Recently, the "genetically edited baby" incident has caused us a huge impact, and the issue of "post-human" has once again entered the public eye. Further, "artificial intelligence" also attracted great attention when "AlphaGo defeated human beings" was screened. While popularizing the latest technological progress, it also brings a panic that is summarized as "post-human" by the intellectual community.
We don’t lack all kinds of imaginations about "post-human". From blade runner to Alien, from A Space Odyssey 2001 to ghost in the shell, science fiction movies have created countless images of "post-human" or "imitation human" for us. Even in our present life, it has become a reality to implant artificial auxiliary facilities and use domestic robots; The mobile phone has also become an "extended organ" that we can’t live without-in a sense, we are already "post-human". But whenever we talk about this issue, we still feel fear and confusion: when we are worried about the "post-human" era, what are we worried about?
There are various manifestations of "post-human" problems, such as the blurring of the boundaries of "human" by gene editing and artificial intelligence, the replacement of human by machines or cybermen at work level, the impact of brain-computer interface and virtual reality on reality, and the reappearance of social Darwinism under the combined action of various technologies … However, whatever the meaning and context of post-human fear, the core is to pay attention to the current situation of "human". What scares us may be the present full of unknowns.
Every modern person,
It’s all "K in the castle"
"We don’t like it. ""how can you like it, "said K." Of course you won’t like it, but you can only do it. -Kafka’s Castle
No matter what the meaning and context of post-human fear are, its core is to pay attention to the current situation of "people". This further involves two issues: first, how do we define "people" at present; The second is how the world that has come or will come will change this "human" situation. When dealing with these problems, people with different knowledge backgrounds will find different theoretical supports, especially intellectuals under the two training systems of science and humanities, and it is often difficult to reach a consensus, let alone agree with public opinions.
However, under the split of opinions, Philip K. Dick, Mamoru Oshii, Gibson, Alien, A Space Odyssey 2001 and other sci-fi authors and their works have been repeatedly mentioned, especially many film and television works adapted by Dick and his novels (blade runner, Full Memory and Minority Report The Man in the High Castle) have almost become the unavoidable coordinates in post-human problems, and also the "greatest common denominator" of opinions from all sides.
Do bionic people dream of electronic sheep? ",[America] by Philip Dick, translated by Xu Donghua, Yilin Press, October 2017.
When people are talking about Dick and his enlightenment, two paragraphs are often at the top of the volume: one is "Do bionic people dream of electronic sheep?" Ye Zhi’s poem on the title page of a book: "But I still dream that he is walking on the grass and floating in the dew, so that my songs can be easily pierced. The second is the line added by ridley scott in blade runner: "All these moments will pass away with time. Like tears, disappear in the rain. 」
The bionic man in blade runner (1982).
Philip K. Dick (December 16th, 1928 ~ March 2nd, 1982), an American science fiction writer, whose representative works include The Man in the High Castle and Go! My tears, etc.
As the two quotations show, if the keynote of The Bionic Man is nostalgia for the past and its accompanying loneliness, then in blade runner, nostalgic tears can only be washed away by the continuous rain, and the lonely body will go to the grave, leaving a brand-new land at last. It can be said that although the two works present different angles, they share the same nostalgia, homesickness and loneliness, which is not unique to Dick, but permeates the whole western science fiction world after Dick, making this bleak and hazy world different from all kinds of utopias (news from nowhere), dystopias (1984, Brave New World) and fantasy adventures (journey to the center of the earth) constructed by early science fiction writers.
Stills from A Space Odyssey 2001 (1968).
In fact, although Cyberpunk’s works such as The Bionic Man and The Neurorover are often placed in the genealogy of dystopian works, they are considered as an extension of such works as 1984. However, if we set aside the setting of "science and technology" and "centralized society", the whole sci-fi works in the late 20th century kept a considerable distance from this pedigree in terms of writing style and internal theme, and there was also a strong division within it. Paradoxically, decades later, it seems that the most powerful point out the post-human situation is not Clark-style hard science fiction full of various scientific settings, nor is it the grand history that Asimov wrote across various star fields, but focuses on the most concrete people in the abstract society in pieces to see how they face the extrusion and shaping of the world, whether they are gradually deformed or opposed to Dick and Gibson.
