Part two: civilization of rupture by technological ways

Written and published by Nihilitus

Date of publication: August 20, 2022

In the first part, Jorjani explained at length how the political structure of world democratic liberalism has deep contradictions that could lead to the collapse of the system, a phenomenon that is already being observed in some parts of the West. The propensity for relativism, the fragmentation of societies and the rise of nationalism are latent threats, and everything seems to point to the end of global capitalism. With more hermetic borders, harsher migration policies and a new semantics of social political order, the future of democratic governments and liberal economies seems uncertain.

But the crisis is not only political, it is not only about institutions. Modern society is on the threshold of a profound change directly linked to technological development. This change will not only allude to forms, it will also transform structures, which is why Jorjani identifies it as a singularity because it will be a historical moment of rupture that will render societies unrecognizable whether they endure or become extinct.

The first half of the 21st century will mark the destiny of humanity and Jorjani makes a strong claim that the moment of rupture will be completed when a world government is installed due to the emergence of catastrophic events that the planet will have to face. There is something common to this process. The threats facing societies are no longer local, or even regional, but global, and that is another weakness of modern states because they are simply limited in scope no matter what they do. They are not capable of resolving threats of a global order.

The outlook is bleak. The future does not seem to show the continuity of liberal democracies, or an order of power based on representation, dialogue and consensus. The new world order will be heavily influenced by a harsh authoritarian style. Human rights will take a back seat. All these conditions may seem aberrant and certainly a step backwards in terms of the coexistence of human communities, but when Jorjani analyzes the three technological phenomena that will lead to singularity, it is reasonable to think that a strong state with global reach is the only alternative humanity has to survive. And that is without considering climate change, which is also a latent threat, but is not addressed by Jorjani.

EUGENICS AND THE NEW HUMAN OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Technology has reached such a complex level of development that it is currently challenging the natural dynamics of life, and human beings are no strangers to this change. Biotechnologies such as cloning, genetic engineering or embryo selection emerged as part of the desire to create perfect societies, free of diseases and with a longer average life span than today. This direction is part of a historical trend rooted in the human mind to achieve perfection in all possible areas of life and is called eugenics, because it has not only been limited to human communities, historically it began with agriculture, then it was animals and finally it has reached human beings.

What does perfection imply in human communities? Avoiding congenital diseases, for example, or extending life expectancy beyond what nature can allow. However, in human societies it has been seen that these possibilities of improvement are so meager that only an elite can benefit from them. But the problem is also political and cultural. After the traumatizing experience of Nazism, many European countries and the United States banned genetic manipulation in humans and the subject became the secret domain of powerful corporations. However, in other regions of the world this practice was never questioned. In some Asian countries eugenics has been modernized to the point of having seriously modified the nature of their societies. The case of China is the most prominent.

The problem that arises from this reality is whether genetic experimentation can continue in the context of dangerous secrecy. Have human beings really not been cloned yet? Have human-animal hybrids designed in top-secret laboratories not yet been created? But the biggest dilemma is what advantage are societies that use genetic engineering methods to improve themselves from the laboratory? What kind of society are we building when we allow inequalities to be genetic rather than natural? Jorjani analyzes this problem and comes to the conclusion that a regulatory order with global control powers is necessary. But let’s start with the basics.

Jorjani explores the origins of eugenics in Western thought and finds in Plato his main reference. In “The Republic” (Jorjani 2017) he explains that society needs social selection methodologies to maintain the caste system dominated by the intellectual aristocracy. He also indicates that this selection method is not new because it was already applied in agriculture or animal farming but suggests that it could be used in human communities. This is how he proposes the following: the State has the responsibility to keep society orderly in order to avoid its structural collapse, for which it must implement a program of selective reproduction that encourages the reproduction of the best men and women (now we would understand as the most genetically qualified), but the program must also proceed in the opposite direction for the least qualified. The State must also try to maintain a balance between the number of inhabitants and the available resources, but it also suggests the isolation of the disabled and the compulsory abortion of unplanned or unauthorized children.

