Futurism

Futurism: The Need to Improve Human Environments to Improve Humans

The future of mankind is in space, of this there is no doubt. Planet Earth will not be able to sustain a growing technological civilization for more than a few more centuries. We will expand to the planet Mars and build space colonies with resources from the Moon, asteroids, moons of the Outer Planets, Mercury, atmospheres of the Gas Giants and the widely dispersed comets beyond Pluto. We will mine the atmosphere of Venus for carbon. Someday we will reach other solar systems and use similar resources orbiting distant Suns. Swarms of AI robots will enable us to engage in construction and extraordinary engineering on an immense scale. Inexhaustible robot labor will allow us to build our island cities in space to sustain a population of trillions, perhaps quadrillions. Human creativity will reach new hieghts. Should I eat my own words?

Some people see a glorious Space Age. Others see a swarm of humans invading space and devouring its resources for the sake of breeding, oppressing women, enriching a few lucky ones while others work their asses off in foolish self imposed exile from the potential paradise of Earth for the sake of life in a totally artificial environment. Although space colonies large enough to mimic the surface of a planet may be possible, will our creativity really reach new heights just because trillions of us live in these space habitat, or is this just a Galactic Manifest Destiny delusion? Why can't Earth support our civilization in a few more centuries? Is it not possible that we will learn to use solar energy and biomass, recycling, and even reduce the population through artificial contraception? It seems logical that we will voluntarily genetically engineer our children to eliminate inherited diseases, mental retardation and deformities. No child should be cursed by these, but we don't need to conquer the universe to do that.

                                                  The Simple, and the Complex
     Dietary and lifestyle changes will improve humanity as much as genetic engineering. The consumption of a low fat, low calorie diet consisting mostly of fruits and vegetables and a little lean meat in addition to a less stressful lifestyle and shorter work week thanks to robotic mass production and more time for athletic recreation will reduce the incidence of heart disease. Vaccines could prevent cancer. Tobacco smoking, drunkeness and sunbathing will be replaced by better pleasures like property and good relationships. Life spans will increase by ten years at least if most people adopt these changes. Moreover, less land and energy will be wasted as is now for meat production.

     Genetic engineering to enhance the immune system and prevent the shortening of teleomeres in the cells, perhaps, will also have a profound effect. Will we live for centuries? Perhaps. Why would we want to? For the sake of long interstellar voyages? That's not a very immediate concern.

                      Improved Material Conditions equals Species Improvement
    These changes will only come about if all the world's people enjoy a high standard of living. People in the West live decades longer than people in the Third World and have much better access to education and information. Average life expectancy in Zambia is only 37. In Swaziland it is only 33. We can't expect good genes to achieve much in those nations. To improve the human race we must see to it that all people have medical care, sanitation, decent housing, good hygiene, education and information technology. Presently, about one in one hundred of Earth's people have a computer and/or a college education. Clearly, we must do more to improve most of mankind before we create large numbers of people with genius IQs and lifespans of more than a century, by an unkown but probably high cost in genetic research, unless you believe that creating more advanced humans who can lead the way and invent great things is the way to improve life for everyone on Earth. Raising a gifted child and providing him or her with an first class education could be seen as the equivalent of creating a genetically engineered super human, eh? By the time one gets a Ph.D. or M.D. (or both) in his or her late twenties we can only expect 30 or 40 years before senescence sets in. There are scientists and doctors who work until they die, but they are not the rule. We've all met burned out professors. If more highly intelligent and educated people could live for over 100 years and remain vigorous they could do more for humanity. Even so, better environments allow the development of better people.

     The children of poor women with IQs of about 80 adopted by middle class families have been found to have IQs of 100 to 110 probably because of growing up in a better environment. Intelligence has a strong genetic component and also an environmental component. Better material conditions will lead to an overall increase in the average IQ of humanity. Of course, intelligence doesn't have much use without education and information from books, broadcasting, the web, etc. Brute strength and work endurance can be more valuable for people in primitive conditions. Sensitive intellectuals, artists and musicians might seem like weaklings to people living in dire circumstances unless they have books to read and stories to tell, religion to preach, art supplies and musical insturments to entertain others with.

