Abstract
The feeling that one was ‘born in the wrong
time’ we call malchronia. This is distinct from mere
nostalgia, in that it may generate the longing to transcend the
temporal present in favor of a time of which one has had no
experience, or even a timeless state of being. Implicit in
malchronetic longing is the rejection of one’s experience of
one’s own time, making it a revolutionary and utopian
inclination. In this article we examine two dominant
strategies—primitive weapons in the war on time, really—that
have been developed in the hopes of delivering individuals to a
future beyond the reach of their natural life spans: cryonics
and bionics.
Acknowledgements
Elements of this article were presented at two conferences in
January 2005; one hosted by the British Comparative Literature
Association at Goldsmiths College in London, and the other by
the eSharp electronic journal for the social sciences,
humanities and arts at the University of Glasgow (in conjunction
with the Arts and Humanities Research Board). Both conferences
focused broadly on the theme of ‘boundaries’, and responses
elicited from these have greatly informed the development of the
ideas presented within this article. We would like to thank
Prof. Dudley Knowles and Dr. Tony Milligan for their comments on
earlier drafts.
I: Introduction
‘Time travel’, properly construed, is the
misapplication of a spatial metaphor to a non-spatial
phenomenon. ‘Travel’ is a spatial term, but the independent
traversal of the temporal dimension alone does not in any way
imply literal movement through space. Thus, ‘time travel’ is a
poor way of describing a process that we imagine can
occur—the temporary and localized dissociation of time from
space—though in truth it may be beyond human capacity to
initiate it or even comprehend its full implications.
Two main streams of literature concern
themselves with the possibility of time travel: theoretical
physics and science fiction. The latter of these, at least,
typically treats time travel in a Ptolemaic fashion, which is to
say that the earth is implicitly taken to be the unmoving center
of the universe. Flatly ignoring the movement of the earth
through space allows authors of science fiction to avoid having
to account for the various logistical problems this fact would
pose for their time-traveling characters.
But to take the idea of time travel seriously—as distinct from
spatial travel—one must account for the idea that during time
travel one presumably stays in a single spatial location in the
universe as one navigates the temporal dimension independent of
spatiality. Leaving out the theoretical problems posed to one’s
animal survival upon leaving the spatial dimension, under such
conditions it is very probable that upon one’s reentry to
spatiality, at a (presumably pre-selected) earlier or later
time, expressed as a temporal coordinate, that one could end up
in the vacuum of space or somewhere within the crust of the
planet, or on a meteor, or so forth, unless one was extremely
diligent in making the appropriate calculations to avoid such
contingencies (and even then there could be no guarantee of
safety). So in science fiction it is often a conveniently
neglected fact that we are spinning through the universe (in
which nothing keeps its exact place—not planets, suns, solar
systems, galaxies, nor even the universe itself), and not firmly
pinned to an unmoving surface, terra firma. Indeed, it is
difficult for us to conceive of inhabiting time independently of
space, because space and time are, in all observable cases,
intimately connected. So through popular usage of the term, and
perhaps also a dearth of imagination, we have become burdened
with the unapt spatial metaphor of ‘time travel’, and all of its
concomitant Ptolemaic assumptions.
But that concept of time travel—of moving
through time independently of space—is itself exceedingly
modern. What we are interested in here is not the science or
metaphysics of such modern time travel, but rather the
desires that inspire research regarding, and drive people to
attempt, time-travel, as well as primitive technological and
philosophical expressions of this desire, a desire as old as humankind itself. We are interested in
dissatisfaction with the present, in utopian longings for
inaccessible pasts and futures. We are interested in man’s war
on time (where the term 'man' stands for all humankind), and how
this can be further understood as the extension of man’s war on
himself, his quest to flatten all limitations that nature has
imposed upon him. For the purposes of our discussion we shall be
content to leave the popular misconceptions about ‘time-travel’
outlined above as we found them. They will trouble us no further
for the moment, as the frameworks of desire, and primitive
methods of time-travel generated by the same, are simple enough
to be analyzed equally well within either a Ptolemaic or a
non-Ptolemaic worldview.
