The Future of Being Human and Other Essays

By Sylvia Engdahl

What will humans be like in the future? According to science fiction author Sylvia Engdahl, they will be no different from what they're like now. There will be many innovations in technology and ways of daily life, but people are people, wherever and whenever they happen to live, and that's not going to change.

In this book Engdahl departs from the theme of space colonization on which her past essays (available in her book From This Green Earth) have focused, and discusses such topics as artificial intelligence, "paranormal" psi powers, healthcare policy, and the coming loss of personal privacy. Her controversial views on these subjects will inspire thought about what the future is likely to bring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ad Stellae Books
• Release date: Jan 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781370951086

Sylvia Engdahl

Sylvia Engdahl is the author of eleven science fiction novels. She is best known for her six traditionally-published Young Adult novels that are also enjoyed by adults, all but one of which are now available in indie editions. That one, Enchantress from the Stars, was a Newbery Honor book, winner of the 2000 Phoenix Award of the Children's Literature Association, and a finalist for the 2002 Book Sense Book of the Year in the Rediscovery category. Her Children of the Star trilogy, originally written for teens, was reissued by a different publisher as adult SF.Recently she has written five independently-published novels for adults, the Founders pf Maclairn dulogy and the Captain of Estel trilogy. Although all her novels take place in the distant future, in most csses on hypothetical worlds, and thus are categorized as science fiction, they are are directed more to mainstream readers than to avid science fiction fans.Engdahl has also issued an updated edition of her 1974 nonfiction book The Planet-Girded Suns: Our Forebears' Firm Belief in Inhabited Exoplanets, which is focused on original research in primary sources of the 17th through early 20th centuries that presents the views prevalent among educted people of that time. In addition she has published three permafree ebook collections of essays.Between 1957 and 1967 Engdahl was a computer programmer and Computer Systems Specialist for the SAGE Air Defense System. Most recently she has worked as a freelance editor of nonfiction anthologies for high schools. Now retired, she lives in Eugene, Oregon and welcomes visitors to her website at www.sylviaengdahl.com. It includes a large section on space colonization, of which she is a strong advocate, as well as essays on other topics and detailed information about her books. She enjoys receiving email from her readers.

Book preview

The Future of Being Human

And Other Essays

Collected Essays, Volume 3

Sylvia Engdahl

Copyright © 2020 by Sylvia Louise Engdahl

(except where earlier publication stated)

All rights reserved. For information, write to [e-mail] or visit www.sylviaengdahl.com/adstellae.

This ebook edition distributed by Smashwords

Cover photo © by Can Stock Photo / photocreo

Author website: www.sylviaengdahl.com

Contents

Note: The essays in this book do not need to be read in order; they are independent. You can return to the Table of Contents from the end of each essay.

INTRODUCTION

Part 1: THE IMPACT OF FUTURE TECHNOLOGY

The Future of Being Human (2020)

The Only Sensible Way to Deal Wth Climate Change (2019, 2022)

The End of Personal Privacy (2020)e15

Robots Will Never Replace Humans (2020)

Part 2: THE HUMAN MIND AND SPIRIT

Transhumanism Is a Dead End (2017)

The Role of Psi in Human Affairs (2017)

The Roots of Disbelief in Human Mind Powers (2020)

Existence of Psi in the Living Reveals Nothing About Death (2020)

Christianity as Metaphor (1969)

Part 3: SOCIETY'S OBSESSION WITH HEALTHCARE

The Worship of Medical Authority (1995)

The Need for a New Outlook on Healthcare (2020)

In Defense of Natural Death (2019, 2020)

Part 4: OUTLOOK ON THE UNIVERSE

Humankind’s Future in the Cosmos (2019)

Does It Matter Whether Humankind Survives? (2020)

Why I Don’t Read Much Science Fiction (2020)

EXCERPTS FROM OTHER ESSAY COLLECTIONS

Breaking Out from Earth’s Shell (2019) from From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward

Perspective on the Future: The Quest of Space Age Young People (1972) from Reflections on Enchantress from the Stars and Other Essays

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Introduction

This is one of three books that replace my earlier essay collection Reflections on the Future, which covered too many different topics, and which with the addition of new essays would have been too long. Four of the essays included here were in that book, one has been online since 2019, and the rest are entirely new. In addition, two essays excerpted from the other two books in the series appear at the end.

