“Train to Huxley's Dehumanized Brave New World has Already Left the Station”

LifeSiteNews ^ | 11/7/07 | Hilary White

[wagglebee]

NEW YORK, November 7, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The meaning of human nature itself is under threat from a new philosophy of “soul-less scientism” that will undermine “our own self-understanding as human beings” and reduces the aspirations of mankind to the purely material realm. This new philosophy outstrips the danger posed by the actual techniques and technologies of modern biomedical science, said Dr. Leon Kass, speaking to a New York audience in October.
 
“Scientific ideas and discoveries” he said, “are being enlisted to do battle against our traditional religious and moral teachings, and even our self-understanding as creatures with freedom and dignity.”
 
In a speech to the Manhattan Institute last month, Dr. Kass, one of the most prominent public intellectuals dealing with bioethical issues, also pointed out that in many cases, these technical achievements are being used “for purposes beyond therapy, and may soon be used to transform human nature itself.”
 
“The Pill. In vitro fertilization. Surrogate wombs. Cloning. Genetic engineering. Organ swapping. Mechanical spare parts. Performance--enhancing drugs. Computer implants into brains. Ritalin for the young, Viagra for the old, Prozac for everyone. Virtually unnoticed, the train to Huxley's dehumanized Brave New World has already left the station,” Kass said.
 
But even these dehumanizing technological instruments are not as great a threat as the philosophy driving most of the biomedical research community. Dire as some of these issues are, he said, they point to a deeper, underlying “philosophical challenge: one that threatens how we think about who and what we are.”
 
Dr. Kass researches bioethics, ethics, philosophy, marriage, family, and social mores. He is a former chairman and member of the President's Council on Bioethics, and was instrumental in helping President Bush develop his policies restricting embryonic research and cloning. On October 18, he gave the annual Wriston Lecture, sponsored by the Manhattan Institute, a public policy think tank that hosts forums in New York City and Washington, DC for policy makers, business people, researchers and journalists on prominent contemporary issues.
 
He identifies a “quasi-religious faith” that he calls “soul-less scientism” a materialist philosophy that that “believes that our new biology, eliminating all mystery, can give a complete account of human life.”
 
Kass clearly identifies this philosophy as a “threat to our humanity”, saying it proposes to provide a “purely scientific” explanation of “human thought, love, creativity, moral judgment, and even why we believe in God.”
 
The stakes, Kass warned, are high. “All friends of human freedom and dignity—including even the atheists among us — must understand that their own humanity is on the line.”
 
To counter this threat, Kass recommends the view of humanity found in the Bible, particularly its account of creation that he says, “offers a profound teaching on human nature” and “nourish[es] the soul's deep longings for answers” to humanity’s great questions. He notes that the biblical account of creation that “locates that teaching in relation to the deepest human longings and concerns” is unsurprisingly the “chief target” of the proponents of the anti-human soul-less scientism.
 
Kass has defended the Bible’s version of creation, in a way similar to the teaching of the Catholic Church, saying that it in no way conflicts with the findings of modern science. He says it presents not a “freestanding, historical or scientific account” of how life began, areas that are properly the purview of the natural sciences, but an “awe-inspiring prelude to a lengthy and comprehensive teaching about how we are to live”. The creation account provides us with a starting point to help human beings “make sense of their world and their task within it.”
 
While not entirely pro-life, Kass’ work discussing and developing a humanistic answer to modernity’s nihilistic philosophies has been praised by pro-life advocates as a genuine and much needed contribution to the issues. And he has not hesitated to criticise the intellectual vacuity of most modern secular bioethics.
 
Kass warned that the result of the new philosophy of “soul-less scientism” that seeks to reduce all questions of human life to the material, is “more dehumanizing” than any of the actual technologies. It presents “the erosion, perhaps the final erosion, of the idea of man as noble, dignified, precious, or godlike, and its replacement with a view of man, no less than of nature, as mere raw material for manipulation and homogenization.”
 
Read the entire lecture:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/wl2007.htm
 
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Dr. Leon Kass An Exceptionally Principled Scientist
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2001/aug/01081605.html
 
AEI Interview With Bush's Bioethics Council Head Leon Kass
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jun/06061310.html  

[Psycho_Bunny]

“The Pill. In vitro fertilization. Surrogate wombs. Cloning. Genetic engineering. Organ swapping. Mechanical spare parts. Performance--enhancing drugs. Computer implants into brains. Ritalin for the young, Viagra for the old, Prozac for everyone. Virtually unnoticed, the train to Huxley's dehumanized Brave New World has already left the station....But even these dehumanizing technological instruments are not as great a threat as the philosophy driving most of the biomedical research community."