II: Malchronia and Cryonics
The first nascent technology of time travel we
will examine is cryonics, the practice of preparing and storing
organisms, in whole or in part, at subzero temperatures, for the
purposes of re-animation at a later time. Currently, this
procedure is mostly favored by the wealthy terminally ill who
have themselves cryogenically preserved as soon after their
deaths as possible, in the hopes that they can be revived at
some future time, when a cure for their ailment might be
available. The reasoning behind this practice is typically
justified by making reference to life as the source of ultimate
good (regardless of the expected quality of life). Cryonic
freezing, by offering even a small chance at future life, is
thus touted as a preferable alternative to certain death.
In the most ideal application of this
procedure, a frozen body would stay in more or less one
geographic location while time marched onwards (note once more
the inevitable use of a spatial metaphor), and while various
other spatial entities moved around her, cumulatively changing
the appearance of her surroundings. After a given length of
time, she would be revived and allowed to explore her unfamiliar
surroundings with, no doubt, a sense of wonder. This prospect of
preserving oneself, whilst one’s physical and social world
becomes largely unrecognizable (hopefully for the better), forms
part of the underlying utopian dream that pushes forward
technological development in cryonics. One might freeze oneself,
if not out of sheer desperation or fear of death, then
presumably in the hope that one will be greeted by a better
world when one is eventually thawed out.
It would seem, however, that to sacrifice the
inherent advantages of familiarity with one’s native time and
place (for example: knowing where to acquire food, with what
currency, using which gestures, and so forth), one must find the
present, for one reason or another, wholly intolerable. Whether
this is due to concrete reasons, such as concerns for one’s
health, or ideological reasons, such as dissatisfaction with the
system of governance one is subject to, the compulsion to flight
is very similar in effect. This sense of existing in an
unbearable present time we call being in a state of ‘malchronia’,
or ‘bad-time-condition’, as literally translated from its Greek
root and Greek and Latin affixes. A person in a state of
malchronia may experience intense psychic distress resulting
therefrom, which can be expressed in a condition we have dubbed
‘malchronesis’. One so suffering from malchronesis may respond
to the discomforts it induces by becoming what we will refer to
further along in the paper as a ‘malchronetic agent’—one who
engages in, or agitates for, a war on the limitations imposed by
time. The movement from a realization of malchronia to the
development of malchronesis—the phenomenological equivalent of
an allergenic reaction to time itself—is not necessarily driven
by egoistic concerns; one can be sick of one’s own time because
of widespread injustice, societal entropy, and environmental
conditions which impact others more than oneself, as well as
because of profound personal disaffection, maladjustment, or
ostracism.
In the background, behind all of these
particular and general dissatisfactions with the present is, no
doubt, a concern with cheating time…with gaining immortality.
Keeping this generally appealing prospect in mind, the fiction
and theory built upon the logical possibility of time travel is,
considering its low probability of realization, still
understandably quite comprehensive. Consider the well-known tale
of Rip Van Winkle. As the story goes, Rip takes a nap after
drinking with some gnomes in the Catskill Mountains of New York
state and wakes up twenty years into the future, only to find
that he has been all but forgotten, his wife now deceased and
his daughter grown. Further, Rip has no place in the present he
wakes up in because of the unexplainable gap in his past, which
prevents others from finding his words to be credible.
Similarly, in the Japanese fairy tale “Urashima Taro”, one reads
of the eponymous hero’s trip to the wondrous undersea Dragon
Palace on the back of an enchanted turtle. Taro stays there with
the princess Otohime for three days of leisure and
entertainment. When he returns home, however, three hundred
years have passed in his village. And so the tragedy of time
traveling is compounded in Taro’s case…the site of his house is
in ruins and all of his family is long dead. When he realizes
what has happened to him, in some versions of the fairy tale he
ages terribly in seconds, and in others he disintegrates
completely. In the stories of both Rip and Taro, the moral is
clearly a cautionary one: punishments await those who
transgress temporal boundaries.
III: Prometheus, Noah, and H. G. Wells
But neither Rip Van Winkle nor Urashima Taro
chose to time travel; it simply happened to them in the
natural course of conducting their ordinary mortal affairs. It
is a hunting trip gone awry that brings Rip into contact with
the mischievous gnomes, and it is during a fishing excursion
that Taro is approached by the enchanted turtle. Each man is a
victim, it would seem, of bad moral luck, as he goes about his
day-to-day business. This is an important observation to make
here, as we are particularly interested in examining a very
different strain of time traveler. We wish to concentrate on
figures who willfully pursue the option of temporal
flight over remaining in a present which they find to be painful
and ultimately dissatisfying—figures that, in type, resemble H.
