordained and assisted
harbinger of
the coming of a literal heaven on earth.
Participants may also expect to inherit a privileged place in
the new
order, while opponents will be humbled or destroyed.
Movements of this type can be found scattered throughout
history,
and including primitive Christianity, the Jewish Zealots of Masada, the
Montanists of early Christianity, who expected the New Jerusalem to
descend in
Asia Minor. Such attitudes continue to
appear periodically in the larger churches and denominations, as well
in less
familiar New Religious Movements (NRM's).
Many, perhaps most,
religious revitalization movements have historically been triggered by
the
existence of intolerable levels of corruption and moral breakdown
within the
dominant faith, well as the growth of feelings of nationalism and
changing
notions of human rights and sovereignty.
However, by the late 1600's Western culture was facing new
cultural
force: the Enlightenment, and its new
attitudes toward the authority of science.
The interaction of Western European Christendom produced a
number of
interesting syntheses over time, giving rise to such movements as
Swedenborgianism, Comptian Positivism, Freemasonry, and various
occultic
groups.
In America, too, new
faiths emerged that attempted to deal with the increasing authority of
science. Some, such as Unitarianism and
Felix Adler's Ethical Culture Society, tried to formulate more
rational, less
supernaturally oriented religious forms.
Others have attempted a more direct synthesis.
Mary Baker Eddy, for example, formed the "First Church of
Christ, Scientist." this faith incorporated aspects of the then-newly
discovered science of hypnotism and auto-suggestion to effect cures and
also to
make the assertion that matter completely subservient to spirit. Joseph Smith, on the other hand tried a
differing approach, suggesting that spirit is but a special form of
matter, and
was thus subject to scientific laws.
Attempts at dealing with scientific advances continue to the
present
day, with Christian Fundamentalists, as well as new religions such as
Scientology, the New Age movement, and psychic and UFO-worshiping
groups, each
presenting their own interpretations of the meaning of scientific
endeavor
(Lewis 1995).
Yet if we examine the
groups above, we find that despite their attempts to make some sort of
accommodation to science, relatively few were founded by persons with
extensive
scientific training. The scientific
establishment, for its part, appears to have relatively little interest
in such
synthetic endeavors. Part of this
reason is historical: during much of
the 1800's, most American natural philosophers and scientists had
achieved what
they thought was "an impregnable synthesis of faith and reason" that
allowed science and orthodox Christian theology to support each other. Later on, the professionalization of both
science and theology during the early 20th century, along with the
growing
prestige of the former, did not encourage efforts at reconciliation on
the part
of the scientists; indeed, books such as Andrew Dickson White's History
of
the Warfare of Science with Religion (1896) tended to generate a
myth of
perpetual conflict between dogmatic religious obscurationism on the one
hand,
and value-free scientific truth on the other (Marsden, 1989).
But
was this "value free" search for truth as neutral as has
traditionally been portrayed? Recent
work in the history of science has tended suggest that social factors
have had
at least as much effect upon directions taken in scientific endeavor as
has
simple technical feasibility. Such
sociological studies have also tended to focus more upon the inner
workings of
the scientific establishment than upon the interaction of this
establishment
with the larger culture. Closer
examination reveals that scientific and technological movements are
often
undertaken for reasons other than the simple search for abstract
knowledge;
often, the investigators may be laboring under a scientized faith with
convictions that border on the millennial or chiliasm.
Furthermore, once begun, such efforts may
either generate and/or ride an unacknowledged tide of public sentiment
to
unforseen conclusions. We turn now to
one such case, that of eugenics.
EUGENICS: BETTER BABIES FOR A
BETTER TOMORROW
While eugenic notions
can be found in the culture of Sparta and the writings of Plato, the
rise of
modern eugenic thought in the West began is usually credited to the
Englishman
Francis Galton. Galton, however, generally
credited with the foundation of the new science of eugenics. Inspired by the work of his cousin, Charles
Darwin, Galton first published his ideas in 1865; this work,
"Hereditary
Talent and Character," laid out the groundwork for modern hereditarian
thought. Galton's premises were
simple: character traits of all types
are inherited, with nature favoring adaptive traits and destroying
maladaptive
ones. The same process is at work,
Galton felt, in the human animal; observation indicated that some
families were
"good," populated with morally virtuous, hard working, healthy and
long-lived individuals, will some were "bad," given to vice, sloth,
and poor health. In this view,
character was as much inherited as height, so generalizations could be
made
about entire races as well: Native
Americans, for example, were generally "naturally cold, melancholic,
patient, and taciturn"; though patriotic and possessing an
"astonishing" sense of personal dignity. West
Africans, on the other hand, were perceived by Galton as
"impulsive," "warm-hearted," and "eminently
gregarious, for he is always jabbering, quarrelling, tom-tom-ing, or
dancing." These traits were
thought to be transmitted "as truly as physical forms," even if the
children were raised by step-parents.