The term eugenics first appeared in the 19th century thanks to the contribution of the English statistician, biologist and psychologist Sir Francis Galton (Lynn 2001). It is a term derived from Greek and suggests “good breeding”. It is basically described as a methodology used to improve the genetic qualities of different human populations. It was never conceived as an improvement measure but as a corrective measure.

Galton theorized that the force of natural selection of the fittest decreases as a determined civilization advance (Lynn 2001). This relationship is produced by a change in the massification of societies and social inequality. As the rich populations reproduce less and less because their priority is professional growth, the opposite occurs in the marginal sectors, where they reproduce at an accelerated rate. So, the civilization in question enters a phase of decadence and terminal decline.

Galton developed a whole program of eugenics for society, but it was always clear that its application depended on an authoritarian power. China, for example, was an ideal nation for these purposes because of the type of government it has. However, reality showed that Galton’s ideas were widely accepted and applied in several European nations and in some states of the American Union. Science itself accepted Galton’s proposal without much resistance. Eugenic practices became a common issue in the Western world. Many countries incorporated them into their control policies. However, Nazism would stop this expansive chain of eugenics because of the brutality with which it applied its methodologies and its publicly manifested intentions to purify an Aryan race. It no longer mattered if the problem was the handicapped or people born with congenital diseases, the problem was not being Aryan because that implied extermination. The horrors of World War II made it clear that eugenics can be a double-edged weapon and most nations refrained from promoting it any further.

However, eugenics did not disappear, it adapted to the new times. After the Second World War, eugenics ceased to be a priority of the states, of their social control policies. Now its development would be more modest and secret. The new eugenics no longer consisted in promoting the reproduction of the best men and women, nor in eliminating the disabled. The new eugenics moved to the laboratories so that improvement could be done through genetic manipulation.

Thus, three areas of complex experimentation were developed: genetic engineering, cloning and embryo selection. Cloning is probably the most controversial according to Jorjani’s argument. The term originates from the Greek word klon (meaning “twig”) and refers to an ancient method of growing fruit trees using branches from the original tree (Naam, 2005). Cloning, in general, is the reproduction of an identical copy of a plant or animal and has been practiced since the mid-20th century.

The frog, for example, was the first animal cloned, while the first mammal, Dolly the sheep, was cloned in 1997; 500 identical copies of bovine embryos were cloned shortly thereafter, and cloned mice were being produced in 1998-1999 (Naam, 2005). Cloning in humans has, however, been a taboo subject. If it is done, it would be done in absolute secrecy and at the risk of facing imprisonment and repudiation by the scientific community. European legislation, for example, sees cloning as a form of eugenics that it simply cannot permit. In 1997 the European Parliament issued a resolution condemning it, which basically stated the following (2005): “With the clear conviction that the cloning of human beings… cannot, under any circumstances, be justified or tolerated by any society, because it constitutes a serious violation of fundamental rights and is contrary to the principle of equality of human beings, since it permits a eugenic and racist selection of the human race, violates human dignity and requires experimentation on human beings…. Each individual has the right to his or her own genetic identity, and human cloning is, and must remain, prohibited.”

With the doors of human cloning closed, the only viable alternative left is embryo selection through Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD). Although this method is eugenic, its application is done in vitro¹ which eliminates some of the associated controversies such as the violation of the right to life. 

Genetic engineering is a more complex process because, unlike selecting the best embryo with the best characteristics from an analyzed sample, it directly intervenes in its genetic characteristics, modifying them and thus creating a healthy specimen that can also improve its cognitive and physical capacities, as well as lengthen its average lifespan. In other words, gene editing can lead to the design of superhumans before they are conceived, and this of course raises alarm bells in many ways.

