TELEOLOGICAL EGOCENTRIC FUNCTIONALISM IN THE AGE OF DECADENCE.
(Author’s note: What follows is not a review of Zoltan Istvan’s novel ‘The Transhuman Wager, but rather some thoughts inspired by its plot and the issues it raises. My intended audience are people who have read the book, so I do not intend to give a synopsis of its plot, nor will I shy away from spoilers.)
(Image from wikipedia)
Jethro Knights is clearly the protagonist of 'Transhumanist Wager'. Equally obviously, Reverend Belinas is the antagonist. But is the Reverend Jethro's opposite? I would argue that in some crucial ways, these characters are really quite similar.
Most importantly, they are both 'authentic persons'. What is meant by that? I mean that both men are wholly committed to what they believe in. There is no ulterior motive at work, no hidden agenda that is contrary to what they seem, on the surface, to believe in. Their beliefs form a philosophy of life that they practice unwaveringly.
In the case of Reverend Belinas, we are told that his more wealthy followers "bought Belinas' goodwill and paved the way for his ministry with their resources. In return, he promised them God's favour, both in this world and the next. He meant it, and they believed it". On the basis of that quote I think we can say of Belinas that he really means it when he promises God's favour, in this world and the next. It might not have been the case that he really meant that. We can imagine a person who finds it useful to pretend to sincerely believe in God's favour, as that encourages others to part with their money. In that case, it is amassing material wealth that is the true motive, and surface-level faith is merely used to obtain it.
Now, Reverend Belinas- or rather his Church- has amassed a considerable fortune, "worth hundreds of millions of dollars". But, for Belinas that fortune is merely a means to an end. He is not interested in wealth for wealth's sake. "Belinas never splashed out on fancy living". He is, however, quite aware of how useful and essential money is in getting things done, and he is quite willing to use the rich and vain- "people for whom riches came too easily and freely, celebrities, royalty, and heirs"- in order to obtain funds for the greater purpose of "helping the faithful, the downtrodden, and the destitute".
I think it is fair to say that Belinas makes sure the money he raises goes to fund his mission in life, and the same can be said of Jethro. There is a moment in the story where he turns down an offer for a huge amount of money from a Russian businessman, because the money was offered on the condition it was used to achieve something Jethro did not consider to be plausible in the near-term. Jethro could have pretended to agree to do what was asked and take the guy's money but he stuck to his principles.
Just to make it clear that Belinas is an authentic person, we are told: "Belinas was an authentic man, singular in his absolute faith and servitude to The Lord and to his people...If God demanded that he fly a fully fueled commercial liner into a skyscraper filled with thousands of people, he would do it. And not think twice about it". What does that tell us about him? "It tells us that he is a nutter" might be one reply. But it also tells us that he is an existentialist, like Soren Kierkegaard.
BELINAS: A KNIGHT OF FAITH
(Soren Kierkegaard. Image from wikimedia commons)
Kierkegaard's philosophy arose partly from observations of his fellow citizens of Copenhagen. At that time, in the 19th century, the people of the capital of Denmark were extremely religious, at least by today's standards. But, for Kierkegaard, the faith of his fellow citizens came too easily. People attended church, they read the Bible, they said their prayers, but these acts of devotion were carried out within a more general existence of avarice, vanity, and greed. In his most famous book, Soren (who always wrote under various pseudonyms) said:
"Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt-cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid".
What bothered Kierkegaard was whether what his fellow citizens took to be sufficient justification to call themselves 'Christian' really was sufficient. Attend church on a Sunday, say Grace before meals and the Lord's Prayer before bed, was that really all it took to secure one's place in Heaven? For Kierkegaard, if Christianity was to be at all meaningful, and provide a central purpose to one's life, then practicing it ought to be more difficult than that.
