Morality and ethics may be loosely defined terms, whose contours keep changing with time. But these have been anchors without which Homo Sapiens would drift in senseless directions and end up as Homo Pravus
There is no stopping the relentless march of human beings towards even more stupendous technological and medical advancements. The impossible 50 years ago is the order of the day today; the sacrilegious dreams in a century before is now a banal reality; from nearly crawling on all fours we have taken to flying several thousand feet in the air and delving deep into the oceans through amazing contraptions; from being clueless on why chicken pox strikes us, we have begun to alter genetic structures; from being consigned to flames or buried under mounds of mud, we (or at least a few of us) are preferring to be preserved in super-cold chambers after death, to be retrieved once science has progressed even further to get us back to life; and the resignation to our fate has been replaced by a determination to define our future.
We can give life forms, alter life forms, and cheat death by more number of years than before. If god exists, we want to appropriate its qualities; if it doesn’t, we are the new god. The Homo Sapiens, as author Yuval Noah Harari says in his new book, is seeking to now become Homo Deus.
Is mankind on a dangerous course to tinkering with issues it better leave aside, or is it just pushing the frontiers of understanding and in the process making topsy-turvy conventionally-held beliefs and presumptionsIJ Is this a celebration of coming of age or a precursor to doomIJ If ‘understanding’ eventually leads to ‘solution’, does it mean that having realised that anger, pain, happiness, hurt, love, liking and desire are triggered by electrochemical reactions and no more, we can or will surely manipulate these biological reactions — just as we have done with the genetic code — and mute the bad ones (anger), the depressing ones (pain and hurt); and flare up the nice ones (happiness, love, liking and desire)IJ It’s just biochemistry, after all.
The desire to be in control of everything is apparently the Homo Sapiens’ latest obsession. Ethics may not be a dirty word yet, but it is an irritant, and an obstacle, that has a way of creeping into the process of every life-defining discovery, of every new conquest that the brilliant mind achieves. But ethics is unquantifiable, and what cannot be measured on a scientific scale deserves scant attention. Even better for the wannabe Homo Deus, ethics is an invisible particle, a construct of convenience designed to subjugate Homo Sapiens to a certain kind of conduct, to frighten it from becoming daring. In modern-day terminology which has assumed great popularity, ethics cramps the ‘freedom of expression’ of modern science and technology. like the soul does. The bacteria are seen under a microscope, the DNA structure can be drawn, the most complex nervous system has been plotted, even stars millions of miles away have been observed in minute detail. But where is the soulIJ It does not reside in the body, else it would have been isolated, ripped apart and demystified by now. And so, why must one allow a non-existent entity, a figment of imagination at best, to lay the ground rules for what is ‘good’ and what is notIJ
God, soul, ethics. Even if they have no meaning to some, even if they are imaginative and not real terms, even if they are impediments to faster progress, they serve a positive purpose to the larger mass of Homo Sapiens. They make human beings to think twice. And ‘think twice’ is not just linguistic jargon; it’s an invaluable restraint: It can prevent conflicts, relationship breaks and arrival at hastily-concluded assumptions. The human mind’s moral compass works on an ability to look beyond obvious gains and losses and appreciate the ‘goodness’ to self and society.
Morality may be a loosely defined term, whose contours keeps changing with time. But it has been an anchor without which Homo Sapiens would drift in senseless directions and end up as not Homo Deus, but Homo Pravus — a wicked or perverse human being. Schools have made Moral Science as one of their subjects, along with Science and Humanities, to keep students balanced between ethics and science. But that subject is being eased out at many institutions.
That the fear of imbalance is real and not a concoction of the anti-science/anti-progressives, is borne by recent history, when Adolf Hitler sought to twist genetic engineering to create human beings of the ‘perfect superior race’ and, worse, to eliminate those with ‘impure’ DNA qualities. Such was the outrage that the entire ambitious Genome project, thoroughly discredited, was scrapped, and restarted only years later with more noble intent. In his brilliantly written book, The Gene, author Siddhartha Mukherjee provides a detailed glimpse of the episode. He also deals at length with the moral-ethical dimension of genetic engineering. Harari too, concludes his Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, with the questions: “Are organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just date pressingIJ”; “What’s more valuable — intelligence or consciousnessIJ”; “What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselvesIJ”
All of this does not, however, guarantee that morality will see us through in difficult times and that it will assist us in making the right decisions. If that were so, religion (which has a heavy dose of morality and is all-pervasive across the world) alone would have resolved mankind’s problems. To the contrary, religion has become a source of conflicts, of terrorism, of even territorial conquests. Gerald Posner’s deeply-researched book, God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican, is an exposé of how the Church failed the victims of the the Nazi brutalities — providing funds to the perpetrators of the crime and refusing to protect the fleeing masses. In the middle of 1930s, writes Posner, thousands of German priests surrendered their parish marriage and baptism records to be used by the Nazis “to verify blood purity”. He adds that after Hitler and the Vatican signed a deal, which brought added revenue to the Church, the “Vatican gave Hitler the formal endorsement” of the Church’s loyalty to the Third Reich, that he wanted. life-time teachings on morality and theology did not come in the Church’s way.
Nonetheless, as we progress (or hurtle) towards advancement, we must remember that even science has limits. Algorithms are not the answer, but only an explanation. Individuals and not science make moral judgements. let’s not aspire to be Homo Deus.
(The writer is Opinion Editor, The Pioneer)