An absolutely perfect example of argumentum verbosium.

[RightWhale]

Everyone has their place

Interesting. We read it in the 50s in the age of conformity. Everybody was the same, acted the same, thought the same, had his place. We didn't like BNW, where everybody was the same.

[VOA]

bump

[RightWhale]

what is human life "for"?

Same as all life with the addition of the ability to wonder what it is for.

[Smokin' Joe]

left station at least as early as 1965

My take, too. It was definitely rolling by the 70s when I first read the book.

[bmwcyle]

Let me off at the Rapture.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"...what is human life "for"? Same as all life with the addition of the ability to wonder what it is for."

To pursue the question is to act in faith that there is an answer worth the pursuit.

[RightWhale]

Actually it is an attempt to avert the boredom of nothing better to do.

[puroresu]

The college kids I deal with on a daily basis would give up their liberty in a heartbeat in return for being taken care of by the state and allowed their share of sensual thrills. Not all of them, obviously, but enough the destroy everything we hold dear.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Then let your boredom drive you to something better.

[Quix]

Agreed.

I’ve told The Lord I’m not interested in any behind the scenes special assignments. I want the first ELEVATOR UP!

[Quix]

The college kids I deal with on a daily basis would give up their liberty in a heartbeat in return for being taken care of by the state and allowed their share of sensual thrills. Not all of them, obviously, but enough the destroy everything we hold dear.

= = =

So OUTRAGEOUSLY true.

And the elite globalists have been training more such for the last 45+ years

[Jo Nuvark]

[... All things considered, we’re living in the
hell that pre-WWII writers considered only in
their wildest flights of fancy and imagination...]

Brilliant post!

— Jo —

[Das Outsider]

What can I say? I'm an avid reader of 20th-century dystopic fiction and writers like Francis Schaeffer and Dorothy Sayers: I just put the two together.

Huxley somehow managed to see down the pike, following his own line of reasoning, perhaps in spite of his family name and proclivities towards the psychedelic drug use and Eastern mysticism that helped carry us down this primrose path to the bombed-out, spiritual Sarajevo that we find ourselves in today.

[Jo Nuvark]

My you are waxing eloquent tonight.

I liked “Brave New World”. But we
do just the opposite. His little
axioms about throwing things out
and buying new haven’t come true.
We obsessively recycle, repair and
repurpose EVERYTHING.

However, he got the chemicalized
pacifization of society EXACTLY right.

Seems to me if we were really awake
our chemically suppressed depression
might motivate us to fight off the
raging hordes we’ve elected to lead
us down the rat hole.

[Das Outsider]

I liked “Brave New World”. But we do just the opposite. His little axioms about throwing things out and buying new haven’t come true. We obsessively recycle, repair and repurpose EVERYTHING.

You're being tongue-in-cheek, aren't you? ;)

However, he got the chemicalized pacifization of society EXACTLY right.

Ritalin, Prozac, and so on. This was because he was able to see how a truly materialistic philosophy of man would ultimately enable the lesser angels of our nature and those in power. He could never get past his own roadblocks, but unconsciously provided a back-alley way around them.

Seems to me if we were really awake our chemically suppressed depression might motivate us to fight off the raging hordes we’ve elected to lead us down the rat hole.

Drug addiction is one thing--but what about media? It is just as much a potent drug as any psychoactive compound I know of.

Going back to the overall theme of "Brave New World": Unlike Orwell, Huxley saw a society in robot-like conformity, inflicted with pleasure instead of pain, contra the traditional totalitarian model--a society very much like our own.

[Jo Nuvark]

I liked “Brave New World” because I was 18 and
for a girl who liked historical romance novels,
at least this one kept my attention.

I was an intellectual pretender at that age. I
pretended that I understood “2001 A Space Odyssey”.
I pretended that it was deep. But now I know that
it was making fun of me in the Emperor has no clothes
kind of way.

Best book I ever read, other than the Bible, was
Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”. Changed my life and
gave me the courage to dissent and be the individual
that God made me.

—Jo—

[Jo Nuvark]

[... Huxley saw a society in robot-like conformity,
inflicted with pleasure instead of pain ...]

Pleasure IS killing us.

[Das Outsider]

Best book I ever read, other than the Bible, was Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”. Changed my life and gave me the courage to dissent and be the individual that God made me.

Pelham, do you have the link to the Ayn Rand thread from earlier?

[Pelham]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1913463/posts