Much blindness in the LDCs is not genetic but the result of vitamin A deficiencies. New strains of rice that contain beta-carotene might solve this problem. Blindness and neural tube defects like spina bifida can be caused by folic acid deficiencies. Perhaps foreign aid programs should include vitamin pills. Perhaps they do already. Vitamin A can also be obtained from the livers of fish, livestock and wild game.   People must know that liver is an important food for those who don't have many red and yellow vegetables and fruits to eat. Knowledge could save the eyesight of many. Protein deficiencies can lead to stunted growth and mental retardation. While Americans eat too much, others endure disease and death. If we give more food away it can save people NOW. Ultimately we must teach people how to use their own resources to feed themselves.

In many LDCs people must work hard to get water. Inventor Dean Kamen has created an inexpensive Stirling engine based device that can burn wood, dung, coal, almost anything, that distills clean water and generates some electricity to power a radio or small lamp. More inventions like this are needed to help the world's poor help themselves.

AI computers and robotic mass production will do a lot to end poverty and raise living standards. Cheap, clean, renewable energy supplies will power progress in the 21st century. Infrastructure development is needed in the less developed countries, and much of this need could be met by large telecommunication stations in GEO. Water supplies and powerlines will still be necessary. It will take more than technology to surmount these challenges. International cooperation and leadership in the impoverished countries is necessary. Hopefully, the poor countries will avoid our excesses on their road to modernity. What need is there for cheap tobacco, junk food, fatty foods, cheap alcohol, speeding, traffic jams, and other Western ills on the path to material wealth? Oddly enough, Africa has a high rate of auto injuries and fatalities.

                                                              Basics Needed
      In my opinion, there are three things beyond food and water that the world's poor people need right away-cleanliness, cloth and birth control. Cleanliness comes with an ample clean water supply and soap. Cloth can provide shelter in the form of tents as well as provide clothing, bedding, diapers, cleaning items, towels and bandages.. The need for birth control is obvious. These are just material things. Religious freedom would also make a big difference, but communist and theocratic governments will not just go away. Thank whatever diety you believe or don't beleive in for the USA and the Bill of Rights.

Perhaps genetically engineered crops and livestock will feed the people. Foreign aid programs could involve the production of water pumps and pipelines, filters, biodegradable soaps and detergents, cloth of hemp, cotton and synthetics, and contraceptives of various kinds. Distribution is the next problem. Many countries have no roads, railways or airstrips. This means we must use pack animals, people on foot and riverboats to reach people way out in the countryside. Airplanes can make parachute drops to.

                          Completing Homo sapiens Before Creating Homo superior
     The road to the stars involves much more than technological challenges. We won't expand into the Final Frontier until we are able to bring everybody with us. Life span extension is one of the prime objectives of futurists, transhumanists and posthumanists. If only everyone could live to be 75. Then, by conquering heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer, we will see everyone living until 90 and more people living until 100 or older without any genetic engineering of the human race at all. Of course, there may be a genetic component to these killer diseases that must be dealt with. The point is, we don't need to make any major changes to human genetics or biochemistry to increase lifespans, we must triumph over poverty and disease. Creating a profoundly different human, a posthuman or transhuman, who lives for centuries and has a superior brain, with genes so different that he or she would be considered a member of a different species that we ordinary humans could not even interbreed with, is a much larger step that need not be feared. We don't need to achieve transhumans in the near future either. By the time we do create transhumans, we will have a lot of experience working with and improving the genes of animals and plants, so we will know what we are doing and we won't end up creating monsters.

     There are some things about genetic engineering that are unappealing. One's sperm would have to be provided or eggs surgically harvested and doctors and lab technicians would then go about modifying the genes. In vitro fertilization and implantation of the fertilized embryos would come next and a surrogate mother might even have to be hired if the genetic condition being "cured" involves difficulty giving birth or the genetic modifications make the embryo somehow incompatible with the seed mother's body. Many people go through this to get pregnant nowadays so I don't really see this as a barrier to those who want to bless their child with freedom from a terrible physical or mental hereditary disease, if they can afford it. As for the poor, would it not be morally right, even commanded, for society to pay for this kind of therapy to free people from a disease like sickle cell anemia? Will mass production be applied to medical treatments like this to reduce costs, if at all possible? Or will that be a blunder that leads to the elimination of manic-depression and the elimination of associated creativity because in haste scientists did figure out how to do away with the bad genes and keep the good ones?

