Some Other Time

I had a vivid and detailed dream last night, the kind that remains plausible even after you wake. With some effort, I recalled a good deal of the dialog word-for-word, and even the names. It went like this:

I stroll through Baltimore City on a balmy afternoon, holding 'Zilla's hand. His gait is strange, but swifter than you would expect a four-year-old to walk. He talks about dinosaurs and robots, and what he wants to eat. I feel more than hear a burst of static as my collective tries to talk to me--but I should have signal downtown.

I look around and realize that we have strayed into the edges of a massive protest. Someone has set up an impromptu stage a few blocks away. 'Zilla squeals with delight and takes off, slapping the control modules at his waist. Suddenly he is no longer toddling, but running faster than a grown man.

"'Zilla! Get back here!" I give chase, but he is small and weaves effortlessly through the mass of humanity gathering on the street. Traffic grinds to a half, blocked off by tractor-trailers and charter buses whose stone-faced drivers hold pro-union signs beneath their cigarettes. I lose sight of the boy, and climb up onto the loading dock of a nearby building to find him. I spot his purple jacket near the stage.

A bus pulls up alongside the dock much too fast as I jump down from it, and I narrowly avoid being squashed, activating my reflex enhancer as I probably should have done when 'Zilla first got loose. I dart through the crowd, dodging bodies and barricades, ignoring hateful glances. The boy is trying to climb onto the stage, but I snatch him up and put him on my shoulders.

Sirens approach as the protesters finally get their antique amplification system working. A petite redhead takes the microphone and exhorts her fellows to remain calm, that they are sending a message, not starting a war. The crowd seems ambivalent. I run as fast as I can, but the police are closing in.

I head for a sleek(?!) SUV near the edge of the police perimeter. One foot goes on the front bumper, the next on the hood, a hop over the windshield and onto the roof without losing stride. I leap from the back of the SUV and over the perimeter, pulling 'Zilla off of my shoulders in mid-air and holding him to my chest like an awkwardly shaped football. The hang-time seems eternal, and when the ground hits me it hits harder than I expect. Warnings chime in my head, but the pain is fleeting. I roll clear of the startled police, stagger to my feet, and keep running.

There is a greenspace half a block from us, and law enforcement seems more concerned with containing the crowd than chasing us. I put 'Zilla down once we reach the gates of the park, abstractly aware that my left leg is damaged. We sit down on a park bench beside a middle-aged woman with ribbons and feathers braided into graying hair. She offers us some food in a soft, unfocused voice. 'Zilla happily accepts an apple from her and climbs onto my lap.

"Such a cute little boy!" the woman coos. "I hope you didn't have any trouble downtown, with the action today."

"We just missed the police," I reply, rubbing my leg absently.

"I'm terribly sorry, dear." She pats my hand. It feels a bit intrusive. "At least you made it to a peace zone. You know why we have these actions, right?"

I almost sigh. "You oppose automization and cyberization."

"It's dehumanizing," she says, shaking her head. "It taints everything. Imagine if you took your son to the hospital and they tried to put machines in him!"

Before I can protest that I am not his father or think to shush him, 'Zilla pulls up his shirt, exposing the baselayer that keeps his implants from chafing. Two ports on the suit expose the control modules. "I already got machines!" he cries. "I can't walk without them. Now I'm like Godzilla!" By way of demonstration, he hops off my lap and lumbers around on the bike trail, exaggerating his gait and saying "boom" with every step.

The woman turns from him to me with an expression of dawning horror. I thank her for the food and, taking 'Zilla's hand, leave as quickly as I dare make my leg move. He waves at her over his shoulder with the half-eaten apple.

Once we exit the jamming zone, I contact the collective, recalling the ones who had gone looking for us when I went off the grid. We arrive back at the shop shortly before sunset. Only two members of the collective are there, one cooking upstairs and the other tidying up the storefront. 'Zilla pulls free from my hand and sprints the last block. I let him.

Amelia steps outside, holding the boy to her with one arm and operating an archaic tablet with her free hand. She is half a head taller than me and dressed in a dark red unitard. "I need to look at that leg," she says. We send 'Zilla upstairs to help with dinner and, locking up the store, go into the back room.

It serves as both a workshop and an operatory, though not legally in the latter case. She makes me sit down and strips the street clothes from me. "These are pointless, you know," she says, tossing my t-shirt aside, "the unitard regulates temperature far better."

"Not everybody feels as comfortable you do in skin-tight metafabrics," I grumble. My jeans go flying, too.

I can feel her accessing my logs from my time off the grid--like the 'static' and the damage notification, it is not mapped onto any existing sense, but has an emulated neural pathway all its own.

