Saturday, June 24, 2023

Quo vadis, sex?

Writer Emily Witt, in her piece "Fertile Ground" in the New Yorker Magazine (5/1/23), reminds us that while advances in AI are taking up the oxygen in rooms discussing the end of our human mentality, biotech continues its progress towards altering human sexual reproduction and desire as we've known them.

The current biological revolution, Witt relates, started in 1978 with the first succesful in-vitro fertilization (IVF, from Latin, "in glass" i.e. in a petri dish) of a human egg by a human sperm, "making it possible to conceive an embryo outside the body."

Fast forward to 2016 and the advent of in-vitro gametogenesis (IVG), the transforming of non-reproductive cells into gametes (reproductive cells like eggs and sperm) followed by fertilization outside the body. Two Japanese scientists removed skin cells from the tip of a mouse's tail, turned them into stem cells ("youthful" cells able to develop into any kind of cell), then turned the stem cells into mouse eggs and fertilized them, in-vitro, with traditional mouse sperm, finally transferring the fertilized eggs into a mouse womb where they developed into baby mice which the scientists described as "grossly normal."

One of the human limitations that this science is seeking to correct is that, unlike most other female mammals (for instance female elephants who can conceive into their sixth decade), human females are far less likely to conceive past the age of 45 because of declining viablity of their eggs. In addition, as reported by the Oxford Academic Journal (March/April '23), numerous studies have found that in the last 50 years male sperm counts have dropped 51.6%. Scientists are puzzling over the causes of these declines, but IVG could solve both problems by producing viable human eggs and sperm throughout any phase of our lives.

Last March the lab that developed IVG repeated the process, but this time it produced fertilized mouse embryos whose eggs had been developed using stem cells from males only. In other words, they were "mice with two dads," as the headline in Nature Magazine put it. Witt continues, "Futurists have speculated about broader possibilites, such as an embryo formed with the DNA of four people instead of two, or even a so-called 'unibaby,' the result of a person reproducing with herself [sic]."

Witt continues that "a related prospect, artificial wombs, was a prominent theme at the Amerian Society for Reproductive Medicine's annual conference in 2021, hinting at a time when gestation could happen outside the human body." Witt observes, "It wasn't 'Oh, maybe this will happen; it was very factual: when this happens, this is how we're going to use it."

Progress is driven now by numerous start-ups working on IVG, hoping to create the next billionaires who change what we are.

The start-ups must face the politics of the abortion debate. As Alta Dharo, retired professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, put it, "The U.S. has a political debate about abortion that has spilled over into everything that has to do with embryos."

Much of the debate derives from speculation about God's will. Does God consider every embryo a sacred being divinely ordained for life? If so, how will that play out when embryos can develop from non-reproductive cells? There are about 100 trillion cells in the human body, all theoretically capable of being transformed into eggs fertilized by either natural or induced sperm, giving us a possible world population of 100 trillion times the 8 billion people now on Earth, clearly an unsustainable number. We are not accustomed to God appearing and telling us which of our interpretations of His will is right, but short of that we are left with a welter of subjective views and no helpful dictate.

Witt ends with a quote from science writer Katsuhiko Hayashi: "It is valuable to show the possibility of new, let's say alternative types of reproduction for the future," ending dryly, "but of course such a technology should be evaluated by the society." Really?

On this blog I advocate for a new American political party because our current major parties, the Democrats and Republicans, specialize in helping us rage against each other over ill-defined "crises" so we don't notice the radical changes coming to human culture- most prominently from AI and the biological sciences- and because of the lack of ideas from our government on how to deal with these changes. We need a truly "democratic" party to give us a voice regarding the replacement of the current human being with something else.

Here's a question that a truly democratic party might ask: What will happen to the sex drive characteristic of our species? It is much more pronounced than in other mammals, who have "mating seasons" characterized by male combat leading to coitus for the victor. This mating season typically ends (since, after all, it's a season) and is followed by different types of seasons, such as a season in which the species sleeps all winter. Humans, however, have only one season: male combat and coitus. The sexual urges that drive this constant season are of an intensity that invades all emotional states and all undertakings of our kind, from a boy's longing to insert Tab B into Slot A, to a girl's fervid dreams of connection, to art, to science, to everything we do. How will we react (or will we react) if this never-ending desire, typical of humanity for all its recorded and probably unrecorded history, and necessary to keep us going while we weren't produced in a dish, suddenly vanishes or is manipulated into being a limited season? Some of us would notice. They would be the upset ones. The new model humans will have little or no memory of what we were and will settle into whatever status quo they inherit.

Aldous Huxley's prescient view of our future, the novel Brave New World (1931), depicts a not very far off society where all humans are conceived in-vitro, but there are primitive, left-over humans from the end of the previous era (ours) who are kept in concentration camps in the desert and referred to as "savages." The most obscene word in the language is "mother." Memory, you might say, is the theme of the book.