Studies such as those conducted by Harvard professor Robert Barro have shown a significant correlation between a nation’s average IQ and its gross domestic product (GDP) and economic growth rate (Naam 2005). This reasoning is interesting because it would indicate that if a population is genetically enhanced, the benefit would accrue not only to the modified group, but to society as a whole. This seems to be happening in China. Richard Lynn (2001) argues that this country has managed to develop effective human bioengineering programs for decades and the result is that it currently has a genetically modified aristocracy that governs the country and is predisposed to dominate the world, which is why they are imposing themselves (as a nation) in all possible spheres: cultural, scientific, economic and military.

Why a country like China does not care about the ethical repercussions of genetic experimentation on humans has a lot to do with its culture. Unlike Western culture, Chinese culture has no hesitation in invading (and even suppressing) individuality, and that has a lot to do with the way they conceive of power. In the West, social and political semantics are marked by respect for individuality (its nature is inviolable). The reality of Chinese culture is the opposite because the State has the power to invade all aspects of life, including the individual dimension of its citizens. This is a binding reality that is accepted by the elites as well as by its citizens.

Under these conditions, Chinese legislation is open to human bioengineering. Eugenics became Chinese state policy since 1999 and is aimed at limiting the spread of the disabled and people with genetic diseases (Lynn 2001). The more invasive the policies become the more aspects of private life will be controlled, even an area as reserved as sexuality can be absorbed and controlled by the Chinese state so that only the best specimens are reproduced. At this rate the Chinese would within generations reach superhuman levels of general intelligence which will have consequences for the world economy. In a country that reaches these levels of intelligence, physical labor will become a secondary issue delegated to robots or cheap labor from less intelligent countries or regions.

If China has advanced in the area of biotechnology in humans, it has been due to the lack of a supranational authority to control them. It is clear that other countries, which are not identified with the cultural values of the West, are also moving in the same direction; even private capital may be immersed in an industry that operates in the shadows due to the lack of a global control policy. This is a very delicate area that may threaten social cohesion. With genetic engineering, societies will be losing an essential component because differences will no longer be natural but will be programmed in the laboratory before conception. Inequality will also be genetic.  The effects of having such a society are unpredictable, so Jorjani’s conclusion is clear. The establishment of a world government with the power to regulate the field of human biotechnology in all countries is necessary.

Nor is the invisible hand of the free market a solution if one appeals to the argument that supply/demand logic can make genetic engineering massively accessible. This is an argument of Jorjani that contrasts with the proposal of Ramez Naam and Richard Lynn. Both advocate neoeugenic free-market policy (Naam 2005). Their argument is that the more restricted biotechnology is the more expensive it will be and only the rich will be able to benefit from it. If it is opened to the free market, through the effect of supply and demand, its value will fall, and it will become more accessible.

According to Naam (2005), the benefits of massive access to human biotechnologies will have a direct impact on the economy of the societies that take the risk. According to his calculations, the GDP could undergo an exponential improvement and the problem of social security would be solved because retirement would be extended with older but healthier workers due to biotechnology.

But Naam (2005) goes further. He sees in biotechnology the way by which human beings can improve themselves in order to survive as a species, even if this implies hybridization with other non-human species. That means mixing with animals at the genetic level. In his ideal Naam suggests that the human of the future will be diverse and unrecognizable but will retain the progressive and liberal elements of the modern human. This is seen by Jorjani as intellectual arrogance because there is nothing to ensure that Naam’s posthuman will be marked by a single culture when there is clearly a (confrontational) coexistence between many cultures.

Thus, the challenge is to confront the power of influential nations such as China and the private capital that clandestinely moves billions of dollars in biotechnology. Faced with this scenario and the weakness of national states, it is necessary to create a regulation in this field imposed by a world government. The power of this sovereign will have to take shape around 2050, according to Jorjani, and one of its first challenges will be to defeat the influence of powerful groups that will oppose its formation, such as conservative, religious and transhumanist sectors.

ROBOTICS AND VIRTUAL REALITY

The development of robotics, virtual reality and their unification can amplify human senses. If we add genetic engineering to this, the possibility of creating superhumans is very real, but the biggest problem does not lie in this qualitative change in people, but in the use that can be made of them to reinforce a certain type of political power, or worse, these technologies can be a threat to social coexistence and security. For these reasons, Jorjani suggests that global regulation is necessary.