She rolls her eyes and pushes me back into the reclined exam chair, finding and unzipping the invisible front seam of my unitard as she went. She runs deft fingers over my exposed skin; my scars look all the paler against the rich brown of her hands.

"I thought you were running a diagnostic on my leg," I say, propping myself up.

She laughs, a single 'hah'. "I already ran that diagnostic. It was just the same old wound again. You really ought to have the whole thing replaced."

"I'm fine," I insist. She picks up my left leg and rotates the injured ankle. Pain shoots through it momentarily, before the regulator blocks it off again. She is tapped into my feed, but does not flinch with me.

"Pain is either signal or noise, baby," she says, "nothing special about it unless you make it special. You can have all the pain you need, and a leg that doesn't give out every time you do something stupid."

"Maybe some other time," I concede. She massages my leg as we wait for the rest of the collective to return home. We say nothing more to each other, either vocally or electronically, comfortable in the quietude of our intimacy.

The Consequence of Humanity

I recommend reading Inherit the Earth first, but those familiar with the concept of transhumanism can probably afford to skip it. In case you are wondering: no, I did not do all of my research on Wikipedia, but it does makes a convenient quick reference for readers unfamiliar with the terms.

Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game

At last year's Dragon*Con Transhumanism Open Discussion, someone brought up the idea that transsexual rights are similar in some ways to transhuman rights. While most people are not familiar with transhumanism, they do generally have a passing familiarity with transsexualism. Public opinion and legislation surrounding gender variance may well inform us about the way society will react to emerging transhuman issues.

Transgender (gender variant) people in general face a great deal of prejudice and, in some parts of the world, denial of basic rights. Transsexual people in particular, whose bodies do not match their gender identity, often seek medical procedures to transition to their target gender. This is accomplished through sex reassignment therapy, which may include hormone therapy, genital reconstruction, hair removal, and various cosmetic surgeries.

Many social conservatives regard gender variance of any sort as a deviation to be suppressed. Even social liberals often find transsexual people intimidating, and profess discomfort at associating with them. The fear and misunderstanding of these issues has lead to the development of a 'gatekeeper' mentality in legislation and standards of care relating to sex reassignment therapy. Transsexual individuals must undergo lengthy psychological assessment, and may be barred from medically transitioning if they do not meet the criteria.

Such barriers exist ostensibly to keep people from undergoing procedures they do not require. However, the gatekeeper mentality is, like censorship, founded on society's lack of confidence in itself. Transsexual people with no access to legitimate sex reassignment therapy often seek illegal alternatives, so the 'gatekeeper' system is not really effective at 'protecting people from themselves' in any case.

It is hard to imagine anyone going through the pain, expense, and social fallout of sex reassignment without good reason. However, if a man decided that he wanted breasts, or did not want a penis, he should have as much of a right to seek treatment as a trans woman (a male-to-female transsexual). In the same way, a man should have the right to seek a prosthetic replacement for his hand whether or not the original one functioned (I did not say this is a good idea, or that the technology is 'there' yet--only that it should be allowed). Mandating therapy (for all of the above) is still a good idea, especially in the case of minors, but ultimately the choice should belong to the individual.

I do not mean that the transhumanist desire for modification is equivalent to the agony of gender dysphoria and social rejection that drives so many gender variant people to suicide. At minimum, though, the rest of society will likely see transhumans the same way they see transsexuals--incomprehensible and frightening. Legal and medical gatekeeping of human augmentation will likely come to pass as such procedures become more common. I hope that society will grow more enlightened on the topic. Until then, transhumanists should advocate for the rights of transsexual people. Not only is it the right thing to do, it sets important precedents for other changes to come.

Inherit the Earth

I consider myself a transhumanist--that is to say, I have an interest in ideas about modifying and improving the human body and mind through technology. No, I do not think the Strong AI In the Sky will solve all our problems overnight, though I cannot discount the possibility, either. It seems likely that changes will occur within my natural lifespan which would have been unthinkable at the time of my birth--or even now.

I recognize that misusing technology can spell dire consequences for humanity and the Earth. However, fear and luddism make poor strategies for averting such consequences. No amount of regulation or doomsaying is going to forestall technological progress now. The key to ethical and beneficial advancement lies in understanding technology and making it accessible to more people.

Not just for lightsaber-related injuries!

Transhumanism is an enormous complex of ideas. Here, I would like to focus on the acceptability of human augmentation or modification.

I believe in the right to modify the human body on a voluntary basis. That goes for tattoos, piercings, plastic surgery, cybernetic prostheses, gene therapy, et al. I do think that regulatory/medical oversight should exist for some procedures. However, if I want to amputate my right hand and replace it with a prosthesis at my own expense, I should be permitted to do so. (Edit: I understand the current limitations of prosthetic technology; I am speaking hypothetically in order to underline a philosophical issue.)