Don't look to our dominant political parties for a response to the biological revolution. The Democrats and Republicans would rather pontificate about God's view of a fertilized egg than pretend to understand the imminent end of the current human model.

How about a new political party that at least promotes consciousness of what is happening?

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Theory of the day

Greetings, readers!  Today begins a new feature on Lasken's Log, in which I post an original theory or meditative essay each morning.  I will try to come up with lively essays that, even if you're having the worst morning of your life, will give you a little something.  I will post by 5am (West Coast time), so you can make Lasken's Theory of the Day part of your morning routine!  Bookmark this page now and start the day right!  

Live long and perspire!  Doug Lasken

Theory #1, posted 6/14/23

We often say that, "All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," as if it were a given, perhaps because the statement's author was John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, aka Lord Acton, 1st Baron, 13th Marquess of Groppoli and Deputy Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order, and maybe also because the statement sounds true.  It may be true, but my theory is that, in addition to corrupting, power enslaves the powerful, because in order to achieve power one must please some people- not everybody- but the right people.  Absolute power would entail absolutely pleasing these people, with the result that the powerful person is in fact a slave.  Corruption, then, can be defined as the subservience of the self to someone else.  It is corrupt to deny yourself absolutely.

Theory #2, posted 6/15/23

Our five senses of sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch are geared to the human time setting.  We might define this setting as one in which, if you observe a human clock, you can see the minute hand move but not the other two. In another setting, all three hands might be zipping around too fast to see or stuck in place for thousands of years. Science figures out things that we formerly couldn't see due to the limitations of our time setting, for instance scientists figured out that mountains move. We couldn't see them move because mountains move too slowly for our setting. The physical evidence took scientists beyond the human time setting, and they saw that mountains are crashing into the Earth or thrusting out of it even as we watch. Physicists broke through in the other direction to superfast realms when they used lasers to view photosynthesis. In the course of recording very fast processes, they detected the creation of particles which last such an incredibly short time that their lifespan can only be measured in nanoseconds (billionths of a second).  Such particles are termed "virtual" because they are so short-lived that we're not sure they're real. Could we not imagine, though, that in their own time setting virtual particles may last millions of subjective years?  We too, in relative terms, are short-lived, our entire life-span come and gone in a flash from the POV of an infinite universe.  In this sense humans are virtual.  If we extend beyond our time setting we can see more, and perhaps be more.


Theory #3, posted 20 minutes later

This is an idea for the youth of Hong Kong about what you should do now.  It's clear you're on a binary course: either you will confront a dragon that will kill and eat you, or you will likely float like ghosts to safer havens where, although you will be part ghost and less real, you will gain access to other time settings, and that will help you.  By "float like ghosts" I mean drop your physical protests, suddenly, without warning, then float like ghosts into bureaucracies and civic organizations, as we did in the face of our wars, so that now we float like ghosts in our huddled havens, wondering how long the power will stay on.  I'm just saying, you'll last longer.

Theory #4, posted 6/16/23

I apologize to readers: I have no theories this morning.  My head is empty of content, even after drinking coffee, staring at online images, letting my dog Franklin out, letting him in and feeding him, walking out front again into the dark moon dawn and picking up the paper, scowling at its cover as Franklin monitors me for signs of life.  At times like this I rely on the dictionary for wisdom; I found this: "Theory derives from Greek theoria: 'contemplation,' 'speculation,' from theoros, 'spectator.'"   So if you have a theory then you are a spectator witnessing something happen, suggesting that a theory is not only a concept, it is an event. It could be that if you don't have any theories it's because nothing is happening.    Maybe Friday, June 16, 2023 is itself not happening; it might just be a reflection of yesterday, with a yearning towards tomorrow.  This will have to do as today's theory.

Theory #5, posted 6/17/23  

Tonight is new moon- the dark of the moon- said by obstetric nurses to be the most powerful moon phase in terms of inducing births. Let's do a test to determine if moon phases affect human behavior. It looks like The End is Near, for a change. Keep track of moon phases and see if you detect causal relationships with up or downticks in the Apocalypse, and if you think of a practical purpose to this, let me know.  

6/18/23:

6am: Theories are illusions. I have no theories about anything.

9:35am: Horoscope for Capricorn: Shut up and go back to sleep.

11:45am: This ends my attempt to write an inspiring theory every morning.

Monday, June 19, 2023

Defining "democracy"

Americans are taught in elementary school that the word "democracy" comes from ancient Greek and meant "rule by the people" (demos, "the people" + kratia, "power, rule").  The Greeks are said to have created democracy around the 6th Century B.C., the implication being that 300,000 years (give or take) of possible human self-management prior to the Greeks was negligible, that there was no democracy until there was the word "democracy."