G. Wells’ Time Traveler from his novel The Time Machine.
Such malchronetic agents are in the tradition
of Prometheus (the Titan in Greek mythology who stole fire from
the gods for the benefit of humankind). They defy powerful
forces (the so-called natural order and time’s place in it) and
risk terrible punishments (typically, their own annihilation
through stranding or disappearance in time). These fictional
figures are confronted with an ugly present, yet nevertheless
dare to imagine a different time, a better time even; in
this way, would-be time travelers constitute a subversive,
utopian archetype. Like the early scientists in any emergent
field of study, they grope in the darkness for answers to barely
articulated questions. Or, conversely, they may be led, like the
biblical Noah, by mysterious visions of apocalypse and the means
by which to escape the foretold annihilation. But regardless of
whether the source of dissatisfaction with the present is
internally or externally suggested, once it has been accepted
there can be no step backwards for malchronetic agents, and
formulating a method to cheat time becomes their central
occupation from that point onward; whether that is expressed in
ark-building or solitary cogitation will be an agent-specific
affair.
One might fairly ask why we consider together
figures such as Noah and Prometheus, neither of whom are
conventionally interpreted as time-travelers, in the same breath
as true time-travelers. Partially this is due to the suggestions
of both H. G. Wells and his critics. Wells’ All Aboard for
Ararat features a latter-day descendant of Noah in a reprise
of the familiar role of humanity’s savior, while Patrick
Parrinder makes specific reference to Prometheus as a figure
analogous to Wells’ Time Traveler. But more importantly, we make
these associations because of the distinct methodologies both
Noah and Prometheus employ in their quests to achieve their
ends, which have, as a distinct feature, some time-cheating
effect. For Noah, enduring the passage of time allows
for a transition to a better state of affairs. For Prometheus,
stealing fire for man brings the future closer for all of
humankind. In other words, through the employment of technology,
the cultural practices of humanity are irrevocably altered:
the future becomes now, and thus the old order, the hated former
'now', is forever vanquished.
IV: Performance Art and the Culture of
Bionics
We link the Promethean strategy for combating
malchronesis to bionics, the electro-mechanical modification of
the human body for aesthetic, medical, functional, or spiritual
purposes. Robotic limbs, artificial organs, and cybernetic
implants in one’s nervous system all count as instances of
bionic enhancement. Cyborgs, the entities that are the result of
such marriages between flesh and machine, seek not only to
prolong their own lifespan (and, in some cases, perhaps to alter
the quality of their experiential lives), but also (one
presumes) to inhabit a world wherein the value of bionic
modification is generally recognized. Thus, an implicit goal of
the bionics movement is not only the bio-modification of
individuals, but the generation of a cyborg-friendly culture
that welcomes (or even adulates) those so modified, as well. The
future, in such a schema, is not something that is sought after
through escape to another time, but something that is brought
closer to the present through choices and actions performed in
the here and now. Prometheanism, then, can be described as a
variety of inverted fatalism, wherein the present pulls the
future inexorably closer, and finally—by consuming it—becomes
it.
We see the efforts made by such real-world
malchronetic agents as the contemporary artist Stelarc as
representatives of Prometheanism. Stelarc examines the
problematic of human augmentation through performances utilizing
bionautical media. In his 1981 performance piece The Third
Hand, he utilized a five-fingered robotic hand, constructed
in collaboration with the Japanese auto concern Imasen Denki,
which was manipulated via movements in his abdominal and leg
muscles. In his most notable performances with this bionic
appendage, Stelarc simply wrote “THE THIRD HAND” with both his
right hand and robotic hand simultaneously, but the theory
behind his work is much more comprehensive and ambitious than
his demonstration alone might have suggested. Stelarc posits
that “[t]he body must become immortal to adapt. Utopian dreams
[have] become post-evolutionary imperatives.”
What is significant about Stelarc’s views toward bionautical
exploration is that accompanying his proposed transcendence of
death, and attainment of immortality, he posits that a future
must be conceptualized in advance, one wherein eternal cyborgs
could perpetually inhabit. Again we see how bionics is pursued
now, in the present, but necessarily with an eye towards
transforming both the modifiable self and the society that
contains it into a vision of the future that will support both.