Kierkegaard's existential philosophy was built around what it means to have faith. For most people, faith is defined as 'believing in something when there is insufficient evidence for it'. By that definition, we might say that Jethro and all transhumanists have faith that scitech will one day defeat death. It might. After all, today modern medical and surgical practices can save lives that would surely have been lost in the past, and in the future who knows what miracles will be performed? But of course we cannot know for sure that scitech will make us immortal at some point in the future.
Kierkegaard took a more radical view of faith in that he considered it not simply as believing in something upon insufficient evidence, but rather believing in something irrespective of the evidence. In that regard, Kierkegaard disagreed with Kant's view that religious belief could be founded on reason. Faith was utterly irrational and completely unprovable.
For Kierkegaard, the famous Biblical tale of God commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac reveals the true commitment one needs to be a Christian, and that commitment is unwavering faith. He focuses his attention not on what the tale tells us, but rather on what it misses out. In Genesis 22 we're told that God commands Abraham to "get thee to the land of Moriah, and offer him (his son) there for a burnt offering", and the next day Abraham did as he was told. So it seems like a pretty simple act of obedience.
But what the tale misses out are the thought processes that Abraham went through between receiving God's command and carrying out those instructions. What was he thinking? How did he feel? The story does not tell us, and Kierkegaard considered such details crucial information for understanding Abraham and for having the kind of faith he had.
MISSING DETAILS
(Abraham. Image from wikimedia commons)
The crux of the matter is this. How did Abraham know what to do? What lead him to interpret God's instructions as orders to be carried out to the letter? He could have thought, "God is testing my moral character and the right thing to do is disobey". He could have thought, "that was not God speaking, it was the devil or just an hallucination. I will pay it no credence". Kierkegaard insisted that the process Abraham or anyone went through in receiving a supposed message from God and deciding what to do about it, rests entirely on the individual. You alone can decide whether the voice was really God; you alone must interpret the message and only you can decide, ultimately, to comply. Faith is always subjective.
Remember, for Kierkegaard faith is believing irrespective of the evidence. True faith, the philosopher insisted, involves both a movement of infinite resignation and a movement of faith. For Abraham, the movement of infinite resignation was knowing his son was lost to him, while his movement of faith was simultaneously believing Isaac was not lost to him. Logically they cannot simultaneously be true, so Abraham's faith transcends logic. As Kierkegaard said:
"All along he had faith, he believed that God would not demand Isaac of him, while still he was willing to offer him if that was indeed what was demanded... and it was indeed absurd that God who demanded this of him should in the next instance withdraw that demand".
In other words, at the very moment Abraham gave up his dreams and every hope for this world, he continued to expect the impossible. Kierkegaard called Abraham a 'knight of faith', someone totally prepared to give up the very thing they most hope to keep, while simultaneously believing it is not lost. This is no mere act of self-deception. It is not a case of somehow forgetting about your resignation. No, Kierkegaard tells us that the knight of the faith believes on the strength of the absurd.
Knights of faith are both admirable and scary precisely because of what they might be prepared to do at any given moment in virtue of their faith. They are quite prepared to act contrary to ethics. Kierkegaard's view was that ethics is identified with the universal. The killing of one's own son is forbidden by morality that applies to everyone at all times. By acting on their faith, knights of faith instead act on the personal, on reasons that are uniquely that individual's, pertaining to their relationship with God. Objectively, it is not possible to distinguish between those who disobey universal ethics so as to obey God from those who have murdered in response to insanity or delusion. As Kierkegaard concluded, "either Abraham was a murderer, or we are confronted by a paradox which is higher than all meditation". Choosing the latter interpretation, Kierkegaard argued for "the teleological suspension of the ethical". In other words, the personal can override the universal or ethical, when done in obedience to God. Kierkegaard's philosophy does not prove that Abraham or anyone who carried out the 'teleological suspension of the ethical' is a hero rather than a villain. It requires a leap of faith in order to reach that conclusion.