Galton was, of course,
merely echoing many of the racist and imperialist stereotypes of his
day, which
maintained that the Anglo-Saxon race was at the peak of biological and
cultural
evolution. What made Galton noteworthy
was his interest in mathematical and biological statistics, fields to
which he
made several valuable contributions, and his interest in applying this
knowledge to contemporary social problems.
However, his work toward the implementation of a more
biologically desirable
social structure was necessarily delayed until eugenic and genetic
science
achieved a better understanding of cellular science and human anatomy.
By the turn of the
century, however, both the scientific and social climate were changing. Lamarckian theories of inheritance of
acquired characteristics fell from favor, to be replaced by Weismann's
"germ plasm" theory, while rediscovery of Mendel's work, coupled with
improvements in microscopy, allowed better understanding of the
mechanisms of
genetics. Eugenic science could also
point proudly to its proponents, who included such notables as polymath
Alexander Graham Bell (who had done substantial work in the field of
audiology
in addition to his better known career as an inventor), biologist David
Starr
Jordan, plant breeder Luther Burbank, and Harvard biologist Charles
Davenport. Similarly, eugenicists
received public support from such notables as Theodore Roosevelt,
Harvard
president Charles Eliot, and British writers George Bernard Shaw and
H.G. Wells
(Bozeman 1993).
A turning point was
reached, however, in 1907. This year
marked the passage of the first involuntary sterilization law in the
U.S., in
Indiana. Surgical sterilization in the
form of vasectomy had recently become practical. (Castration
had generally been seen as needlessly cruel and
debilitating, and the cutting of women's Fallopian tubes was at this
time a
serious operation that resulted in the death of the patient in 2-3% of
all
cases.)
Armed now with a
measure of scientific respectability and a tolerably safe surgical
technique,
the eugenicists were now ready to make war on the causes of racial
degeneration. Societies began to form
to popularize the eugenic message. The
sizable American Eugenics Society (AES), for example, tried to
popularize the
eugenic message by publishing a popular magazine, Eugenics: A Journal of Race Betterment.
Other AES efforts included running large
displays at fairs (including "Fitter Families for Future Firesides"
contests, in which family pedigrees were examined for eugenic merit and
trophies
then awarded), and contests in which clergymen competed for cash prizes
by
preaching pro-eugenics sermons in their churches.
But could the eugenics
movement be called chiliastic or millennialist? If
we examine the writings of both amateur and professional
proponents of eugenics, the answer appears to be at least a qualified
"yes." Even before Galton had
published "Hereditary Talent" and his follow-up book, Hereditary
Genius (1869), Horace Bushnell had stated in the 1863 edition of
his
classic work Christian Nurture, that the Kingdom of God would
come not
only through preaching and conversion, but also through the superior
"populating force" of sanctified puritan stock (Bozeman, 1994). Galton's own writings may have inspired John
Humprey Noyes' famous late-19th century experiment in "stirpiculture"
(regulated human breeding) in the perfectionist Oneida colony; persons
participating in the program signed statements offering to become, if
necessary, "martyrs to science" as well as regarding themselves as
"living sacrifices to God and true Communism" (Parker, 1932).
Indeed, such
statements--odd as they may sound persons living in the 1990's--became
increasingly common during the early 20th century.
A woman writing on the topic of "Building a Better
Race" in the mainstream magazine World's Work could write:
. . . the better race is being
builded [sic]. . . And a new people,
who shall be born right in the homes that have been made right of
fathers and
mothers who have been educated right [in eugenics, home economics, and
scientific motherhood], shall be fashioned once more in the image of
God from
which the generations have so far departed. . . . The
American woman is now engaged in the transcendent creative task. And the world awaits her work (Daggett,
1912).
These such views
extended to some degree to the credentialed scientists and
professionals
involved in the leadership of the movement.
Charles Davenport, for example, went so far as to compose an
essay
entitled "Eugenics as Religion."
In it Davenport suggested that the highest aim of the human
species was
to develop a social order of the highest and most effective type--an
order in
which each person would be physically fit, mentally well-endowed for
some kind
of useful work, calm, cheerful, and possessing such inhibitions as to
allow him
to control his instinctive reactions and conform to community mores. Davenport went on to propose a
"eugenics creed" which affirmed, among other things, a belief in the
need to take such "sanitary measures" as necessary to protect the
offspring of carefully selected matings from "accidental and
unselective
mortality (Davenport, 1916).