     The integration of man and machine could improve people and it is doing so now with things like wrist watches that monitor blood pressure and pulse rate. We don't need to become a race of cyborgs, but we could make use of things like chips implanted under the skin that measure stress levels, blood sugar levels, neurotransmitter metabolites, anti-psychotic medication levels, blood fats, oxygen and other blood gases, hormone levels, body temperature, metabolic rates, etc. The chips could store data going back for weeks and this could be printed out on a doctor's or patient's home computer. The chip implants could transmit data to displays worn on the wrist and they could even send out emergency signals to 911 if there is a medical emergency like a heart attack, insulin shock or massive stress caused by a trauma, assault, car wreck, etc. Mental patients could have chips that send signals to 911 if low medication levels, intense stress, high dopamine metabolite levels, etc. are detected. Elaborate computerized security systems would prevent invasion of privacy and the use of these chips would be voluntary except in the case of those who are given a court order to have them implanted because of a history of alcoholism, illegal drug use, insanity and violence. The wives of violent men might want them to so they could be rescued should he attack her. Paranoids will buck at this, but we should be able to make this technology safe in the USA as far as our rights go. In a dictatorship this technology could be used for evil purposes.

     Chips in the scalp could detect potential and actual seizure activity. Epileptics could take a pill or inhalant that prevents a siezure and 911 could be alerted if a serious convulsion occurs. The chip would be no more intrusive than vaccinations or the progesterone implants that some woman have for birth control. The use of TCM (Trans Cranial Magnetic stimulation) could replace shock treatments for depressives. It might even be possible to have TCM units at home by prescription for depressed people to use every other day. Some people might want TCM units just to get them going. This might be abused, or it might be safer than a couple of cups of coffee. Who knows?

     A mere microchip implant and/or a home TCM unit won't make us inhuman, but being freed from these things by genetic engineering would be most desirable. Even so, genetically engineered humans will eventually get old and sick, so they will find such technology useful when they are well over 100 years of age perhaps.

          A Vast Amount of Untapped Potential in the Present Species Must be Tapped
     Will we create technological and biological monstrosities? Will be smart enough to avoid creating AI machines and genetically engineered offspring that turn against us? Are we smart enough to create any of the great things envisioned like artificial intelligence, millions of robots that allow us to tame the solar system and build space colonies, spaceships, and more? I am sure of one thing. There is a lot of human potential that is going unrealized. Since only 1% of the Earth's people have a college education and only 1% have a computer, we can be certain that an incredible amount of brain power is going to waste. Increasing world living standards to a level enjoyed in the West today will allow ten to a hundred times as much human intelligence and imagination to be put to work for the benefit of all. Giving everybody a lifespan of at least 75 years will allow more productivity from each individual. Of course, this human talent could be exploited by evil governments to oppress humanity. The greatest improvment in human environments is the establishment of freedom and democracy. This might only be won through fighting in some nations. In other nations peaceful reforms can take place.

The first goal of transhumanists and posthumanists and others who want to improve the human race should be the attainment of the full human potential that exists with the genetic stock alive today by providing opportunity and wealth for all of Earth's people. That means all people must have freedom and democracy, education and information, computers and web access perhaps by satellite, as well as basic survival needs like food, clean water, sewers, antibiotics, medical care, clothing, shelter and security. They will also need business capital. A better material, social and spiritual environment for all the world's people will lead to great things. Unfortunately, I don't expect it all to come about peacefully, especially in countries where guerillas and terrorists will kill anyone who accepts Western charity or commandeer foreign aid for their own evil purposes. There are also tyrants who will use their armies to kill missionaries and foreign workers, steal farms and industrial complexes built by Westerners, and live to enrich only themselves. Many wars in less developed nations remain to be fought. They cannot be avoided by going to Mars. This is the sorry fact.