Kierkegaard's book was called 'Fear And Trembling' and what left him in fear and trembling was both the idea that people such as Abraham could exist, and that his faith might be similarly tested via instructions to sacrifice that which was most dear to him. From what we are told about his commitment to carry out a 9/11, Reverend Belinas is a knight of faith.
Now, when it comes to belief irrespective of the evidence, we can hardly say that Jethro Knights holds such convictions. On the contrary, he is forthright in his insistence that logic and reason are the only viable methods for gaining knowledge, and he is just as vocal in his position of faith:
"They want you to dedicate your life and subjugate your reasoning...all because it feels right to them. Their beliefs are absurd, completely lacking in sound judgement".
JETHRO AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
It would seem then, that whereas Belinas very much fits the 'knight of faith' mould, Jethro could not be more different. But there is another aspect of Existentialism that very much defines the protagonist of 'Transhumanist Wager'. When Soren Kierkegaard died, he requested that just two words be engraved on his tombstone: THE INDIVIDUAL. Why those two words? Because they get right to the essence of existentialist philosophy.
Philosopher Matt Lawrence wrote, "existentialism focuses on the issues that arise for us as separate and distinct persons who are, in a very profound sense, alone in the world. Its emphasis is... on taking responsibility for who you are, what you do, and the meanings you give to the world around you".
I doubt one could find a better description of Jethro's philosophy of life. He himself wrote, "I will fail to achieve my goals if I lose myself in another, live for another, or place my happiness and aspirations in another. I am self-sufficient, not needing anyone or anything else".
Jethro Knights is unwavering in his dedication to his version of transhumanism, and as committed to working to realise his goals, as Belinas is dedicated and driven by his. In a confrontation between Belinas and Jethro, the latter admits, "I would kill my wife a thousand times over if I absolutely had to in order to reach my goals", which some might say is not all that different to Abraham making a sacrifice of his son on the strength of his personal conviction.
I have been a member of a few online transhuman groups, and sooner or later somebody always accuses the members of those groups of being all talk and no action; spending their time discussing transhumanism but not doing much at all in terms of practical work. I would imagine that Jethro Knights is what those people would regard as an exemplary transhumanist, for he works incredibly hard for its cause, and any roadblock put up by the movement's opponents only causes him to push himself further. It actually gets to the point of absurdity. We are informed that "Jethro continued labouring for the transhuman movement at a gruelling pace, always seven days a week" and later that "Jethro Knights pushed himself with renewed vigour, working 20 hour days" and later still, "if the days were desperate, Jethro didn't seem to notice. He chose only to work harder, putting in longer hours".
So, what, by this time his work schedule is 21 or more hours per day, seven days a week? We are never told that Knights is genetically modified or augmented in some way so as not to need sleep. He is just an ordinary (albeit obsessively driven) human being. Methinks anyone who pushed themselves that hard would just collapse.
There is something almost paradoxical about Jethro, in that he is wholly committed to living forever but at the same time risks his life. Not just in terms of working himself to death but also by deliberately placing himself in lethal situations. Indeed, our very first introduction to him finds him out on the ocean somewhere, in the middle of a hurricane, about to be drowned by a rogue wave. Later in the story, he is working as a correspondent for 'International Geographic' and is asked to take on an incredibly dangerous assignment, after the previous correspondent is killed. "yeah, I'll do it", he says.
Why would anyone who is determined to live forever choose to place themselves in such dangerous situations as "skimming down an erupting volcano on a sandboard"? Maybe because the point is not just to survive but to LIVE. The story tells us that "journeys that illuminate and change lives are not defined by schedules, money, or agendas- but by experience".
FREEDOM IS A SCARY THING
(Jean-Paul Sartre. Image from wikimedia commons)
Time and again, while reading about Jethro, his philosophy of life and his attitude toward others, I am reminded of a phrase in a song by Laurie Anderson:
"Freedom is a scary thing. Not many people really want it".