Only
after several decades of popularity did eugenics enter a period of
uneven
decline. The movement probably achieved
its height of scientific respectability around 1900 to the early
1920's; after
this time the new science of genetics quietly began to dissociate
itself from
eugenics and its social programs. With
the coming of the Great Depression, organizations promoting eugenics
suffered;
however, eugenic philosophies become accepted by persons charged with
the
operation of state asylums and the number of surgical sterilizations
experienced a considerable increase.
Eugenic sterilizations in the U.S. only began to decline toward
the end
of World War II as American surgeons were pressed into the war effort. Public realization of Nazi atrocities (some
carried out in the name of eugenics), combined with opposition from the
Roman
Catholic Church, prevented sterilizations from returning to their
pre-war
levels; however, some programs were active as late as 1976. All told, the U.S. witnessed between 60,000
and 70,000 eugenic sterilizations between 1907 and 1973.
Many of these were done without the consent
of the patient, and some with varying degrees of coercion (Reilly,
1991)
.
CRYONICS: WAKING UP IN A BETTER
TOMORROW
Of course, it is also
true that a young, potentially revolutionary science does not
necessarily
entail coercion. Such is the case of
cryonics, the science of freezing persons with the intent of later
revival.
Early experiments in
this area were carried out by the British surgeon John Hunter. After unsuccessfully trying to freeze and
revive fish in 1766, Hunter mentioned that he had originally hoped that
it
might be useful for freezing people. In
America, the earliest expression of a desire for preservation of the
self for
revival in the future was voiced by Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin claimed to have found three drowned
flies in a container of wine; however, after being removed and allowed
to dry
out, two of the flies revived and flew away.
The statesman expressed regret that such a procedure could not
be
performed on himself, so that he could see what would become of his
country in
a hundred years (Perry, 1990a; Perry, 1991a; Perry, 1991b). By the turn of the century,
Serious talk about
freezing humans began in 1962, when Evan Cooper privately published a
book
called Immortality Physically, Scientifically Now (Perry,1990b). 1963 witnessed a conference dealing with the
subject, was well as the formation of the Washington, DC-based Life
Extension
Society. Cryonics began in earnest,
however, with the publication of a book, The Prospect of Immortality
(1964). Written by Robert Ettinger, a
physicist who occasionally wrote science fiction, Prospect
presented a
brief review of the science of cryobiology (the branch of biology
dealing with
life at low temperatures) and suggested that such research might be
extended to
humans. While presenting a rather
optimistic view of the future, the author presented a thorough overview
of both
the technical and social challenges yet to be overcome.
The core problem was,
of course, obvious: in spite of some
promising research, nobody had yet frozen a higher organism and
revived, or in
cryonics jargon "reanimated" it.
In the face of this difficult, Cooper, Ettinger, and other
agreed it was
better to follow a "path of least regret"; a frozen person might have
low changes of revival, but (Christian resurrection notwithstanding) a
person
who was buried or cremated would have absolutely no chances of revival
whatsoever. Cryonics researchers thus
developed a freezing regimen that could be carried out at reasonable
cost while
minimizing freezing damage as much as possible. Revival
would have to be carried out sometime in the future when
thawing technology would (hopefully) be more advanced.
During the 1960's a
number of cryonics clubs and groups formed in New York, Michigan,
Florida, and
California. After several false starts
the first person, a college professor named James Bedford, was frozen
in 1967,
with others following. Cryonics,
however, was still in its infancy and did not yet have a stable
physical or
legal infrastructure. The result was
that many of the early attempts at suspension failed, either due to
legal
challenges from surviving family members, lack of funds, inability to
procure
facilities, or unscrupulousness and fraud on the part of facility
providers.
In spite of these early
challenges, the movement as a whole survived.
After the mid-1970's, suspension failure became the exception
rather
than the rule as the different cryonics groups gained experience both
in
freezing clients and in maintaining financial solvency.
Standard freezing procedures were
established and trust funds were established to ensure that maintenance
costs
for the frozen "patients" could be met. Furthermore,
the movement's legal battles and the ensuing
publicity also had the salutary effect of garnering increased
toleration and
cooperation from the medical community.
Part of this change in attitude was probably due to the
cryonicists'
increased legal clout; however it also appears that the passage of time
and the
establishment of stable institutions caused physicians to see cryonics
less as
a field populated by con-artists and crackpots, and more as a
speculative but
sincere form of alternative medical practice.