One bit of information that is sometimes missing from school textbooks- but that students often pick up on their own- is that for the ancient Greeks, "the people" referred to wealthy, slave-owning men of sharply defined ethnicity, as it did for their successors the Romans and our predecessors the Founding Fathers.  

The period of the Greek and Roman empires (called the classical age, from Latin 
classisclass, as in, upper class) was followed by a thousand year period called the Dark Age, which happened because when the Roman empire collapsed, the peoples whose cultures it had destroyed had no cultures to fall back on (a similar potential exists in today's industrial world).  Textbooks suggest that Dark Age people didn't know anything; they just made things up and believed them no matter how stupid or crazy they were (imagine that!).  There was no democracy.  People were ruled by monarchs- kings and queens- who were members of the "aristocracy," from ancient Greek meaning "rule by the best people" (aristos, best + kratia, ).  Aristocratic power tended to derive from agricultural possession and wealth. There were also religious leaders such as the Pope, who represented rule by God.  Many monarchs tried to cover both ends by claiming that, in addition to being the best people because they owned the most, they had been appointed by God.  

In the 14th Century, towards the end of the Dark Age, the Black Plague killed an estimated 25 million people throughout Eurasia and North Africa- about a third of the population- leading to a major shift in human ambition.  Many people were dissatisfied with monarchy and/or religious rule after these failed to protect against the plague.  The institutions had also notably failed, over centuries, to turn human life into an interesting and gratifying experience.  This became important in the late 18th Century to a group called the Romantics, who imagined that life used to offer more than a desperate quest not to be a slave.  In contrast to the Enlightenment (see below), which valued rationality (from Latin reri, to countas in counting money), Romantics believed our ancient life was primarily emotional.  My vintage textbook describes Romanticism as "a reaction against the order and restraint of classicism," which is ironic because "Romanticism" derives from "Rome." 

The Dark Age concluded with an explosion of light and darkness called the Industrial Revolution, in which humanity believed, perhaps rightly for some, that it could not survive without continually evolving machines.  People from every background, sensing that humans could fight back against obstinate nature, developed science (from Latin, 
scire: to know) into a well-funded, politically supported organized collection of data on every aspect of everything. Among the most prominent of the scientific achievements were a variety of machines that could do human work using steam and electricity.  

The machines increased human power so much that the human role started to change from doing work to tending machines that do work.  The owners of the machines- who were often not members of the aristocracy and so could not rule- became rich, sometimes gaining near absolute power over the workers who tended the machines.  These owners started to feel like their abilities to move earth and dominate people qualified them to be among "the best," with attendant perks.  It was the machine owners who resurrected the ancient Greek idea of "democracy," which they found afforded them the quickest route to power.

There were people who did not want the machines and their owners to take over society and culture.  In the early 19th Century, a group of English textile workers called "Luddites" (after a mythical character named Ned Lud) believed that machines were in competition for their jobs, so in response they destroyed machines.  Their movement lasted four years, until they were all either killed or imprisoned.  In current usage a "Luddite" is a person who opposes industrialization generally.  If you call someone a "Luddite," the implication is that this person is living on another planet. 

At the same time that industrialization was forcing a transition from serfdom to urban "wage slavery" or actual slavery, the philosophers of the age started thinking about classical Greece and Rome, how the ancient aristocracies were able to lord it over everyone not just with the sword and the wage, but with intellectual output.  Suddenly everything about the classical world was cool: rectangular buildings surrounded by columns; state endorsed theater that probed the human soul; democracy, where rich men could run things on behalf of women, wage-slaves and slaves.  The PR department for this movement came up with the term "Renaissance," meaning "rebirth."  Thus Shakespeare, a Renaissance playwright, was patronized by the royal court even though his plays laid out the mental pathologies of kings and queens, an elevation and acceptance of theater not seen since classical times.  At least for playgoers, there was a rebirth.  For everyone else, life was the same slog.

Another PR coup was the term "Enlightenment," the idea that all the stupidity of the human race through the Dark Age had been replaced by a great understanding of things.  For instance, we finally understood the self-evident goodness of allowing people to make as much money as possible doing whatever it takes to make it.

Not many people talk any more about the Enlightenment or the Renaissance as ongoing processes, but we continue to refer to democracy and expect it to be practiced in America, with or without clarification of its meaning.  

We should look at the concept of "democracy," however, and determine what it does and does not mean, because it's at the core of our state religion, which holds that our government takes its orders from every single one of us, not just from people economically or socially close to the government, or part of it.

[Digression alert!]