V: Cryobiology and The Great Flood
Returning to the malchronetic archetype of
Noah, we see a different sort of strategy adopted in response to
unbearable present conditions. Noah, as we discussed, hopes
simply to endure disaster—to live to see a better tomorrow. The
great biblical Flood, he has been promised by his God, will
eventually subside—and then a new beginning for humanity will
obtain. Humankind is to be delivered to safety by protective,
otherworldly forces that elude his full comprehension. The chore
of humankind, in this schema, is not to transform itself
internally—to rebuild itself from the top down bionically or
morally—but simply to suspend its normal activities until
certain external conditions have improved.
Noah’s strategy for combating malchronesis has
its parallel in the motivation behind (and technology of)
cryonics: one prepares oneself for ‘travel’ to a future
euchronia (‘good time’), either through the building of an ark,
or the readying of a cryo-chamber, to escape a present that one
interprets as fundamentally unchangeable by human effort in the
short term. Noahism, then, could be described as an impatient
variety of fatalism: the future is seen as inevitable, and the
present as unbearable, and so the future should be arrived at as
soon as possible. This is to say that, during the course of a
natural lifetime, a Noahist will not strive for improvements,
but rather pray for interventions. After he has
built the ark, Noah is largely a passive figure awaiting an
outcome. Compare this to the figure of Prometheus, who takes the
initiative, and plays an active role in generating an outcome.
Noah outlasts, while Prometheus transforms.
It should not be surprising then, that cryonics
should find its initial inspiration in the passive natural
phenomena of hibernation and diapause. Hibernation is familiar
enough to people of colder climes; it is the process by which
over-wintering animals are seen to enter a state of prolonged
sleep during the onset of winter, in order to conserve energy as
they await more favorable conditions for foraging and breeding
to emerge. Diapause is a slightly more obscure and more dramatic
process, wherein organic growth and development are themselves
temporarily suspended as the bodies of animals—usually insects
and amphibians in this case—decrease their metabolism and
produce much more sugar than usual (which acts as a kind of
natural antifreeze), or develop coverings such as hibernacula,
cocoons, or egg shells as barriers to the cold. Diapause, in
short, induces a more severe state of suspended animation than
simple hibernation.
Animals in such a state appear to be deceased for all intents
and purposes—such are the effects of diapause. As growth is
arrested in an organism in a diapausal state, so too is decay,
and therein lies the deeper kernel of pragmatic motivation
behind developing the science of cryobiology, the umbrella
discipline under which cryonics ostensibly falls. If decay can
be indefinitely forestalled, then life should be able to be
indefinitely extended.
Significant investigations by R. A. Reaumur
were conducted in cryobiology in 1736 using the bodies of whole
insects as his subjects. Reaumur was known to have likened the
animals’ recovery from freezing to resurrection.
Although to this day, insects remain the largest animals to
survive freezing at extremely low temperatures, the information
these investigations provided has subsequently been applied to
other, larger animals which have been able to be reanimated from
less severe freezing, such as frogs, fish, and mammal embryos,
including those of humans.
Applications of cryobiology have also played a
significant role in medical research and practice. Cryosurgery,
the freezing of organic tissue to destroy infected or malignant
tissues, or to deaden nerves as a pain prevention method before
an operation, is routinely practiced in hospitals worldwide. And
cryotherapy, or exposing part or all of the body to extreme cold
to prevent pain, has long been employed in folk medicine and
professional medical practices alike. Cheating pain and disease
through freezing or chilling tissue—in other words, overcoming
certain factors which make the present unbearable—constitutes
the application of a primitive, elemental technology toward the
end of transcending natural limitations. Pain thresholds and
life expectancies are only two examples of boundaries that
promise to be broken utilizing these means.
VI: Utopianism, Transhumanism, and Nietzsche
Although, on the whole, cryonics seems more
passive than bionics, both of these strategies for overcoming
malchronesis fall under the aegis of a transcendent urge, an
ideological compulsion for one-upping what exists in favor of
what could take its place. Thus we attach it not to the
philosophy of late modernism, the era wherein these technologies
have begun to come into their own, but rather the early modern
tradition of utopianism, which began in the sixteenth century.
