Right-wing Technological Dread

Ronald Bailey | January 31, 2001

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What an odd argument! Does Wolfson plan to do his own open-heart surgery? Repair his own car? Fix his own plumbing? Of course people will need to seek out the best advice they can find to guide their decisions about biotech medical treatments or genetically enhancing their offspring. And naturally some people will be more discriminating and demanding than others about the advice and services they receive. But we all rely on experts to get through life now and by doing so we are not diminishing our freedom of choice. In fact, by having a range of experts on tap, we have substantially expanded our choices. Fortunately, too, we can rely on another older technology called markets to supply patients and parents with good advice and quality services. It works for schooling, grocery stores, restaurants, prescription drugs, and there is no reason to think that if we can limit government interference with these new technologies, that markets won’t work to supply us with more rather than fewer choices.

Wolfson also believes that Americans cannot resist the new technologies because we live in a society that is pervaded by technological metaphors and a protechnology ideology. In Marxist terms, we’re like the bourgeoisie who cannot see class relations because they are blinkered by their own positions in the system. To illustrate how he thinks that technological metaphors have taken over and changed our self-conceptions, Wolfson cites a common argument brought out by advocates for genetic engineering : Why shouldn’t parents be allowed to enhance their children’s IQs through genetic engineering? After all, parents already spend thousands of dollars on education to achieve the same goal.

Wolfson counters that this argument confuses achieving a high IQ with the larger purposes of education rightly understood. Education was once understood, he says, as helping a child "to become a good citizen and a good man; it was about the inculcation of virtue. It was about shaping human souls, not raising test scores." He’s posing a false dichotomy. High test scores are not usually thought to be a bar to inculcating virtue or to becoming a good citizen. One can be both smart and virtuous.

"A sentiment less generous than education of the young drives the ambition to engineer smarter, cleverer beings. It is the desire for an ever more complete mastery over nature," complains Wolfson. Again, it is not one or the other, it is both. And what’s wrong with wanting "more complete mastery over nature" anyway? The successful quest for mastery has essentially doubled human lifespans in the past century, prevented the starvation of hundreds of millions, and lifted millions more out of desperate poverty and the darkness of ignorance.

Wolfson rejects as cold-blooded "reductionism" the greater understanding of the components of human nature that evolutionary biology and genetics can afford us. "The woman who falls for Prince Charming, or the man who courts a woman with a voluptuous figure, is said to be really seeking to produce attractive, healthy offspring," writes a dismissive Wolfson. He then cites James Joyce’s sarcastic observation that such a view "tells you that you admired the great flanks of Venus because you felt that she would bear you burly offspring and admired her great breasts because you felt that she would give good milk to her children and yours."

There is no denying that evolutionary psychologists find consistent patterns in people’s physical criteria for selecting a mate, but does not mean that we love our spouses any the less. And whatever genetic and evolutionary impulses underlie our appreciation of Venus, she remains as beautiful as ever.

At the end of his essay, Wolfson touches on an issue that he believes could be very socially and politically disruptive. He fears that the more we learn about the genetic differences between people, the more pressure this could put on our notions of political equality. Here he is skirting the naturalistic fallacy in which "the natural" is mistaken for "the moral good." However, political equality is sustained chiefly by the principle that people who are responsible moral agents, those who can distinguish between right and wrong, deserve equal consideration before the law and a respected place in our political community. The broad ability to distinguish right from wrong does not depend on the genetics of IQ, skin color, or gender. With respect to political equality, genetic differences are differences that make no difference.

Wolfson ends by citing Benjamin Franklin’s admonition that it is more important to be a good parent, a good spouse, a good friend, and a good citizen than it is to excel at scientific and technological pursuits. Who would argue with that? The pursuit of scientific excellence and technological prowess does not controvert those fundamental values.

Ultimately, the conservative worries about technological progress are rooted in a deep skepticism about human intentions. And we must surely be vigilant against people and ideologies, including conservatism, that might attempt to misuse technology to limit human freedom. But the plain fact is that despite the horrors of the past century, technology and science have ameliorated far more of the ills that afflict humanity than they have exacerbated. In the end, the highest expression of our human nature is our ongoing quest to understand ever more of the world around us and ourselves.