This seems to imply that the problem of "post-human" is not a simple technological Darwinism’s erosion of human nature, but more related to the relationship changes between human beings and the outside world, people and things, people and others, and people and society. In this sense, the continuous rain in blade runner and the dark stone tablet in A Space Odyssey 2001 have become symbolic projections of the outside world in the eyes of human beings. What people feel is not only the fear of being replaced by bionic people and AI, but also the increasingly cold and hard modern world in which they live. So the essence of "post-human" problem goes far beyond the substitution of "human" in the physiological or technical sense, and it is more reflected in the gradual alienation of human beings in modern society as Marx and Lukacs said. In this regard, whether it is gene editing or artificial intelligence or even the "alien" in movies, it is just a material manifestation of "alienation" and is by no means the key to the whole problem.
Castle, by Franz Kafka [Austria], translated by Zhao Rongheng, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, January 2011.
It may be said that the core of the whole Cyberpunk tradition and even the whole post-human problem domain is the fear and resistance to the gradually cold and abstract modern world. As PKD (Philip Dick) made a preface to the collection of short stories "The Golden Man", "I want to write about those people I love and put them in the imaginary world in my mind, not in the real world where we live, because the world I live in is far from up to my standard. Then, I should lower my standards, I should be in tune with everyone, and I should obey the reality. No, I have never obeyed the reality. This is what science fiction does. 」
Every modern person experiences the fate of K in The Castle, and "dislikes" the existing world, "but can only do so". So whenever we talk about "post-human", what we are talking about is not the future, but the past, which is a kind of nostalgia, a tragedy, a gentle world that cannot be returned, a green grassland that can be trampled on, and the possibility of loving and being loved. For us, the future is the reflection of the past. There are not only "real sheep" in that past world, but also the light of humanity that has gradually passed away. In the final analysis, what we fear is not the technologies themselves, but the possibility of losing an alternative world.
The gatekeeper of post-humanity,
We need cross-disciplinary communication.
What does post-human mean? The best time to argue about this issue may be now. Don’t wait until the train of ideas it embodies has stopped steadily, and then use explosives to change them. -Catherine Heller, "Why We Become Post-human"
After sorting out the context of "post-human" problems, a question emerges before us: If the discussion between Cyberpunk’s early works and post-human has such rich connotations, why does the post-human problem domain shrink to a few technical fields such as gene editing and artificial intelligence?
An important reason is that the construction of the history of related works and disciplines has classified the corresponding works and academic discussions into special categories (such as science fiction literature and philosophy of technology), thus strengthening its technical orientation and hiding its reflection on the whole modern abstract social situation. But perhaps more important is the influence of early sci-fi works and academic discussions (especially cybernetics) on subsequent research. As Catherine Heller revealed in How We Become a Post-human, early discussions, especially the sci-fi works of Dick and Gibson, not only imagined the situation of post-human, but also directly framed the problem domain of post-human. Let’s just say that if there were no Aliens and Bionics, would people dream of electronic sheep? Without Neuro-Wanderer and ghost in the shell, there would be only a messianic void after "human". Except for abstract concepts, we can’t imagine a real existence called "post-human". Moreover, if the historical and cultural context other than technology is lost, many technological thoughts that have evolved in the concept cluster and directly shaped the "post-human" may not arrive as scheduled, and the "post-human" itself will dissipate in the wind.
"How do we become post-human", [America] N. Katherine Heller, translated by Liu Yuqing, Peking University Publishing House, June 2017.