Robotics is a field that has been developing for decades, since the middle of the last century, and now concerns not only public safety, but also private industry, which moves billions of dollars. But as Jorjani notes, the biggest change in robotics was the shift in focus from mimicking human morphology to incorporating zoology models for new robots to emulate the movement of animals. This shift is extremely important because it has allowed the new robotics to make inroads in the fields of military security and espionage. The current trend is to build robots that mimic the movement of dogs, for example, but adapted with artificial intelligence. Insect robots are another trend that can be used for spying missions. Jorjani warns that these robots can carry lethal weaponry to attack specific targets without being seen, i.e. killing an enemy in complete anonymity.

Jorjani warns that these changes could threaten social cohesion because it means living in a state of latent threat of being attacked by technologies that most of the population is unaware of. If they were to fall into the hands of terrorists or if they were able to develop them, the consequences would be catastrophic. Jorjani believes that advanced robotics can coexist in a society if it has high levels of trust (which would imply, for example, the non-existence of terrorism), but that is not the case. Terrorism and organized crime can lead to levels of insecurity that threaten social coexistence, which is why a world government with the power to control the development and use of these technologies is necessary.

Despite these threats, the advancement of robotics has not stopped. The latest innovations have focused on providing robots with more precision and artificial intelligence is no longer the only means to achieve this. There are aspects of animals/humans that cannot be replicated, such as consciousness, so it is necessary to improve remote control systems so that the human operators themselves can directly control the robots.

Work is currently underway to improve the synergy between robotics and virtual reality. This technology is being applied in military drones, for example, so that they can be remotely operated by human operators. To this end, new haptic suits are being tested that allow the operator to feel the movement of the drone in a virtual interface. The long-term goal is for the operator to develop a new sense by incorporating the drone into his body. The pilot would then have the drone’s own perception of the drone, minimizing accidents and perfecting evasive attack techniques.

Another way to remotely manipulate robots is through mind control. It sounds like science fiction, but the research is quite advanced, and the goal is to use brain waves. These technologies have opened up the possibility that brains could be linked together so that a single command could be unified for a set of soldiers dispersed across the battlefield. It would be like controlling the troops from a remote location, just as a player controls his units in a computer strategy war game.

So far, the analysis has been restricted to robotics and other technologies applied to the military industry and the consequences it may have on social coexistence and security, however, there is another technology that also represents a challenge for the societies of the future: virtual reality. On their own, these technologies have been very beneficial in areas such as medicine, industrial design and police research. Its potential lies in objectively mimicking reality and establishing an interactive link with the subjective dimension of the operator, making it an adaptive technology. The fear of some theorists and of Jorjani himself is that it will become a mass consumer technology for entertainment. Its consequences are a clear threat to social coexistence: it can become the most addictive drug; it can destroy privacy; it can destroy personal identity and it can promote a sense of derealization of reality.

Jorjani points out two reasons to believe that this dystopian future may emerge. The development of technology will enrich the virtual experience on the level of portability and representation of the real. Future devices will achieve absolute immersion; vision will be free of mounts; devices that create the sensation of smell will be added; and haptic suits will allow contact with the artificial world to be felt.  At the same time, Jorjani notes that there is an increasingly strong tendency that indicates that video game consumers are no longer children or teenagers, but adults. This may indicate a repudiation of the real world. With more immersive and portable technology it is evident that this conglomerate will grow and ultimately there will be more people connected to the virtual world than people living their experiences on the street or in the real world.

