A plan for self-directed, moral, equitable human evolution
Think about the biggest, worst, most inescapable problems that we face now and have faced throughout our history as humans: disease, poverty, war, violence, abuse, defects, scarcity, environmental abuse, self-destruction.
Next consider personal issues that are often just as inescapable: fear, anger, despair, cruelty, greed, jealousy, addiction, gluttony, disability, depression.
Most people I think would consider these problems evil. The root of evil.
What if I told you there was a single technology that had the potential to erase these evils from society and ourselves?
The evolution of evolution
Up to this point, our collective imagination has put the most stock in our previous discoveries and creations—regarding what we hope will save us from ourselves.
- Religion — if we believe hard enough in the unbelievable, salvation will be gifted to us eventually.
- Technology — if we invent enough methods to change the world around us, we can accomplish anything.
- Evolution — if we follow the path of nature, we will survive and be the fittest.
- Community — if we stick together, we can keep training ourselves to not be evil.
While these have had good effects on us as people and as a species, they’ve also been the center of our doom. Each of these swords is double-edged and I’d argue that for the most part, we’ve cut ourselves more than we’ve slain our demons. While we’ve possibly become commonly more moral, healthy, peaceful, and happy… we also still have all of those problems looming over us. We continue to face the real possibility that we’ll become extinct and that it will happen as a result of our actions or our dysfunctional neglect.
What’s more, each of these efforts of hope has at least one ongoing deficiency that renders it incapable of becoming a permanent solution. Religion and community only work as long as each person can be influenced to overcome their human predilections. More often than not, this fails. Evolution only “works” (finger quotes with heavy sarcasm) when the people dying before breeding are actually less fit than the ones reproducing. There is no morally sound way of even determining who is considered to be fit.
That leaves technology, which even if we find ways to improve everything around us, it won’t be improving us. That means after we surround ourselves with amazing things, we’ll remain the same organisms prone to the same problems we’ve always had. Even stranger to me, tech won’t be improving us because we refuse to let it. From speeches to sci fi stories to current laws, popular opinion has been firmly against the prospect of fundamental human alteration. While we’re mostly fine with filling our bodies with drugs and prosthetics, fear of genetic engineering has been pretty constant—and not just because of the technology we’ve used so far for attempting genetic modification. “Playing God” is a favorite phrase used against the possibility, as if religion wasn’t already humans playing god.
Given all this, what I’d propose is either an evolution or revolution of our previous work. We know that we got here through evolution, enhanced that through community, attempted to comfort our uncertainties with religion, and advanced ourselves through technology. We need to create what comes next to overcome the baggage that will otherwise never leave us.
The next steps
In order to evolve our evolution, we need to focus on several keys in the following sequence:
- Identifying all of the human systems and attributes that are desirable in the near and distant future.
- Identify all of the human systems and attributes that are no longer appropriate for modern life and are antithetical to attaining and maintaining an advanced future.
- Develop global laws and guidelines to ensure the application of re-engineering is a primarily self-directed activity for cognizant adults to engage in.
- Maintain global guidelines and technologies that prevent detrimental, dangerous, and immoral use of human engineering.
- Establish equitable infrastructure to create, distribute, and maintain human engineering for all people in all regions of the planet—similarly to the way cures were applied to eradicate diseases.
- Develop technology capable of safely re-engineering our DNA, epigenetic condition, and microbiomes—for the purpose of removing or subduing our inappropriate traits.
- Bonus: use the same technology to safely enhance and introduce new, favorable traits.
This course of actions would take the best aspects of our past and leave the worst behind. It would be morally sound and aware of the need to keep bad-actors from ruining it for everyone else. I think it is the only comprehensive way for people to survive long enough to indefinitely thrive on this planet, our only home.
Why do I think genetics is the answer?
When I look at the core evils of humanity, I can see that they are almost entirely vestiges from our chaotic path through evolution, natural disaster, and conflict. They either helped us long ago or were just inconsequentially present to be inherited by us. Either way, we don’t need them now and we can’t keep them if we want a real future.
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Many people have grappled with the question of what they are and where they come from. Let’s look at the list again:
- disease, poverty, war, violence, abuse, defects, scarcity, environmental abuse, self-destruction, fear, anger, despair, cruelty, greed, jealousy, addiction, gluttony, disability, depression
Some of these are clearly physical, some are societal, and some are psychological. A lot of people arguing nature vs nurture want everything to be either one of the other. I think they’re a mix of both and I think there’s a lot of science to back that up. But around both, I also think that the nature portion of it is entirely responsible for setting the stage—for creating our predilections, urges, and physicality of the problems in this list.
If the soup of our genetics, epigenetics, and biome are responsible for setting the stage—we could make them set a different stage, a better stage.
If we treat the human genome as a known and fully mapped out technology, we could potentially address every problem. We could:
- cure genetic defects—ending hereditary ailment and visible disabilities
- make ourselves immune to all disease
- become able to repair most disabling injuries of the body and brain
- make our bodies more efficient to need less/different food and products taken from the world around us—thus reducing scarcity, poverty, gluttony, and environmental abuse
- by altering our responses of fear, anger, and cruelty—diminish or end war, violence, and interpersonal abuse… while possibly also subduing despair and depression
- by removing the physiological triggers for greed, jealousy, and addiction—end self-destruction
All of those problems are rooted in the code that builds us. No matter if they manifest as “physical”, “mental”, or “societal”. The core is physical and improving that makes everything we experience and build on top, easier to guide away from evil.
Beyond solutions to problems
When we accomplish all this, what will we be? How can we be? What is next?
After that I think we will be the solution we’ve always needed. We will for the first time be fully capable as a world of people to heal ourselves and heal our planet. We can be universally kind, clever, peaceful, mindful, and dare I say wise. We can collectively make the right decisions to benefit everyone and everything around us. We can have an end to needless tragedy and suffering.
I think the next step should be utilizing our self-evolved core to dream up and experiment with self-engineering that goes beyond solving old problems. Only with evil problems solved would we be able to trust ourselves and each other to experiment with new possibilities. We would no longer have predilections to maliciously engineer ourselves or one another, and thus be free to explore.
We could improve our abilities to coexist with traits associated with compassion, thoughtfulness, empathy, patience, family, and love. We could improve our abilities to thrive with traits enabling clear thinking, joy, memory, resilience, and flow. We could enhance our bodies to be the kind of beauty and capability we most appreciate, aspire for, and identify with.
No one at that point would need to feel stuck in their bodies or their minds. They could have the freedom to become whoever they want while feeling safe and included doing so. Anything that is physically possible could be within reach of every person and anything detrimental wouldn’t become a goal for any person.
Being fully knowledgeable and capable of re-engineering ourselves is the realization of self-awareness. We will be self-actualized. Humanity could then honestly progress in any direction that seems important or desirable for our self-evolved minds. Whether on Earth or beyond, we could completely be the best we possibly can be.
Thats my plan and my case for it. Have any thoughts? See any holes in my thinking? Let me know. I’d be happy to improve it.