Even more than
eugenics, cryonics has an optimism about the future that includes
millennial
expectations. Part of this optimism
focuses upon expectation of scientific advancement; the technology for
revival
(known as "reanimation" among cryonicists) does not yet exist, and so
is dependant upon assumed future discoveries.
More interesting, though, are the social assumptions behind
cryonics. Clients assume that the
present economic system will remain stable enough in the ensuing
decades and
perhaps centuries until reanimation takes place. They
also assume that members of future society will in fact wish
to revive persons from the past, repair the damage caused by freezing
and
original cause of death, and make the effort to retrain and socialize
them.
Indeed, if the cryonics
movement could be called a culture, then one of its primary components
is the
revival scenario. Ettinger, in The
Prospect of Immortality, suggests that the future will be a "Golden
Age" which will include intelligent robots, ectogenesis (human children
carried to term in artificial wombs), life-long sexual virility,
climate
controlled cities, and unlimited
wealth. Presumably the aging
process will also be conquered, allowing time for artistic and
philosophical
speculation as well. Finally, persons
will have the ability to improve themselves through genetic enhancement
and
prosthetic augmentation--people will have the ability to become even
"better than new." Ettinger
explored extended these themes in even more fanciful directions in a
later
book, Man Into Superman (1972), detailing such possibilities as
cybernetically enhanced sex and zero-residue foods that would obviate
the need
for bowels.
This joyful speculation
continues to the present day. ALCOR
Life Extension Foundation, one of the largest companies to offer
cryonic
services, includes a "speculative scenario for recovery" in its
promotional literature (ALCOR, 1993).
Written in the form of a first person narrative, the story
begins with a
man in great pain dying in a hospital in 1997.
He awakens, cured, some decades later aboard a space colony to
see the
same ALCOR representative who oversaw his case on earth; his wife (now
remarried) is waiting to see him, and his children are now grown up and
enjoying successful careers in high-tech fields. There
is no mention made of any social or political problems.
Such attitudes appear to be consonant with
the expectations of ALCOR clients themselves.
For example, a woman whose husband had recently been suspended
immediately after dying from a malignant brain tumor spoke both of her
feelings
of loss, but also of hope for the future:
Today's technology sheds a bright
light on the very realistic possibilities of tomorrow's technology. Those who "check it out" can share
in the wonderful vision of rejoining loved ones in a future bearing
abundance
of both time and resources.
Time enough for love; time enough to live
(Glennie, 1992).
SPACE
COLONIES: THE HIGH
FRONTIER
Cryonics practitioners
tend to believe that human destiny will reach its fulfillment, probably
through
technological means, sometime in the future.
Others believe that this destiny lies in another direction: space exploration. A
number of alternative religious groups have focused upon space
as an arena of salvation or inspiration.
Eric von Danikan's best seller, Chariots of the Gods,
for
example, popularized the notion that much of the religious iconography
and many
ancient texts are really records of visitors from other planets; this
book
inspired several sequels and prompted a tremendous outpouring of books,
television shows, and movies.
A more direct form of
veneration of technology is found in various flying-saucer and
UFO-worshipping
cults. One international group with
some 20,000 followers, the Raelian movement, is dedicated to building a
landing
pad and embassy in preparation for the UFOs' apocalyptic return
(Palmer, 1992);
the group also promises immorality to select followers through being
cloned by
the aliens. Some New Age psychics have
also published works telling of an "earth evacuation plan" that will
be carried out by friendly extraterrestrials in the event of an
earth-threatening disaster or a nuclear conflagration.
Such beliefs tend to
focus upon the salvation of humans through alien intervention rather
than
collective human technological achievement.
Others, however, have chosen a more "humanistic" approach, in
which human, rather than aliens, are the primary source of activity. Indeed, the concept of human space travel
has captured the imaginations of writers for centuries, with novels
(some of
which were social commentaries disguised as fantasy) written by Cyrano
de
Bergerac, H.G. Wells, and others. By
the early 20th century, however, such concepts were no longer the
exclusive
domain of fantasy; Konstantin Tsilkovsky of Russia, Robert Goddard of
the U.S.,
and Hermann Oberth of Germany were beginning to do theoretical work on
rocketry. Tsiolkovsky and Goddard,
however, spent most
of their careers in obscurity. Oberth,
who had been inspired by Jules Verne's From Earth the Moon,
actually
popularized the notion of interplanetary flight in his book of 1923, The
Rocket into Planetary Space (Winter, 1990). This
book inspired a number of other books and magazine articles
and turned amateur rocketry into a national German hobby.