Say I lost my hand in a tragic lighsaber...'accident'. Most people would find it understandable if I seek a replacement, and see nothing unethical about it. What if the injury only rendered my fingers useless? Or just less dexterous? What if the hand worked fine but never stopped hurting? I do not see a rational justification for drawing an arbitrary line and saying, "You must be this impaired to seek treatment."

It startles me how many people disagree, even with regard to existing procedures. Though tattoos and piercings have finally gained some degree of mainstream acceptance, many people seem to have reflexively negative opinions of other modifications. I have striven to understand these concerns, and have found the following three most common:

1. Lack of desire for modification and inability/unwillingness to imagine why no one else would desire it.
2. Belief that vanity (or some other moral failing) is the primary motivation for modification.
3. Attachment to ideas of purity (e.g. "The body is a temple") or naturalness (e.g. regarding breast prostheses and implants as 'fake'), and seeing modification as detrimental to same.

I suspect these concerns will fade as the idea of modification becomes less novel. A much more serious potential barrier is the 'gatekeeper' mentality assumed by governments and the medical community toward certain elective procedures. The assumption is that medical information and advice are not sufficient to prevent individuals from making bad decisions. This is probably true in some cases, but I do not think it is right (or effective) to legislate common sense.

We live in exciting and perilous times, and it behooves us to think well on these matters. To be human is to strive and innovate, to overreach and learn from mistakes. Humanity will advance, that is a near certainty; how we do it, though, is still in the air. It is my hope and my goal that we find a way to move forward with wisdom and intent.

Immutable

I have spent the last two months using my non-dominant left hand to perform typically dominant-handed tasks (see Born Sinister for details). It has proven neither as easy as I hoped, nor as difficult as I feared. I am not by any means ambidextrous, and even if long practice makes me proficient in using my left hand, science says I cannot change my chirality.

At least not yet! Perhaps someday a procedure will exist that can make me left-handed, or ambidextrous. Would I seek out such a procedure? It depends on a lot of factors, but though I find the idea of ambidexterity appealing, it is not likely to be a high priority for me. I would probably do it if the expense (to finance and health) were not prohibitive.

If I were left-handed, the inconvenience of operating in a world designed for right-handed people might make the prospect of changing handedness more compelling. If I were a left-handed person living a century ago in a predominantly Christian society, I would probably feel a great deal of pressure to cease relying on the 'devil's hand'.

We might argue until we turned blue which of the above are 'good' reasons for wanting to change handedness, but I suspect we can mostly agree that such a (hypothetical) procedure is not unethical in and of itself. At various points in history, left-handed people have been pressured by society to change; that was wrong, regardless of whether it was possible.  However, there is nothing wrong with a left-hander wanting to be right-handed, or vice versa, or with either wanting to become ambidextrous.

Ah-ha! Now the ring's on the other hand! Or something...

Some of you have already figured out what I am getting at, especially if you know I like to use handedness as an analogy for sexual orientation.

I consider 'reparative therapy' and other pseudo-scientific 'cures' for homosexuality comparable to shaming or forcing a left-handed person to use his right hand. My aunt and countless other left-handed children of her generation have demonstrated the ineffectiveness of such measures. No sound medical procedure exists for changing either chirality or sexual orientation.

However, that does not mean it is not possible. If a safe and effective procedure existed to change sexual orientation, I would not deem a voluntary application of it any more unethical in and of itself than hypothetically changing handedness. Note the key parts of that statement: 'voluntary' and 'in and of itself'. Also note that I am not, in fact, advocating the pursuit of such a procedure. I just want honest discourse about the issue, which has been politicized very nearly beyond the reach of science and reason.

We still live in a society that denigrates sexual minorities, though that attitude has changed much over the last few decades. Because of the LGBT community's harrowing experiences with forced conversion efforts, the immutability of sexual orientation has become a central theme in the modern gay rights movement. The slogan 'born this way' and its corollaries stem from the conceit that sexual minorities' rights should be respected because they 'cannot help it'. Logical problems aside, I feel that this is a flawed argument because we do not actually know that sexual orientation is immutable.

Even if we banned research into changing sexual orientation, our expanding knowledge of human sexuality in general may someday put such procedures within reach of those willing to perform them illegally. If we are lucky, none of that will come to pass (and it may never come to pass, for that matter) until sexual orientation has become as much of a non-issue as handedness is now.

I hope to see a future where sexual orientation, like handedness, is considered a value-neutral variation. If, in that future, methods exist to alter sexual orientation and/or handedness, I can imagine any number of practical reasons why people would seek out such procedures. I do not mean to start saving up for ambidexterity just yet--but maybe someday.