| Life Principles To see a World in a Grain of Sand
Earth – Home. No matter where we travel in the galaxy, across however many millions of years we may have ahead of us, one thing is certain. We will never find another Earth and never find another world to which we are so perfectly suited. We do not merely live here - we are an integral part of Gaia, Earth's biosphere. We are related to every strand of life here, from microbes to tigers. We share much of the same DNA, and like every living thing we exist in an unbroken chain stretching back across billions of years to a common ancestor - the first life on Earth. Earth is our Mother, Earth is our Father. Earth is sacred. Earth is dying. Indeed, we are creating an extinction event comparable to that which occurred in the Cretaceous era when the dinosaurs died. That was what one might call a 'cosmic accident' when an asteroid hit what was later to become the Gulf of Mexico. What we are doing through ignorance, greed, stupidity and indifference could equally be referred to as a cosmic crime - the destruction of life on a planetary scale. In fact, a criminal event of so great a magnitude that there is not a word for it in the English language. It is symptomatic of the contempt for Nature ingrained in our societies, exemplified by our institutionalised cruelty to animals whether in the laboratory or in the factory farm. We do not have a false romantic view of Nature. Its beauty is equally matched by its cruelty and the life of almost every creature is 'nasty brutish and short' with an unpleasant end awaiting the vast majority. That is how Nature is, and that is right. Animals are adapted to their world and do not make moral choices, unlike us. Also unlike us they have no power to make it otherwise. However, it is a fact that this is their world as much as ours and we have no Right to either increase that suffering or dispossess them. It is this belief that leads to our statements that the genetic debasement of any creature with a nervous system more complex than a mouse should be a criminal act, including all selective breeding and genetic engineering that renders a creature less likely to survive in its natural habitat. Also all avoidable cruelty to such is to be outlawed - from vivisection to factory farming and beyond. Of course, one may disagree with the above premise in its entirety. It is a position of morality that is arbitrary, like all moral principles, including those that claim to emanate from an unproveable authority such as 'God' (and which one would that be?). The only alternative is 'Might makes Right', in which case we will fight to ensure that our view prevails. However, there is a utilitarian view for preserving life on Earth even apart from the potential dangers to Humanity of an ecological collapse. It is that the true treasure of this world is its genetic information. Every virus, microbe, plant and animal is the end result of billions of years of evolution. Each one of these is a unique development unlikely to be found anywhere else in the universe. When we destroy a species it is the equivalent of an illiterate savage burning down a library because it is more convenient to burn books than fetch firewood. By the time we are capable of reading, fully understanding and utilising the treasurehouse of genetic information that is Earth most of it will have eradicated beyond hope of retrieval. The immediate aim must be to catalogue all the species of life on Earth, so at least we are aware of what is being lost. Additionally, and most important, the genetic information of each species must be preserved, if possible along with details of its local environment and ecological niche. This is by no means a trivial program. It may cost as much in total as fighting a small war. Finally, and perhaps in the far future if we fail now, the rich tapestry of life can be recreated by a saner society than exists today. Assuming that an advanced genetic engineering capability exists it will be possible for them to edit out defects that arise from what will have to be a limited gene pool, and reconstruct the ecology. This may not save those animals that have a culture that is imparted to their young, most notably the primates and cetaceans, but also including such animals as elephants. Trying to restart, say, a dolphin species purely from genetic information might be like aliens from another world tying to bring up a human child when they had no concept of language. However, it may be all that we have. At present it is the pharmaceutical companies that are setting the pace in the Third World as they scour the dwindling forests looking for plant species that have medicinal properties to exploit. Not only is the focus of this work too narrow, but they are looting the most valuable resource on this planet. Somewhere there is a gene to produce almost any biochemical, or regulate any biochemical process, that we can imagine and many that we cannot. Purely from an economic perspective, ignoring the palpable evil, every few minutes species die and we lose something that is by definition unique. Even to our descendants the cost of redesigning a gene group to order for a specific function in an ecology is not going to be trivial. Every species that disappears, even the 'useless' ones, represents probably tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. It is also critical