However, many historical contexts that have shaped the "post-human" problem have also become a shadow over the problem itself. As mentioned above, today’s "post-human" problems pay more attention to the relationship between technology and people in a narrow sense, especially in gene editing, artificial intelligence, cyber body, data monitoring and so on, as if these problems are the root of "post-human" problems, and human beings are indeed facing great changes for thousands of years. However, if we go deep into the field of science or technology, we can easily find that many common judgments made by scholars in humanities and social sciences are not valid: today’s technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, but it is far behind the industrial age and the beginning of the twentieth century; Today’s innovation is ubiquitous, but it is also a small innovation that clings to business, and the creation that really changes human beings has not yet appeared; Although today’s computer field is booming, the most basic disciplines such as mathematics and physics have encountered bottlenecks, and there has been no major breakthrough in decades. As for the common settings such as "super AI" and "super human" in science fiction works, if it is in a technical sense, I am afraid it is still a long way from us.
The opening stills of ghost in the shell (1995).
This is by no means pessimistic, whether it is the next 50 years published in the century.
（The Next Fifty Years）
Or the recent Atlantic Monthly.（The Atlantic）
The survey of nearly 100 physics researchers also proves this point: the so-called rapid development of science and technology in recent years is actually only the progress of technology, and it does not involve the key progress of science. The farther away from the basic science and technology production, the easier it is for people to exaggerate the progress of technology under the operation of business and media. Just like Andrew Abbott（Andrew Abbott）
In the future of knowledge, it is said: "The information we have about human beings significantly exceeds any information about non-human systems that exist. The ever-expanding contemporary "knowledge" is no longer centered on the outside world, but more about human beings themselves. The so-called "revolutionary change" is just the latest progress in a long-standing gradual transformation process, which is the essence of seemingly accelerating technological innovation in recent years.
The Next 50 Years, by John Brockman, translated by Li Yong, Hunan Science and Technology Press, January 2018.
However, most scholars in humanities and social sciences combine the technological progress under commercial operation with the future prospect in science fiction works, creating a narrow "post-human" fear in public space, as if artificial intelligence and gene editing would irreversibly destroy human beings the next day. On the one hand, this illusion comes from the division of "two cultures" as described by C.P. Si Nuo (scientist and writer C.P. Si Nuo observed in the middle of last century that intellectuals in humanities and science and technology were increasingly divided into two different cultures, and he warned and called for cooperation between them), on the other hand, it was because scholars in humanities and social sciences lacked respect for science, technology and other professional fields. Instead of trying to understand the actual progress of technology and science, they ignore the texture of specific problems and are eager to analyze the superficial situation in their familiar problem areas (such as ethics, art, social stratification and mobility, etc.). If so, what they get is mostly not academic analysis, but a fable.
It is true that it may be increasingly difficult, or even thankless, to bridge the gap between science and culture at a time when disciplines are increasingly divided. However, we still need to find and cultivate reliable intellectuals who can communicate with different fields, because only such a group of talents can really assume the responsibility of "gatekeepers", track the process of technological development, bridge the cracks in different fields and watch the future of the whole mankind. In this sense, those scholars who are eager to express their views on the latest technological progress have not made fundamental mistakes, but have lost some enterprising spirit and blindly imitated the behavior of science fiction writers in the twentieth century to achieve warnings through "stories" and "predictions." However, it has been several decades since the works of Orwell, Huxley and Dick came out. I think we should have a more solid and reliable post-human research that integrates the knowledge of many disciplines, instead of repeating the stories that our ancestors have already told.
An unstoppable object,
We are already post-human?
"One day," Joe said angrily, "customers like me will overthrow you and the tyranny of your automatic service machine. People’s values, compassion and warmth will return to society. -PKD "Youbik"
If we want to usher in a more solid and reliable post-human research, then we should first break away from the narrow technical restrictions and restore the original rich meaning of the concept of "post-human". As mentioned above, the core of the post-human problem is the fear and resistance to alienated human nature in the modern world. This alienation always comes from an "inhuman" "object/thing", so the post-human problem can be understood as "fear of object/thing". Take Darwinism, the most understandable technology (such as gene editing, the combination of brain-computer interface and eugenics) as an example. Gene editing means transforming people into "non-people", while brain-computer interface embeds "things" in people. The combination of these two specific technologies and eugenics further points to the substitution or domination of "non-people/things/objects" on people-the whole logic has not escaped from "people and things".
