When I was about seven, a rat bit me on the hand. I was wounded, and I swear to this day the rat winked at me. From that moment forth I have had little patience for rats. They serve little purpose; they steal cheese, tell lies and carry the plague. My short-term counter-rat strategy for these ignoble little parcels from hell has been to unleash the vehemence of two angry little Jack Russells upon them and their families. If this were a numbers game (which it is by the way), it would be fair to say I’m back on top.
So, whilst perusing the BBC in my usual dim-witted wake up fashion this morning I stumbled across an article about… CYBORG RATS! Pinkie and the Brain have gone rogue. They’re taking over The Matrix, there’s going to be a rat like T1000 scuttling around the streets of London looking for future heroes with an array of stabbing weapons (somewhere in the South East I would predict).
There’s considerable, predictable controversy surrounding the whole idea of replacing biological parts with electronic and or mechanical ones. One of my colleagues, Lauren Bishop, wrote a very interesting blog about this back in September considering whether we, as society, are ready to fully digest the ethical implications of this kind of technology.
My contention is that society in this instance should by and large be ignored. This is not so much from a tyranny of the majority Plato-esque perspective, but because society is never going to agree on an issue that splits morality and defies age old value-systems. And this one most certainly does. The decisions that are going to take place around cyborgology are paramount to the future.
Ironically the healthier society becomes, the weaker it becomes. Immune systems are falling asleep. Unnatural intervention will become increasingly necessary. Traditionalists will be angry, hippies will smoke more drugs, and the righteous will pray extra hard. But as J.F. Kennedy said in 1962: “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
If we deny scope for progress, controversial or not, then we may as well give up and rely on miracles, crystal balls and hope Gandalf comes back from the Undying Lands. If rational argument fails to defeat ideological sentiment then perhaps society can’t be trusted?