The German lead in
rocket science was further developed under the Nazi regime. After World War II this knowledge and
expertise was divided between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., where was used
by both
power blocs in the development of ICBM's and, in the form of the space
race,
the fruition of the dream of flight in space.
The space race was a
curious Cold War phenomenon. On the one
hand, it allowed each superpower to display publicly its missile
launching
capacity, a technology that could easily adapted to the deliver of
nuclear
weapons. However the race might also be
described as a sort of technological Olympic competition, with
Americans and
Soviets competed for national prestige through the display of
technological
prowess in space while simultaneously honoring the peaceful pursuit of
scientific knowledge. A crescendo was
reached with the race for the Moon, an effort that culminated with the
success
of the Apollo Moon landing, an event labelled by Walter Cronkite as
"the
greatest day since Creation."
The Moon effort was
actually something of a mixed success in which each side tended to
spend at
least as much time pursuing theatrical successes as it did on
long-range
program building. Thus, while the U.S.
national goal of a lunar landing had been accomplished, budget cuts
under the
Nixon administration had made the space effort something of a one-way
trip. Rather than building a broad-based
space
infrastructure--NASA had originally hoped for a space shuttle and/or
space
station from which to base its manned venture--the decision was made
instead to
build a special-purpose launcher dedicated solely for the lunar
expedition. With the successful
completion of the program and the near-term Soviet decision not to
pursue
manned activity beyond low earth orbit (not to mention domestic unrest
over the
Vietnam Conflict), the U.S. government no longer had a politic
motivation to
fund expensive manned missions.
Scientific exploration was largely shifted to the arena of
unmanned
probes, which were both less expensive, did not risk human life, and
was a
branch of space exploration in which the Soviets were still active.
Not all Americans were
pleased with this choice of policy.
Many, particularly those with a penchant for science fiction,
saw space
exploration as something of an end unto itself, an expression of a
fundamental
human need to explore the unknown. In
addition, space offered both natural resources and unlimited room for
human
expansion. To these people it appeared
that humans had become a spacefaring race only to lose collective nerve.
In the wake of this
disappointment, various persons and groups began to try to formulate an
alternative. One such group was the
Committee for the Future (CFF), documented by W. Bainbridge (1976). Begun by a visionary couple, Barbara and
Earl Hubbard, who saw existence driving toward two goals:
the integration of all humanity into a
unified body of Mankind (Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin's
"Convergence"), and "transcendence of the human condition
through evolution into a 'universal species'" (Bainbridge, 1976: 160).
The CFF chose to try to realize these goals in part by
sponsoring a
program called the Harvest Moon Project, in which an international
expedition
would travel back to the Moon on board a surplus Saturn V rocket in
order,
among other things, to leave a robotic lunar rover, to deploy a
telescope, and
to set up a garden under a plastic dome complete with animal life. While the CFF did manage to establish some
congressional contacts for its space project, the technical details for
Harvest
Moon tended to be romantic and impractical.
Eventually the project was abandoned, and the group began to
loose
interest in space while devoting increasing attention to occultic
interests.
Not all of the space
enthusiasts were so mystically inclined (Michaud, 1986).
Gerard K. O'Neill, for example, was an accomplished
physicist. During his early career he
had distinguished himself by developing a new cyclotron configuration
that
later became a standard in the field.
Later he entered the U.S. astronaut training program but was
rejected
during the final selection process.
Returning to academia in the late 1960's, O'Neill began teaching
introductory engineering-track undergraduate physics at Princeton. Presented with the task of organizing an
informal seminar cum discussion for especially talented and/or
inspired
students, O'Neill chose a sample problem that he felt would interest
both be of
interest both to himself and to his students:
space colonies.
As a teaching tool the
subject was a success, offering enough challenges to occupy the
students for
the entire year. In the course of the
study, though, O'Neill made a discovery:
most plans for space colonies started with the assumption that
an such
colony would build on planets, with space stations serving mainly as
way
stations and routing points. Such
colonies were, not surprisingly, would be complex and expensive to
build. However, if one were to reverse
this
scenario--making the planets the way stations and depots and placing
the bulk
of the colony in orbit, colonization of space became much more
feasible,
perhaps even practical. The physicist
soon began making calculations in earnest and stared giving talks on
the
subject; eventually, a small conference was held and--after five years
of
effort--his ideas were published in 1974 as a cover story of Physics
Today.