that such genetic information becomes the common property of Humanity, and not those who first acquire the information. Naturally occurring genes should not be patented or copyrighted any more than is sunlight. Patent and copyright should apply only to inventions, not discoveries. To quote William Blake - "To create a little flower is the labour of ages." Green Politics When one thinks of 'Green Politics' usually one of two things spring to mind. The first are pressure groups or organisations such as Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace. The second is the 'Green Party' as a political position covering the full spectrum of conventional politics from defence to the economy and social issues. Being a 'Green party' is by no means the same as being the Green Party. In fact, the only commonality may be in the desired endpoint of policy - namely, the preservation of life in all its richness and diversity. All other Green issues are merely arguments over the means to this end. We must not be sidetracked into thinking that 'being Green' is primarily about such issues as recycling, using renewable resources or using public transport instead of a car. Even less should we be sidetracked into believing that 'being Green' is about a rejection of technology or the acceptance of a unique social policy. So, what makes us 'Green', in the
political sense? We happen to believe that embracing new technology is crucial to accomplishing this feat, and that the nation state, far from being dead, is central to creating and maintaining all kinds of diversity. The Means to the End There is one principle that is essential to a successful future for this world. It is that of using technology to facilitate self sufficiency at the lowest possible level as the optimum organising principle for all segments of society from the individual scale to the national and international, and tying all this together with a global communications network of effectively unlimited personal bandwidth. It most definitely includes such things as recycling and local energy generation and favours decentralised technologies and distributed political structures suitable for their creation and use. Our vision of the future does not include a dependence on fossil fuels. In fact, the whole idea of a would-be starfaring ultra-hitech society being powered by digging up a non-renewable resource and setting fire to it is as ludicrous as it is aesthetically displeasing. So too is the idea of simply discarding products for which we no longer have a use instead of reusing their hard won elements. In the near term our emphasis must be upon clean energy to replace oil and conventional nuclear power. The latter is something we should avoid if possible. Apart from waste management nuclear power is too centralised and is too vulnerable to attack in a dangerous world. Britain is uniquely placed to be able to use wind and water to generate a very substantial fraction of our electrical needs almost immediately - only the political will is lacking, mainly due to pressure from existing energy supply corporations. Even photovoltaic solar power generation is beginning to look viable at the level of individual houses. No doubt if a fraction of the trillions of dollars spent on nuclear power had been invested in the above, and in load levelling technologies, we would not be so embroiled in Middle Eastern politics nor would the worries about global warming be so acute. Central to the technologies that will be critical to creating the world we desire is the one that is most controversial - genetic engineering. It is central because it is the technology of life, and the only high technology that it is reasonable to assume is sustainable across thousands or even millions of years. The controversy arises because of its power and application. This is not to say we are in favour of all genetic engineering, because we are not. Most certainly we are not in favour of turning animals into biochemical factories as well as food. Nor are we likely to approve of cynical attempts of corporations to gain a patented stranglehold over food supplies through such engineering. As for the potential dangers, they are well publicised and we will not go into them in any detail. In a Consensus world a far-reaching freedom of information act and a government dissociated from commercial pressure will go a long way to maintaining a safe and non-exploitative environment. This is not to say that accidents and disasters will not happen - it is probably inevitable with such a powerful technology. However, the potential benefits are vast beyond the imagination and the technology is not going to go away. Consider one vision of the future amongst
many. How far away is this science fiction vision? At a guess, maybe seventy years or less. The future is what we make it, and it will arrive sooner than we expect. Finally we come to the life that most people care about irrespective of their politics - Human life. The core element of the Consensus is the Essentia which is basically a Transhumanist manifesto. As to what this means in detail we leave to others who have been exploring the possibilities for years. Relevant sites and organisations are listed below. The World Transhumanist Association also worth studying is the current state of Transhumanist politics by James J. Hughes, Ph.D © The Consensus 2002 |