In literary practice, utopians depict alternate societies that
challenge individuals to change their ways—and shame societies
to become more than what they are. We have in mind here the work
of Sir Thomas More and his earliest imitators as exemplars of
this trend toward critical, yet constructive and imaginative,
expressions of sociopolitical dissatisfaction with the current
order.
A more recent manifestation of the utopian
impulse can be found in the philosophy of transhumanism, which
aims toward a self-directed course of evolution for humanity,
and advocates utilizing available means toward this end.
Transhumanists hope to transgress many boundaries that are
currently held to define our species: that we are born from
wombs; that we cannot have knowledge of other minds; that we
occupy only one space at one time; that our consciousness is
inseparable from our bodies; and that these bodies age and
eventually perish. Cloning, telepathy, the ‘uploading’ of human
minds into computers, and of course the enhancing and preserving
aspects of bionics and cryonics technology, are considered to be
potential enablers of self-directed evolution for the human
species. The obstacle, for the transhumanist, is in discovering
the means to realize them; and, also, in addressing the anxiety
of a public who may (quite understandably) be concerned about
possible abuses of these emergent technologies.
Many transhumanists acknowledge the humanist
movement of the Enlightenment as constituting the origin of
their theoretical lineage, in that the human remains the center
of the moral universe on their schema. Yet, ironically,
transhumanism can also be construed as containing a strand of
anti-humanism, since its goal is to denude humanity of many
characteristics we now understand as constitutive of it. By
aiming to eliminate certain salient features of the human
condition, it also threatens to eliminate the conditions that
make conventional morality possible. Therefore, we think it more
appropriate to situate transhumanism as a theoretical descendent
of Romanticism, and especially Nietzsche’s writings on moral
freedom and self-transcendence. However, we must make here an
important distinction between minimal transhumanism—that is to
say, that branch of transhumanism that advocates species
enhancement due to fear of death (thanatophobia), or the desire
to prolong life—and maximal transhumanism. Maximal
transhumanism, while advocating similar ends and means as its
minimal counterpart, finds its initial source of inspiration in
a more robust ideology of transcendence, which encapsulates both
species and self. It is toward the philosophical origin of this
latter variety of (maximal) transhumanism—a position that only a
small percentage of professed transhumanists might feel
comfortable aligning themselves with—that we now turn.
Nietzsche captures the malchronetic sentiment
behind self-transcendence in the following extended passage from
Human, All Too Human:
A drive and impulse rules and
masters [the free spirit] like a command; a will and desire
awakens to go off, anywhere, at any cost; a vehement dangerous
curiosity for an undiscovered world flames and flickers in all
its senses. ‘Better to die than to go on living here’—thus
responds the imperious voice and temptation: and this ‘here’,
this ‘at home’ is everything it hitherto loved! A sudden terror
and suspicion of what it loved, a lightening-bolt of contempt
for what it called ‘duty’, a rebellious, arbitrary, volcanically
erupting desire for travel, strange places, estrangements,
coldness, soberness, frost, a hatred of love, perhaps a
desecrating blow and glance backwards to where it formerly loved
and worshipped, perhaps a hot blush of shame at what it has just
done and at the same time an exultation that it has done it, a
drunken, inwardly exultant shudder which betrays that a victory
has been won—a victory? over what? over whom? an enigmatic,
question-packed, questionable victory, but the first victory
nonetheless: such bad and painful things are part of the history
of the great liberation. It is at the same time a sickness that
can destroy the man who has it, this first outbreak of strength
and will to self-determination, to evaluating on one’s own
account, this will to free will: and how much sickness is
expressed in the wild experiments and singularities through
which the liberated prisoner now seeks to demonstrate his
mastery over things!
This quotation is quintessential of many
important elements of our discussion of malchronetic longing
thus far. Nietzsche combines in this one passage both the ‘hot
blush’ and ‘exultation’ characteristic of the bionic
Prometheanist, and the craving for the ‘coldness’ and ‘frost’ of
‘strange places’ characteristic of the cryonic Noahist.
Moreover, he echoes the theme of punishment pending the
transgression of boundaries so central to the Western literary
tradition that can be read both in the Bible (Adam’s fall from
Edenic grace) and in Greek mythology (Icarus’ fall from the
skies). In the same stroke, Nietzsche simultaneously presages
the work of H. G. Wells (who himself is not oblivious to these
repeated themes of transgression and punishment). Wells’ main
characters, especially in his popular science fantasies (i.e.