In spite of his
revolutionary views, O'Neill was a practical man. His
plans were backed up with equations, and he made efforts to
make sure that his plans made only modest demands on future
technological
development. He also submitted his
ideas for scrutiny to the physics and engineering community for
criticism and
correction, with good results. Perhaps
most importantly of all, he realized that governments needed pragmatic,
rather
than ideological reasons, for space exploration; as a result he and his
followers devoted an extensive amount of time working on such
potentially
lucrative projects as the development of solar power satellites. O'Neill also set up GEOSTAR, a commercial
space-based venture offering global tracking services to clients; a
large
percentage of the profits were donated to the space colonies effort.
Behind all of this
activity, however, lay O'Neill's vision for the future (Michaud, 1986,
O'Neill
1976, O'Neill 1981). O'Neill felt that
the human population is increasing in size at an exponential rate. This increase, however, was not accompanied
by a similar increase in resources.
Furthermore, increasing industrialization and crowding resulted
in both
rising levels of pollution and increasing disparities between rich and
poor
nations; the latter problem, especially, could lead to a "war of
redistribution" and a nuclear exchange.
The alternatives were clear:
humanity could continue on its path until growth is halted by
famine,
pollution, economic collapse, or nuclear conflagration.
Or, humanity could reorganize into a highly
structured, regimented, and intellectually static steady-state zero-sum
economy, as described in the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" project.
Or humanity do what it
had often done in the past--it could seek out a new
frontier--space--which
O'Neill saw as a source both of unlimited resources and, like the
American
frontier, a place of health, wealth and great personal freedom. For example, he made economic projections
suggesting that the average space-dwelling family of the year 2100
would have,
in 1975 dollars, an income of over $300,000 per year.
These families would live in enormous spherical or tubular
colonies at low population densities; the internal environment of these
structures would be pollution-free, "optimized for good health," and
beautifully landscaped, with residents enjoying longer lives and lower
accidental death rates than on earth.
For example, he suggested that heavy "smokestack" industry
could be transferred to space, thus removing their earthly
environmental
impact.
Most important,
however, would be the social opportunities that colonies could offer. While O'Neill felt that colonies would be
more or less politically and culturally autonomous and tend to resemble
a
"specialized university town" containing a "similar
proliferation of drama clubs, orchestras, lecture series, team sports,
flying
clubs--and half-finished books," he was quick to point out that such
colonies would not be "free of sadness." However, he did feel that:
. . . there is reason to hope that
the opening of a new, high frontier will challenge the best that is in
us, that
the new lands waiting to be built in space will give us a new freedom
to search
for better governments, social systems, and ways of life . . .(O'Neill,
1981)
LIFE
IN THE DATASPHERE: BETTER
LIVING THROUGH PROGRAMMING
We have now looked at
several groups that have blended empiracal science with millenarian
vision,
i.e., groups strongly holding the opinion that technology will bring
about a
new golden age in the near future which be bring about a substantial,
and
permanent, fundamental improvement in the human condition.
If we examine these groups we find that such
movements have the following characteristics.
First, participants perceive a wide-spread threat--for example,
immanent
social collapse or personal extinction.
Secondly, there exists some new technology in which recent
progress has
been made but also in which the social
significance is as yet unclear:
genetics, cryobiology, and space.
Such fields have a certain numenous quality, holding both great
promise
coupled with unknown perils.
Paralleling Wallace's scenario for a revitilization movement,
the stage
has been set for the emergence of a prophetic figure who can articulate
both
the current hopes and the fears of the audience and then connect them
to the
technology at hand in both a plausible and an inspirational manner. We thus have the following
"equation":
Push
+ Pull + Social and/or Technical Plausibility →
social movement
In the case of eugenics
we see a series of technological prophets, first Francis Galton and
than
Davenport and others, speaking of a threat (racial degeneration through
poor
breeding stock, national bankruptcy from support of a growing indigent
population), but offering a positive alternative vision as well
(Anglo-Saxon
cultural supremacy). Here, the
plausible means of solving this problem was a program of "positive
eugenics," i.e., interbreeding of superior stocks, to be encouraged
trough
the education of children on the need for proper mate selection and
possibly
through grants or tax exemptions to "eugenically deserving" families;
and "negative eugenics," that is, segregation or sterilization of
inferior stocks. Scientific plausibility
was derived from recent advances in genetic/eugenics science, while
social
credibility appears to have come from a popular sense of unease about
increasing numbers of immigrants and "feebleminded" persons in
society, but perhaps also doubts about one's own self-worth;
examination
of literature produced by some eugenics-friendly religionists of the
day
suggests an increasing preoccupation of human personal worth being
determined
more by social Darwinian "fitness" and social utility than by more
traditional
notions of intrinsic human worth.