Now that seems like a strange thing to say. Everyone wants to be free, don't they? Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre have argued that, actually, people really are afraid of freedom and protect themselves from it by living in bad faith.
The story informs us that "Jethro only took notice of values, not people", and that most people feel "enmity and resistance to that type of harsh machine like objectivity". But why should that be? Jethro cares "only for the core value of a person, judging them solely on their usefulness". He does not discriminate on the basis of age, gender, race, or sexuality. He considers such things as whether you have a criminal record or not as being completely irrelevant. He cares only for how useful somebody is to him. His attitude sounds very much like the ideal that society is reaching for as campaigners strive to end discrimination based on anything other than ability. But such a society has always had conditions that don't seem all that appealing to some.
Consider the question: "If you compete in a completely free, fair, open, merit-based society and you lose, what does that make you?". The point is that, in such a society, there is no one and nothing to blame but yourself. You have to accept personal responsibility for your own failings. Sartre argued that a great many people are not willing to accept the personal responsibility that goes along with absolute freedom, and adopt bad faith in an attempt to trick themselves into believing they are not as free as they really are.
An example of bad faith is to take the meaning of events to be a given, rather than something created or invented. People say things like "Yesterday was boring" or "Such and such happened and it made me sad", as if events occurred that were intrinsically dull or melancholy. In actual fact, boredom and sadness are simply those individual's responses to those events, in other words their freely chosen way of relating to them. We as individuals are always free to chose how we feel about any given situation.
Another form of bad faith is pretending one's actions are not free. Sartre argued that whenever somebody says they have to do something, that is bad faith, for there is absolutely nothing that one must do. Such a conclusion seems to radical for many people, and they try to refute it by citing examples of actions people must do. Death and taxes are familiar examples, but neither really refutes what Sartre is saying.
In the case of "everyone has to die", we have to distinguish between something that is going to happen, and an action you have to perform. You don't actually have to do anything in order to die a natural death. As for paying taxes, it is true that failure to do so will likely result in punishment. But, again, such consequences are simply things that happen to you, not something you have to do (you can always yell 'you'll never take me alive, cops!' and take your own life rather than go to prison).
Time and again, we hear people say they 'have to' do something when they really don't. For example, somebody might say "I would love to meet up with you tomorrow, but I cannot. I have to work. The boss is making me come in on weekends, now". The implication is that this person's situation is not ideal but it is not their fault. Rather, the boss is to blame. Of course, in actual fact, this person does not HAVE to go into work, but could chose to disobey and accept whatever consequences come from that.
Prejudice is at once a hateful thing that we should strive to overcome but also a convenience for people with bad faith. Take the idea of a 'glass ceiling' in the form of sexism that makes it hard or impossible for women to rise up the ranks of professionals. This is at once frustrating for those who should excel but are prevented from doing so by some stupid prejudice. It is also very convenient for women whose merits simply do not warrant success but do not want to admit personal responsibility for their failures. "I tried and failed, but it's not my fault. There is a glass ceiling in the way, after all".
In the Transhumanist Wager we are told that "few people wanted to be judged solely on their usefulness and then dismissed because they had little or none". I have said that although Reverend Belinas is the antagonist, he is not the opposite of Jethro. Both are authentic men, very much dedicated to achieving their goals in life. From a story point of view, it helps to have an adversary who is, more or less, the equal of the hero. It makes for a worthy nemesis.
Considering the point about being judged purely on usefulness, and the sting to pride in being found to have none, in the next instalment like to turn our attention to a character who really is Jethro's opposite, and who represents the real social condition that opposes Jethro's version of transhumanism….
This essay was originally posted on my blog.
REFERENCES
Philosophy: A Graphic Guide by Dave Robinson and Judy Groves
Soren Kierkegaard: A Graphic Guide by Dave Robinson and Oscar Zarate
The Transhumanist Wager By Zoltan Istvan
Like A Splinter In Your Mind: The Philosophy Behind The Matrix Trilogy by Matt Lawrence