The problem arising from this new sociality lies in the end of privacy. Indeed, this technology can be used to spy on virtual operators. These practices are not new; big technology corporations such as Facebook or Google have been spying on their users for decades and use this knowledge to create products that generate more impact or are more consumed. Virtual reality, being an immersive technology, can reveal more sensitive aspects of the human personality and it is clear that this conglomerate of data can be a source of dispute between corporations to hook more customers or make them more addicted to their products and services. In any case, the operator must be aware of this danger if he is going to spend a part of his life in cyberspace. But how can he know such a thing is what Jorjani wonders. Hence the reasoning behind having clear policies to protect consumers from having their data stolen or used without their consent. That means going beyond the current limits of nation states because Facebook, Twitter or Google are not local corporations, but transnationals that operate worldwide, so they must answer to a global government.

THE END OF BLACK GOLD AND THE SEARCH FOR NEW ENERGY SOURCES IN SPACE

That A major problem that humanity will have to face in the next 20 years will be to find a new source of energy to supply the more than ten billion inhabitants that the planet will have. Oil has entered a phase of massive depletion that will become more evident between 2030 and 2040, which will mean the inevitable advent of a worldwide energy crisis. New world powers will emerge from this situation, or the current ones will be strengthened because whoever controls the new energy resources will control the planet. As renewable energies are insufficient, the world powers will be forced to look for a new source of energy in space and this will entail political and even military disputes beyond the limits of the planet, and therefore it will be necessary to redefine concepts such as nationalism and international law. But before delving into these changes, let us review some important oil issues.

The global oil reality does not seem to be very promising for the coming decades. There are very scientific predictions that have determined that oil will become scarce worldwide between 2030 and 2040. It must be taken into consideration that one third of the reserves cannot be extracted because it is not profitable to do so, and that if it were to be done, the product would be of very poor quality. Other more current indicators only reinforce this gloomy scenario, for example, it is public knowledge that in recent years new refineries are no longer being built in the countries with the highest production, instead they are being merged with the consequent reduction of personnel.

The problem with oil production, and this is a point that environmentalists and promoters of renewable energies do not want to understand, is that it sustains almost the entire modern world economy. Oil is part of a whole industrial chain of goods and services that affects the entire market: it provides energy to cities; it contributed to the creation of highways; it allowed rapid mobility through the mass transportation of goods, which also influenced the cheapening of products. All these elements helped create the economic base of modern cities. Changing the production model will affect the whole system, the way of life of people living in cities will change radically. However, the question raised by Jorjani is: is there really an alternative source of energy that can replace oil?

The answer is no. Alternative energies such as hydroelectric, solar or wind have a small range, it has been demonstrated that they can be useful to cover local territories because they have natural limitations. This would lead to the risk of paralysis, disuse, equipment damage that would only be solved by using oil resources. In addition, their infrastructure requires raw materials that are extracted from polluting energies. Natural gas, hydrogen and atomic energy have the potential to massively cover the market but carry a very high safety risk.

The main defects of natural gas are that it pollutes as much as oil and an accident can cause massive explosions. In addition, it is a source of energy that requires a high investment to be imported or exported and this inevitably leads to an increase in the price to be paid by the consumer. If we add to this the vulnerability of the ports that receive the gas to potential terrorist attacks, the conclusion is that it is not a viable option to replace oil.

Hydrogen is more attractive because it does not pollute, but an accident in its handling can trigger explosions that endanger a large number of people, which makes it attractive for terrorist attacks. But it also requires polluting energies such as oil and gas for its production and the result is not optimal: the number of batteries that come out of the process does not equal the consumption of oil and gas used for its production.

Nuclear energy seems to be the most appropriate to replace oil because it can achieve the same levels of production and coverage. In fact, it surpasses it in efficiency: it produces more energy with fewer resources, it is cheap and non-polluting. However, it carries a very high safety risk: its waste is highly contaminating and can last for thousands of years; the risk of damage to the nuclear reactor can lead to ecological catastrophe (air and soil contamination due to the spread of radiation that would result in the death of crops and the exponential development of cancer-causing diseases). Humanity has witnessed three nuclear accidents that have devastated nature and caused the death of thousands of people: Chernobyl, Fukushima and the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.