Note, too, that both
social and technological plausibility was not always necessary
for the
movement to continue; while the eugenicists enjoyed broad-based support
within
the scientific community in the early 1910's, this eroded during over
the next
decade. Nevertheless, the number of
surgical sterilizations peaked after doubt was increasing as to
the
value of sterilization to the cause of "racial hygiene," apparently
due to institutional momentum within state asylums.
Only a profound change in the social environment--the withdrawal
of surgeons into the war effort, plus a later reluctance to
re-institute
eugenic measures in the wake of World War II and on the eve of the
Civil Rights
movement--resulted in the decline of such programs.
We find a similar
pattern in the cryonics movement. Here
we find a rather universal "push" factor: that
of personal physical death.
Ettinger, Cooper, and others looked to cryobiology, extended to
humans,
to solve this problem; the "pull," on the other hand, came from a
sense of optimism about the future of humanity--human society would
become
better, both socially and technologically.
Technical plausibility, in this case, came from recent advances
in
cryobiology and cryosurgery. Social
plausibility, on the other hand, appears to have been drawn for two
sources: first, the growth of
"science fiction" culture; the movement was founded by a science
fiction author, and ALCOR recruits a number of clients and science
fiction
conventions. Secondly, the movement
also appears to draw support from increased secularity in American
culture; a
very high proportion involved in the early movement were agnostics or
atheists
with little expectation of a supernatural afterlife (Sheskin, 1979), a
trend that
appears to continue to the present day.
Again, it may be noted that social plausibility may overcome
technical
plausibility--while early cryobiologists gave a cautious approval to
the
cryonics movement, they have since rescinded it, giving rise to (in the
words
of one cryonicist) a "cold war" between the two (Perry, 1991b)
groups. This debate does not appear to
have greatly affected the cryonics movement, however, which now has
some 1000
clients presently either in, or signed up for, cryonic suspension.
Within the American
space colony movement, we find the same pattern once again. The push factor here was a vision of social
stagnation derived from works such as "Limits to Growth," and
punctuated by events such as the energy crisis and the emergence of
environmental awareness; the pull was offered by a vision of boundless
expansion and endless resources.
O'Neill was the charismatic leader who synthesized the initial
vision
and who also worked out the technical plausibility of the scenario;
social plausibility
was supplied by recent space achievements by NASA.
The continuing social plausibility of the space movement is also
demonstrated by the periodic reemergence of both technical and
lay-oriented
efforts toward space colonization, as well as continued efforts by
small
companies to produce viable, low-cost launch vehicles with which to
commercialize space.
Other patterns emerge
as well. Each of the groups which we
have examined above began, roughly speaking, with a decade-long period
of
"prophetic" proclamation and ferment, to be followed by a period of
stabilization and consolidation. Each
was also a curious blend of radical and conservative elements; while
each
promised to completely overturn the social order and bring about a new,
more
perfect era, this greater perfection was actually the preservation and
magnification of the existing, perhaps endangered, present order. Galton, for example, saw eugenics as a way
to preserve the British aristocracy against the onslaught of crass
industrial
plutocracy; in America the science was perceived as a way to shore up a
faltering White Anglo-Saxon middle-class cultural imperium faced with
the dual
threats of immigration and an increasingly visible proletariat. Cryonics, on the other hand, assumed that
the future will be like the present, only better--with greater personal
wealth,
longer lives, and better sex. The space
colonies movement, too, claimed to give American energy-intensive
industrial
capitalism a new, indefinite, lease on life in the face of recessions,
nuclear
war, and energy crises.
And what of the
future? Will Americans continue to view
new technologies in a salvific light?
The answer would appear to be "yes." Even
as old groups stabilize, new groups continue to appear.
Presently the trend seems to be to cast
computers as the new road to humanity's ultimate destiny; books such as
G.
Stock's Metaman (1993), for example, suggest that mankind has
now become
interlinked into a giant superorganism, "metaman," thanks to the
emergence of the "datasphere"--the electronic equivalent to the
organic biosphere of the natural world.
Others, taking the myth of the "information superhighway" to
further extreme, have proclaimed the emergence of a new subculture
called
"Cyberia" (Rushkoff, 1994).
The emergence of such thought is not surprising; the desire for
"thinking machines," both autonomous and as a form of human mental
augmentation, has existed for decades.
However, the explosive growth of personal computers and, soon
after,
computer networks, has made them at once ubiquitous and, to many,
mysterious. Religious and
quasi-religious groups have formed around them, as well.