Unlike those books, this one is neither about space nor about my writing. For many years I didn't publicly express any opinions (other than those implicit in my novels) except for my conviction about the vital importance of expanding our civilization into space. I didn't want people to be distracted from the space issue by disagreement with my views on unrelated subjects. But beginning with the publication of Stewards of the Flame in 2007, I began commenting on various other issues that are important to me, mainly on pages discussing the background of the novel. These, along with my view of the future, are the issues with which this book deals.

Though some of these topics may seem quite separate from each other, actually they are all concerned with two interrelated themes: first, the powers of the individual human mind, including so-called paranormal powers; and second the use, and too often misuse, of technology to directly impact the minds and/or bodies of human individuals. They are the topics I feel are of greatest significance in our era, apart from the major world problems that I believe can't be solved as long as we remain confined to one small planet.

If much of this book is about the future, why does the cover show an ordinary family that might exist today? Wouldn’t a futuristic scene be more appropriate? And wouldn’t something featuring strange new technology be more likely to attract readers interested in what the future will bring?

I chose to show people of today because I don’t believe those of the future will be as different from ourselves as most speculators seem to think. There will be many innovations in the years to come, but alteration of average humans won’t be among them. We’re not all going to turn into cyborgs or live in virtual worlds. Human feelings won’t change, despite the use of more advanced technology. We’ll still care about our families, and we’ll still enjoy being outdoors. People are people, wherever and whenever they happen to live. Humankind evolves; human capabilities increase; society matures and progresses. Customs change. Nevertheless, much stays the same, and I don’t think it’s realistic to ignore this fact.

That said, of course there are going to be major differences in people’s daily lives. New technologies that will transform our way of doing things are developing rapidly. Many of them will be improvements, but a few—such as those that rob us of privacy—will be unwelcome. And various trends will be exciting to some people yet appalling to others.

Pessimism about the future is common today. Many feel that that world is declining and that much that was valuable is being lost. I don’t share that view. We have lost some things that were good, but they were not nearly as good as the things we have gained. Some elderly people grieve for times that are past and long to return to them, but I’m not one of them. Perhaps because the best things in my personal life have involved computers, I have been happy to see technology move forward. And so, though I find some expected developments disturbing, I feel that our worst fears about them won’t come to pass.

In my fiction I have never tried to accurately depict the future, other than to express my belief that space colonization will be a major part of it. I have focused on the characters’ experiences and aimed to make them seem realistic to today’s readers. For example, in my novels I’ve mentioned artificial intelligence (AI) only where it is necessary to the story, although actually it will affect everyone’s daily life before this century is over. The ships in my Flame novels are operated by AI and the human pilots do no more than issue commands, except when landing on a planet’s surface. Even small ships contain knowledgebases containing the entire accumulated knowledge of humankind. Bodies are maintained in stasis by AI. Neurofeedback provides enough detailed information about a person’s brain functioning for him to learn to control his inner biochemical processes voluntarily. Yet routine use or AI by ordinary people is ignored. And there is, one significant anachronism in the books: for plot reasons they include asteroid miners, although in an era of AI-equipped starships it is highly unlikely that human labor would be used to dig rocks out of asteroids.

There are also anachronisms in the stories that weren’t intentional. Technology has progressed much faster than I expected when I wrote them. A major element in the plot of Stewards of the Flame is the existence of implanted microchips that detect heart function, which when I wrote it were my own idea. It’s no longer credible that these would be an innovation on an isolated colony world instead of being routinely used on Earth, for they exist now; they can’t track people yet, but they’ll soon be able to. An incident in Herald of the Flame involves a portable brain scanner that fit into a collapsible helmet, which I feared might be too incredible since such scanners are now huge machines. In 2017 the head of a medical imaging company told an interviewer that she has created one in the form of a ski hat.

So my imagination tends to be too cautious. Even knowing this, however, I find some of what experts predict beyond belief, for it’s based on what I feel are false views of the nature of human beings.

For instance, I do not believe that robots will become superior to humans. They may be programmed to show apparent self-awareness and emotion, but that will be merely a simulation. AI will never be conscious because there is more to a human mind, and even an animal’s mind, than a brain. People are not going to become obsolete.