There will be plenty of disagreement about the definition of "democracy." For instance, in my view the current promotion of "Critical Race Theory" (CRT)- the latest mulit-million dollar panacea for racism- in American public schools is an example of democracy not in action, especially for veteran teachers like me who have taught all races from all places for a long time and have developed their own CRT that posits a universality of the human soul, without the additional bit, prominent in CRT, instructing children that anyone who is "white" is an oppressor. I call CRT undemocratic because it was put in place by a handful of academics having a gas in their ideological playground in collaboration with garden variety education hucksters who can spot a quick buck, not by some sort of "majority" of citizens. On the other hand, proponents of CRT see it as an expression of democracy in that it empowers oppressed peoples. What motive they might have for adding on a doctrine of white original sin is unclear. One might surmise that while some of the academic authors of CRT may recognize the counter-productive nature of telling teachers to "challenge whiteness" (as the Los Angeles Unified School District does), they go along with it because it's the kind of "in your face" approach that excites young people; it sells

[End of digression]

I vote "No" to using the word "democracy" as a national shibboleth, given its referent's increasingly exposed reliance on smoke and mirrors, and its habitual entanglement with politics. Politicized democracy should at least not decide questions concerning education and child care, such as determining which ethnicities are moral and which are immoral.

Beyond education, and whatever its motives, politicized democracy is useless simply because it requires that one side be right and the other wrong. It will reshape any issue into that format, to the detriment of solutions.

Even in classical times, democracy was suspect. Socrates and Plato criticized it for serving special interests, as we do today.

In the minds of most people, democracy requires that every adult affected by an issue have the ability to vote on that issue, but voting is glossed over in most practical decision making (e.g., don't expect to vote on CRT). It might be impractical to expect a one-to-one ratio between every key decision our national, state and local governments make and a vote- we would be voting night and day in a real democracy- but it would clarify our political conversations if we stopped describing official decision-making as "democratic" when it does not entail voting or any sort of measure of "majority" and "minority" views, especially as we face future foundational challenges in education and beyond.  We're about to reinvent human society from the inside out, incorporating Artificial Intelligence and bioengineering to create humankind 2.0.  Almost none of the decisions involved will be made by voting, so the process should not be termed democratic.  

Since many of our important rulings are made by experts, we might label ourselves a technocracy- a society run by technocrats (i.e., 
members of a technically skilled elite, Webster), though there is a negative connotation to "technocrat," suggesting a bureaucratic coldness.  That could change with some decent technocrats.

All that matters in the end is whether the human race will be able to figure itself out before self-destructing.  We won't be able to without meaningful language, in which words essential to our society, like "democracy," are clearly defined.

Friday, June 16, 2023

A Jew thinks about Jesus

Religious icons offer a window into a "higher" but slower level of time.  When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son for a greater cause, some big picture, that big picture is the one where the life and death of our planet is over in a flash, agony and ecstasy combined and neutralized.   When Jesus said, "For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted," he may have referred to geologic time, where all human lives will have equaled-out, become smooth and difficult to distinguish.  I wonder too, when Mohammed wrote, "The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr," did he mean that the martyr acts only in the present, where emotions rule, while the scholar ponders the long view, in which the sum of human endeavor is a momentary, hopefully at times corrective static in space-time?

My grandmother told me when I was eight years old that Jews do not accept Jesus as divine, that Jesus was a very good Jewish man, but he was not a god or the son of God. This is how cultures are formed. My parents were secular and did not assert doctrinal ideas (other than the doctrine of withheld belief), but all it took to set my young world-view was one remark from my grandmother, while at the same moment, all around the world, millions of other children were undergoing doctrinal instruction.

Forty years later I was standing in a Catholic church in Oaxaca, Mexico, looking above the altar at a crucifix with a striking aura. My family was up the street. No one else was in the church. The crucifix became a window into stretched-out time. I saw the human race diminish in stature and relevance, as it does in Jewish stretched-out time, but then my grandmother's spirit came and said, "It looks the same, but God doesn't want you to look through that window. Because He has the long-view, and sees things we can't, He wants, for some reason, for people to be separated.  He does not want a communal, Jungian consciousness.  People should be divided now, seeking definition through difference."

I wondered if I could tolerate this news.  And now, Christmas morning, when the world is being led into religious war, I'm ready to channel my grandmother and ask if the message is still the same.  I'll be right back.

I'm back.  I channeled my grandmother and she said that all the world's traditional cultures and religions are about to be re-written by secular, scientific/corporate states, and a sense of this process is causing people to cling to their familiar memes, even go to war over them.  She said the moral re-definitions will at times be traumatic, but that God, in supporting (surprisingly) this new techno-secular state, is not looking for apocalypse per se, that He will accept freethinking, the perception of common ground, as long as it doesn't interfere with the fission of unity into opposites, the aroma of which has been known to please Him.

Given the alternatives, this news from my grandmother wasn't the worst Christmas present.  Happy holidays!


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