In fact, the most concentrated image in popular science fiction works is the "object" that permeates daily life. No matter whether those objects are expressed as centralized society, artificial limbs, artificial intelligence or artificial people, these objects will inevitably lead to the blurring of the boundaries between people and things, subject and object, and then cause the suppression of "I" as the subject. It may be thought that science fiction works have insight into the core proposition of modernity through fables. This proposition occupies a place in the discussion of Zimmel, Husserl and Kundera, but the difference is that the "object" in Dick’s works does not have a stable representation, while the above three people focus on the categories of objective culture/subjective culture, science/life or certainty/uncertainty, hoping to save the latter from the oppression of the former.
Mamoru Oshii, a famous Japanese animation director, whose representative works include ghost in the shell, etc.
However, the "post-human" situation is not a simple repression, but a latour-style entanglement between subject and object: the more people want to draw a clear line with the object, the more closely they will be entangled with the object, and all the objects created by people-objects, systems, cultures and even organizations and relationships between people-finally become the key to suffocating individuals. If this is too abstract, then, in the famous words of Mamoru Oshii, the so-called "modernity" problem is that human beings are always reluctant to admit that "mobile phone" is a part of themselves, but at the same time they are increasingly inseparable from the process of "mobile phone". Borrowing from latour’s judgment, we may say that we have not only never been modern, but also never been human. From the moment when the "self" in the modern sense was born, we were immersed in a kind of anxiety, hoping to distinguish ourselves from others, society and things. If the definition of human beings is the subject with clear boundaries, then we are already post-human.
The famous French philosopher Bruno Latour.
（Bruno Latour）
In his essays, he discussed the topics of modernity, anti-modernity and post-modernity, and tried to link the categories of human and non-human in practice, breaking the separation between nature and history, and between pre-modernity, modernity and post-modernity.
Taking this as an entrance and returning to science fiction works, we will find that what the protagonists are always looking for and longing for-whether it is sheep, history, soul or identity-is essentially a boundary between people and things, between truth and falsehood, and between life and death. Boundary means certainty, and at the same time means the possibility of meaning existence and generation. However, if all hopes are pinned on the existence of boundaries, the protagonist will fall into a Kafka-style dilemma, find a monster independent of himself in the maze, find that he can’t understand the existence of the world, and thus lose himself. In this regard, it is no accident that blade runner has become a classic in the history of science fiction, because Rick’s constant search, questioning and even despair of himself in the story is exactly the process that every modern person will experience.
Different from Scott’s adaptation, at the end of The Bionic Man, Dick left us with a gentler ending: when his wife Yilan brought Rick an electronic toad (which could) order electronic flies, Dick had partially surpassed Kafka’s vision, and the boundary between man and bionic man, which once needed to be searched through infinite retrogression, was shelved. It is through this ending that Dick shows us a possibility: people don’t have to worry about the boundaries that can’t be clearly defined. If we have already become a mixed-race between people and things, subject and object, and become a "post-human" in a broad sense, then the key is not to reverse the gears of time, but to discover the existence of beauty and meaning in those vague and fragmented scenes.
Stills of Blade Runner 2049 (2017).
But how to find beauty and meaning? Just as Marx learned from Epicurus, in a cold world where everything seems doomed, deviation is freedom, and unevenness is meaning. Therefore, it is not the intellectuals who follow the rules, but the marginal people, addicts and losers in science fiction stories, which have actually become the Statue of Liberty in the post-human picture, summoning the long-gone time and looking for the remaining fragments of meaning in the abstract society.
It may be said that in the post-human problem, perhaps the most important thing is not the long-term future, nor the control of the whole technological process after the balance of interests, but the concern for the existing situation at present. This means that the more we discuss those seemingly grand issues related to human destiny, the more we should keep our eyes down until we see the rain and dew dust in the historical strata, the jagged polymorphism of everything in the world, the joys and sorrows of ordinary people, and the daily life of those marginal people-flow, his tears, whether accepted or rejected, which is a souvenir left by the times.
author
: Sun Ningxiang;
edit
: Go, Li Yongbo;proofread: Zhai Yongjun
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