Moreover, I don’t think wild ideas about human minds being converted to electronic form have any basis in reality. We are not going to be uploaded to computers as if consciousness were merely software, and we are not going to become immortal that way or any other—nor are we going to cease caring about the things in life that matter to us now.

The essence of life and death is constant from era to era, all the way back to prehistoric times and forward as far as is conceivable. Whatever the future brings, we will deal with it as people always have, by finding ways to adapt and go on with our lives. Every generation has feared new ways would lead to a loss of human qualities, in society if not in individuals, and such fears have always proved mistaken.

But isn’t the world itself in danger now? In most respects, no more than it has been during many decades that are behind us. In the seventy years since 1950 when I graduated from high school I have lived through many world crises and none of them turned out as badly as people thought they would at the time they happened. The one thing different now is that new technologies in the hands of small groups such as terrorists could prove disastrous; it would no longer take a major war to threaten our survival. Yet we are all in danger, all the time. There is no more point in worrying about world catastrophe than about being killed in a traffic accident, which is far more likely.

Doomsaying has never been a valid outlook on the future. It makes more sense to focus on hope, and apart from the comments of techno-enthusiasts, that’s too seldom done. Nevertheless, where I see potential problems I don’t ignore them. Nearly every new technology will have unfortunate effects as well as good ones.

In this book I have not hesitated to express my opinions, which are often controversial. The essays are what journalists call opinion pieces that do not pretend to present balanced views of the issues with which they deal. Needless to say, you may disagree with some of them. I hope you will also find some encouraging.

*

Part 1: The Impact of Future Technology

The Future of Being Human (2020)

The Only Sensible Way to Deal Wth Climate Change (2019, 2022)

The End of Personal Privacy (2020)e15

Robots Will Never Replace Humans (2020)

The Future of Being Human

(2020)

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

— Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, Les Guêpes, 1849

*

That this French aphorism, usually translated as The more things change, the more they stay the same, expresses a commonly-recognized truth is shown by the fact that googling the English version yields 509,000 hits. It is most often said cynically, especially in political contexts, to mean that despite reforms nothing ever gets any better. Yet it is also used to say that people’s basic wants and fears don’t change even though as time passes they involve different situations. Or it can refer to surprise at finding that despite change in one’s outlook some things, usually tangible things, have remained constant. Philosophically, it can mean that apparent changes do not affect reality on a deeper level. And I have recently discovered that the phrase is in the lyrics of a variety of pop songs.

I think, however, that it is especially appropriate as a description of the very nature of human beings. From era to era, there are enormous changes in human cultures and human technologies—but human nature does not change. People are people, in whatever era they happen to live. Our present way of living and the technology that makes it possible would be utterly incomprehensible to the ancient Greeks, yet if we met them as individuals, we would find them much like ourselves. Similarly, if we were to meet the people of tomorrow we would have feelings in common with them even if their appearance and lifestyles seemed strange.

Until recently, this was taken for granted. But now, speculators about the future are saying that future humans will be so unlike ourselves as to seem, or even literally be, a different species. A friend once wrote to me, The next generation of human evolution is about to take place in the next century instead of the next million years. They aren’t going to be like us, and I actually believe there won’t be an ‘us’ much longer (in historical time).

This strikes me as a profound misunderstanding of what it means to be human. Setting aside semantic difficulties with the word evolution, which I’ll deal with below, such suppositions are usually based on the fact that technology is enabling us to make changes in our bodies and more and more drastic physical changes are on the horizon. But is our humanity defined by the appearance, or even the capabilities, of our bodies? Surely not. That assumption flies in the face of all the progress toward tolerance we have made.

In the nineteenth century and even into the twentieth, scientific anthropology held that skin color marked races as inherently different from each other and that dark-skinned races were inferior. Some called them a missing link between humans and apes. Most of us long ago condemned such views. More recently, we have abandoned the once-common prejudice against the disabled; we do not consider a person with missing limbs less human than the rest of us. Why then would alteration of the body make us question someone’s humanity?

