FEDOROV AND OTHER RUSSIAN COSMISTS A STEP CLOSER TO REALITY?
"Who the heck is Fedorov and who are the 'Russian cosmists'?", I'll bet you're saying.
Well,
to be woefully succinct and therefore inaccurate about it, the "Russian
cosmists" were intellectuals that emerged in the late 19th and early
20th century, who viewed technology as being a means to "live out" and
achieve in culture and society certain doctrines of Russian Orthodoxy.
One of them, Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov, a widely-read man usually
regarded as being the "founder" of the movement, believed that
technology would supply the means to resurrect one's ancestors, and more
importantly, that it was a moral imperative to use such means to do
so. It was, if you will, the ultimate in "realized eschatologies," the
fusion of technology and not just "faith," but central conceptual tenets
of Russian Orthodox doctrine.
If that
sounds silly and wildly impossible even in our inhuman "transhumanist"
age, think again, for this article - which was shared this past week by
many regular readers here - indicates that part of the Fedorovian vision
may be coming to fruition:
The essence of the achievement is here:
Recreating a deceased person or animal’s DNA has required that DNA be extracted from the remains of the individual, but a new study has shown that may not be the only way. The DNA of a man who died nearly 200 years ago has been recreated from his living descendants rather than his physical remains — something that has never been done before.deCODE Genetics a biopharmaceutical company in Iceland, achieved this feat by taking DNA samples from 182 Icelandic descendants of Hans Jonatan, a man who is quite an icon in Iceland, most well known for having freed himself from slavery in a heroic series of seemingly impossible events.It was the unique circumstances of Hans Jonatan’s life that made it possible for his DNA to be recreated after his death. For one, Jonatan was the first Icelandic inhabitant with African heritage. Iceland also boasts an extensive and highly detailed collection of genealogical records. The combination of Jonatan’s unique heritage and the country’s record-keeping for inhabitants’ family trees made this remarkable recreation possible.
Any
way one slices it, this "reverse engineering" of someone's genome from
their existing descendants is quite an achievement, even if, as in this
case, Mr. Jonatan's unique heritage and the context of his descendants
in Iceland made it relatively easy to do. One can indulge in some high
octane speculation here, and envision this as but a "first step" in the
ability to recreate almost anyone's DNA, from almost any set of
circumstances, say - for example - in the case of someone who left no
descendants but who had lots of family. With enough computing power and
knowledge of a few other parameters, one might envision the development
of such "genomic reconstitution technologies" (as I'm going to call both
the technology and the field) from things like pictures or paintings,
and so on. All of this in aid of answering the question "what type of
genome would produce this look or that individual"?
There
was, of course, a flaw in Fedorov's reasoning, and I'm sure you see it:
the reconstitution of an individual's specific genome does not itself
argue that that individual person has been reconstituted. If I
may so put it, the matrix for the epiphany or manifestation of that
person has been reconstituted, but not the person himself. The question
of whether the person would or could do so remains
open from a philosophical point of view. But it's an important one. Ira
Levin, in his classic science fiction novel The Boys from Brazil
- made into the famous movie with Gregory Peck playing a very brilliant
but very deranged Dr. Mengele - had Mengele not only preserving
Hitler's DNA and eventually reproducing lots of little cloned "Adolfs,"
but taking extreme care to recreate the social and family context that
led to the creation of the personality: drunken and abusive father,
doting and protective mother, and so on. Even then, let it be noted, one
"cloned Adolf" is confronted by Mengele (and a very fictionalized Simon
Wiesenthal played by Sir Lawrence Olivier), and the "cloned Adolf"
turns on his creator, and ends up shaking hands with Wiesenthal.
Of course, all this raises the question of why would anyone want to do this at all?
Permit
me to crawl way out on to the end of the twig of speculation today in
attempting to answer that question: I suspect - strongly - that such
enterprises are for the people engaging in them a kind of spiritual goal, one might perhaps qualify it as even a kind of spiritual lust.
There are those for whom the accomplishment would be to prove that
science can do what religion can't (or at least, does in a different
way). These types of people don't bother me so much, for in the end,
scientism of this sort is rather childish and silly, even though all too
prevalent. But I suspect there are also those with deeper agendas, like
Levin's Dr. Mengele, for whom the technology is a means to an end, the
end being the invocation and "resurrection" of revered "hero figures,"
the "ancient and mighty men of renown". It will all be sold in the
usual, deceitfully innocent and charming way, as a means, for example,
of "real education" with personal encounters. Add in the "psychological
experts" to "recreate the personality," mix, stir, bake for 90 minutes,
and voila, one has "resurrected" an individual. https://gizadeathstar.com/2018/01/fedorov-russian-cosmists-step-closer-reality/
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