One example of this is the
"Zippie" movement, a small group led by ethnobotanist and concert
promoter Frasier Clark; this group combines elements of pagan religion,
computer use, drugs, and some aspects of the hippie lifestyle into a
new
techno-shamanistic lifestyle. The
watchword of this movement supposedly is the word "pronoia," defined
as "the unreasonable assumption that forces are conspiring to help a
person" (Marshall, 1994; Huffstutter, 1994).
A more tough-minded,
but equally millennarian group is the Extropian movement.
Led by Max More, this group is dedicated to
the discussion and development of "transhumanist" philosophy--a
philosophy rooted in the belief that the human state is only a first
step, and
that human destiny is to become more than human through technologies
such as
genetic engineering, space colonies, cryonics, intelligence-increasing
drugs,
nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence.
Aggressively secularist and politically libertarian (Morrow and
More,
1988; More, 1994), the Extropians are particularly fascinated by the
prospect
of direct human-machine interfacing; such a development would not only
allow for
cybernetic mental and physical enhancements; it could also allow
"uploading": transference of
one's memories and personality into a computer. Such
an action could conceivably result in a form of effective
immortality, either in a robotic body or perhaps in a virtual reality
setting
in a computer memory bank. Perhaps not
surprisingly, the Extropians have they own vision of the apocalpse
called the
"information singularity" (a concept much discussed on the internet
Extropian newsgroup). Evoking images of
black holes (the heart of which is also called a singularity), the
information
singularity may occur within the next 20 to 40 years and the be result
of the
continued exponential growth of data and computer technology; at some
point the
rate of information increase will become virtually vertical, meaning
that
information will be accruing at an infinite rate. While
the word "singularity" implies a complete,
unimaginable break with the past, many assume that this event will
entail a
fundamental reordering of both the consciousness of individuals and of
the
greater society.
* *
*
Technological
millennialism is an American phenomenon that has existed for decades,
and will
probably continue in decades to come.
For many people it appears to serve as a secular religion for a
technological age; as such it offers various forms of group and
individual
salvation, up to and including eternal life.
While there may be an initial impulse to dismiss such groups as
cranks
and/or eccentrics (particularly by more "establishmentarian"
scientists and technologists), to do so would be a mistake for a number
of
reasons. First, the existence of such
quasi-religious groups tell us at least as much about our personal and
social
values as our organized religions do.
Eugenics, for example, posits that a person's intrinsic worth is
not
intrinsic but rather a function of one's social utility, while cryonics
shows
that strong desire continues to exist for personal immortality, even
though
this desire has become unfashionable to admit in modern secular society.
Furthermore, American
culture is perfused with technological millenarianism; while most
members of
society would not be so bold as to argue that technology is the key to
some
form of eternal life, many would argue that technological progress will
hopefully lead to a better quality of life.
Arguably, this quest to bring forth a better future beginning
here and
now is one of the forces that has made the U.S. a leader in both the
technological
production and in popular culture and which has also given Americans a
characteristic thirst for novelty. At
the same time, technology offers hope for a better tomorrow: problems such as AIDs, or a declining
standard of living, are simply temporary afflictions that will pass
away in the
near future.
Finally, there is the
question of the process of technological innovation itself. Science is frequently portrayed as a
rational process in which hypotheses are tested and discarded in an
orderly
process. While occasional breakthroughs
do occur (a la Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions), it
is
usually assumed such revolutionary events occur after the slow build-up
of
counter-evidence that undercuts a prevailing paradigm.
At the outset of this overturning process,
however, no counter-evidence exists; furthermore, it may take a great
deal of
time and effort before any counter-evidence is discovered.
Often, however, ideas may have no clear
precedent upon which to build and/or no clear market to exploit, as in
the case
of airplanes, electric lighting, rocketry, telegraphy and telephony
and, more
recently, the search for gravity waves and neutrino decay.
Technological millennialism may provide that
element of faith--the belief in the reality of things yet unseen--that
allows a
visionary to carry his or her ideas through to a perhaps uncertain
fruition.
Such visionary
conviction seems to stand in an undefined space between avant-garde
science and
wishful thinking. On the one hand, it
may attract professional scientists attempting simply to expand the
edifice of
science in an anticipated, if not yet proven, manner.
Alternatively, such movements also share something in common
with
some forms of "scientized" millennial faiths such as Scientology, UFO
worshippers, and segments of the New Age which rely upon science not so
much
for providing objective confirmation or disconfirmation, but as a
source of
vocabulary and legitimating mythical paradigms.
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