So far, it has not. People with medical implants such as pacemakers, artificial hip joints, or brain electrodes to treat epilepsy are not viewed as semi-human. To be sure, these devices are not visible, and some readers will protest that they merely restore normal functioning rather than improving it. But in principle there is no difference. We don’t think of wide variation in genetic endowment as defining degree of humanity; an Einstein and a person with Down syndrome are viewed as equally human although not equal in mental capacity. A star athlete may be admired more than someone born lame, but the humanity of the latter is not in doubt. If it becomes possible to increase abilities, either mental or physical, where could a dividing line be drawn?

It’s sometimes asserted that genetic or neurological technologies will produce not merely a line but a wide gap. But will people want that? Technology can’t spread on its own; it is developed beyond the experimental stage when, and only when, it serves human needs and/or desires. Mere technological feasibility is not enough to bring about new developments; they must be wanted by the public. In the 1940s popular speculation about the future held that someday we would all have personal helicopters parked in our yards. The technology for personal helicopters was clearly on the horizon. Why don’t we have them now? Because a neighborhood full of helicopters is neither practical nor desirable. On the other hand, personal computers— which we didn’t imagine even in the 1960s—are useful; they provide capabilities that people want to have. Undoubtedly countless more useful things will be developed in the future. But fundamental human wants aren’t going to change.

We now see it’s likely that people will want improved bodies. But comparatively few of them will want to be transformed into a new species or to be replaced by cyborgs. Human relationships will always be important to them, and most people have a strong emotional attachment to their physical form and that of their loved ones. Moreover, they don’t want to be seen as different from everybody else—they want to enhance physical characteristics that are already admired.

Thus it is difficult to imagine any major changes in the human physique that would be marketable. Many of the things often envisioned are pointless. Movies and TV series that show super-capable individuals are good entertainment, but they have little relationship to what would be useful in real life. We don’t need people to be strong enough to lift a car or jump ten feet in the air, or to fly, or to be efficient killers like Terminator. These are anachronisms; we have technology to do all the physical things that might have been helpful to our ancestors. We don’t need to become human computers, either. One of Robert Heinlein’s YA novels features a mathematically gifted young man who keeps starship astrogation charts and tables of logarithms in his head; this proves so valuable that although he has no space experience whatsoever be becomes captain when the original captain is killed. At the time that was written it would have seemed desirable to give human beings such capabilities, but now it would just seem silly. We have computers for astrogation; there are better things to occupy human minds.

I’ve seen it argued that people will be eager to change their bodies because they now want weird piercings and tattoos. Yet there have been cultures that admired weird piercings and tattoos since the beginning of time; in some African tribes it was a status symbol. In ours it has become fashionable, but fashions don’t have a lasting effect on the human race unless they are heritable. Some currently-fashionable features, such as being thin, will probably be made heritable through genetic engineering, if that proves possible (which it may not, as the science of genomics is finding that far more factors than genes affect a person’s biological characteristics). But there’s a limit to what people will want passed on to their offspring. How many now have their babies tattooed, or encourage their young kids to get piercings?

DNA technology will undoubtedly be useful—but hardly for such extreme changes in human beings that they would no longer be us. It will be employed for medical purposes and perhaps for producing designer babies with the particular characteristics their parents choose from among normal ones. It may be able to provide some enhanced mental capabilities, though these are more likely to be produced by neurotechnology. But why would anyone want intelligent beings entirely different from us? Scientists might want to prove they could create them, but such beings would have no adaptive advantage. Mere change is not evolution. Evolution occurs when new capabilities enable an organism to adapt to its environment better than its predecessors. We have, or will have, technology to do everything our environment requires; we have no reason to alter our offspring in any fundamental way.

When it comes to colonizing other planets, we might well wish to modify our bodies to fit new environments. But there is no reason why this would result in separation into different species—after all, dogs of widely varying size and shape are all the same species and can interbreed. Inability to interbreed and produce fertile offspring is the determining factor in speciation, and appearance, within obvious limits, has nothing to do with it. Why would humans choose to alter their DNA in such a way as to prevent interbreeding? In nature division into different species requires separation for very long periods of time; it could not occur within the time frame of any imaginable future unless it was intentionally engineered. And it’s unlikely that humans of different types would refrain from sex with each other.

Might not mutations caused by exposure to radiation in space lead to eventual genetic differences? No, because even if no way to prevent such mutations is found, before we have a significant number of people in space we will be able to