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What Is Human?

There are many challenges and problems facing humanity in the generations to

come, but of them all, two factors will be paramount: the definition of what is human

(implying the impact of the concept, and the full quiver of human rights thereof), and

secondly --the right to existence unregulated -- of the feral human genome.

We err if we are led to believe that human-generated prognosticators or computer-

generated scenarios will be able to properly analyze and regulate the ultimate

outcomes regarding these two supreme issues. Financial and political pressure will

have their unfortunate and historically predictable effect, perhaps for the last time, as

cybernetic versions of humanity will emerge from the inevitable crises and chaos that

will precede the demise of the human being as we know it, and of the human body,

with all its genetically embedded frailties, engineered and designed into something

more predictable, durable, pleasing and tractable. We will be known as the ancestors

of something that may not even resemble what we think of as human today: just as

apes are scarcely considered primates to be cherished, though they contain up to 99%or greater of the same genetic materials that human beings call their own, similarly,

those enhanced beings who shall come after us will neither regret the loss of, nor

recognize as precious, their primeval and essential connection to ourselves as

representatives of genuine humanity: we shall be their primitive and inferior

ancestors.

I suspect that the richness of our Pandoras box of genetic gifts will lose its texture,

flexibility and uniqueness as those inconvenient feral qualities become regulated, and,

finally, extinguished in favor of prevailing fashions, political climates, social and

physical efficiency, and economics, though it might be politically incorrect to even

mention our extinction as anything but an unfortunate consequence of the factors

causing our ultimately needing to be discarded, for genuine human beings will be as

alien to them as monkeys are to us.

Only if the definition of What Is Human is carefully defined, and the genetic

manifestations guarded as the treasures that they are that we dare not be lost to us

can we hope to retain the slightest link to something so tender and fragile as human

flesh in the millennia to come. It is possible that clinging to such a past would only

continue to proliferate a strain or streak of evil or destructiveness in our current

species, but it might also prove to be the fighting force that keeps our life-form

wanting to stay alive. It just might be that experiencing the rainbow and spectrum of

the fullness of our primitive existence supplies that essence that means life is worthliving, that the range of emotions existing within us that can make us act in ways that

are not human, or, shall we say, are destructive to what is around us to a greater or

lesser extent, are also the roots of what grows and flowers to produce the best in us:

our sense of soul, of love, of conscience, of self-value. Such would be eliminated,

most likely, because of such stuff revolutions are made, and without such stuff, Im

afraid, the very will to live could be extinguished. It would take a long time for the

human being to descend to that smaller, more efficient, less-feeling, more loyal robot,

but the result would resemble what the social insect kingdoms have developed. What

begins as a crowd (herd) mentality devolves to a hive mentality.

Bees in beehives are all alike, tremendously efficient, and give up their livesentirely to the routines for which they were created, for the queen and hive. They

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work themselves to death, living a mere 35 days. Our future is to be made less and

less individual, for the sake of efficiency, predictability, long life, and economy. In

contrast, the feral human genome may be the only reservoir that will be able to

preserve the unpredictable necessary to meet the stressors of a universe that is

unforgivingly diverse in its challenges to self-aware existence.

We should want to preserve the excitement of human BE-ing: if this essence is

eliminated, we may also eliminate that quality of unique self-awareness that so often

is overwhelming within our breast -- those galloping emotions, bursts of ideas, dreams

of success, and the power of incandescent love. If all is known and predictable, the

result may be a sameness best represented by the clone-looking figures of aliens we

now so easily can picture: big, staring eyes, big heads, expressionless mouths and

faces, hairlessness, ultra-smooth skins -- lookalike creatures who walk about naked,

thin, and disciplined. Efficiently the same, such creatures represent our

imaginations nightmares but we may be looking at what is human two centuries

from now. Will we be human then? Well likely be aliens, I fearperhaps without any

flesh at all with which to burden our economy, capable of living for millennia andtraveling to the stars. For greed, corruption and power drive people to lord it over

others, and to create their submissive flocks of sheep. Sheep go where they are

herded, and we love to be herded. It feels good: we dont have to think. Who wants

to be a black sheep, anyway?

Will a spark of what is human remain within the genetically engineered creatures

of the next century? Its time to address the very definition of just what is human

what this means concerning Human Rights, and what our definition will mean as to

the future of the wild human genome and the human race.

Judyth Vary Baker

Phoenix, AZ 2006