There is an irrefutable fact that non-renewable energy producers know: energy consumption is directly associated with population growth, and in the next two decades it will be so abundant that oil and gas will not be able to supply the demand. To overcome this shortage, it has been proposed to extract Helium-3 from the moon. This is a fuel for nuclear fusion power plants, it is more efficient than oil and does not pollute. However, it is rare on Earth and is not sufficient for industrial production, but it is abundant on the Moon (Schmitt 2010) ².

Being a rare element on earth, its commercial value is high, practically more valuable than gold, however, the investment required to extract lunar fuel would be approximately 5 billion dollars in the first five years, a relatively low value (2010). Another $6 billion would be required to build a nuclear plant based on helium-3 (2010).

According to Jorjani, the extraction process would be as follows: the main work would be done by machines and robots; human presence would be limited to repair functions; a human base on the moon would be necessary; unmanned spacecraft would send the helium-3 to Earth. A cost estimate on colonizing the moon would amount to $15 billion. This is where we get into the political discussion of the problem. There are several questions: On what legal basis will the Moon’s resources be shared if more than one nation has the technological power to do so? How will human communities on the Moon be organized if they are to come from different cultures and religions?

Jorjani recovers some of the ideas of astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt to address these concerns. Schmitt (2010) envisions a complex scenario of human coexistence on the Moon. The interaction of different human communities will eventually reveal cultural and religious problems that may threaten their cohesion. But also their persistence and expansion will at some point lead them to organize and demand legal protection.

An international agreement on the exploitation of the Moon’s resources already exists, but some countries have not signed it. The 1979 lunar agreement (Schmitt 2010) argues that the Moon’s resources should not be extracted until there is a democratic system among countries that allows them to discuss their distribution among all countries. This agreement was signed by all countries except those that have the technological capacity to explore space, such as the United States and Russia.

As Jorjani observes this agreement is not only harmful to the interests of the great nations (who have not signed it for that reason), but it also openly discourages private investment. The 1967 Outer Space Convention (Schmitt 2010) has other principles and according to Jorjani is the most appropriate for organizing the future colonization of the Moon. The agreement stipulates that the state retains jurisdiction over objects launched into space. Other states cannot dispose of them unless the owner state wants to share the information based on the principle of reciprocity. Thus, states have an exclusive right over their own space facilities and thus can assign operating licenses to private property.

One of the most controversial points has been Article III of the agreement, which basically states that no nation may have sovereignty over the Moon. This is problematic. For Jorjani, the role of private enterprise will be fundamental in this process not only because it can provide technology for the extraction of helium-3, but also because its dynamics can lower costs and make this fuel accessible to the entire population. But if there is no clear distinction as to who is the sovereign of the Moon, then how can the private rights of companies that want to invest in space be recognized?

For Jorjani the answer is not in the present. The nature of sovereignty on the Moon will be an emergent condition as human settlements create a complex and diverse society. At some point these lunar colonies will demand sovereign protection over their lives and property which will result in a declaration of political and corporate independence from Earth.

Faced with this scenario of dispersion, the only way out that Jorjani finds is that before colonizing the Moon, humanity has reached an agreement on the need to establish a world government that can exercise legitimate sovereignty over the Moon, thus avoiding any discrepancies and disputes between states, under the argument that the only beneficiary of a world political power is humanity and the planet as a whole.

NOTES:

1. This technique consists of selecting the best embryos that are cultivated in vitro. Cell samples are extracted to analyze their genetic composition and the best embryo is selected for implantation (Naam 2005).
2. Helium-3 is based on the high-energy principle that occurs in the sun. This process fuses hydrogen with helium and increases or decreases with solar flares. This occurs in certain areas of the moon and its terrestrial layer is the one that accumulates the fuel (Schmitt 2010).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Jason Reza Jorjani. 2017. World State of Emergency (Arktos: London)

Richard Lynn, Eugenics: A Reassessment (Westport: Praeger, 2001).

Ramez Naam, More Than Human (New York: Random House, 2005)

Harrison Schmitt, Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space (New York: Copernicus Books, 2010).