The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The Island of
Doctor Moreau), taste the exhilaration of freedom from
certain given limitations, the experience of which is followed
closely by death or disillusionment. The ‘great liberation’
Nietzsche refers to is, unfortunately, tainted by the ‘sickness’
of less free times; and thus unfortunately some men will be
destroyed by their ‘wild experiments’.
Wells, who is said to owe the idea of the
samurai class of his A Modern Utopia to Nietzsche’s
concept of the übermensch, can be situated on both sides
of the transhumanist line, as during different phases of his
life, he was both a proponent and a detractor of transhumanism’s
underlying premises.
Put differently, Wells has been at various points both an
optimist and a pessimist regarding the potential of science to
aid in the betterment of humankind, and this can be read between
the lines in his various choices of whether to portray his
protagonists as either enlightened seekers of truth or as
‘liberated prisoners’ demonstrating a terrifying and unstable
newly-won ‘mastery over things’. At the beginning, and again at
the end of his career, it is said that there is a distinct
“theme of the liberated intellect as a destructive element.”
As V. S. Pritchett observes, “[t]here is the optimistic outward
journey, [and] there is the chastened return.”
From the perspective of narrative, the quest
outward and the return home require each other; mirror each
other—as does the critical function of a utopia both need and
ape its constructive function—and the relationship between these
two elements is, not accidentally, complementary. There is a
similar resonance, as well, between the two primitive
technologies of time travel under our consideration. Cryonics’
adherents hope that bionics will progress to such a point that
when cryonically preserved sleepers eventually awaken, they will
be equipped with fully functional mechanized bodies, or at least
bodies whose circulatory systems will have been repaired by
nanobots that could be circulated through their arteries,
repairing the damage caused by thawing. At the opposite end of
the spectrum, bionics is now being used in medicine in the
relatively innocuous forms of pacemakers and hearing aids. This
not only demonstrates the less sensational side of human
augmentation—it establishes that, in very practical terms, the
medical application of bionics technology serves to extend the
lifespan of its recipients. Thus bionics also serves the central
aim of the cryonics movement: life extension.
Bionics is already with us to stay, and as of
yet there has been no notable ‘chastened return’ from its usage.
Cryonics, on the other hand, has yet to actually function as a
proven method of life extension. Nevertheless, cryonics, if
perfected, would have an even greater impact on the perceived
validity of transhumanist thought than the more modest successes
of applied bionics. If the technology of cryonics could be
proven safe for use (and this ‘if’ is a very unlikely
counterfactual, given that the process of thawing is usually
accompanied by severe tissue damage in higher animals) then the
laws against the pre-legal-death freezing of human specimens
would likely be repealed. The natural limitation of mortality
would then be seriously challenged, if not partially overcome.
One could, conceivably, move through time with less effort than
it currently takes to move through space. For the first time in
history, temporal emigration would be a live possibility. This
would doubtlessly produce some foreseeable (and some
unforeseeable) sociopolitical consequences, which we leave the
reader to speculate upon at her leisure.
However, successful reanimation after being
cryonically frozen is still very much a utopian dream, far
removed from the realm of actual practice. Through our research
on the subject, we have learned of only two cryonics centers
that, today, offer the services of “long term patient care in
liquid nitrogen”: namely The Cryonics Institute and the Alcor
Life Extension Foundation. Both operate in the USA, with the
Cryonics Institute making its services available in the UK
through a liaison with a London-based funeral home. One of the
founders of the Cryonics Institute, Robert Ettinger, author of
The Prospect of Immortality and Man Into Superman
(here again, the overall influence of Nietzsche on transhumanist
thought might be surmised by readers), claims the cryonics
movement began in 1962, after which cryonics organizations began
to proliferate. For a fee, clients (whose brain, by law, must be
legally dead) have their bodies drained of blood and perfused
with glycerol before entering the liquid nitrogen-filled
cryo-chamber. The clients are then left, upside down, until such
a time as the complications that caused their death can be
addressed by medical science, and they might be retrieved,
thawed and (ideally) healed. Earlier we mentioned the
complications that arise when higher animals are thawed, in that
tissue damage can occur due to its crystallization through
freezing, and tissues are known to shear during thawing.
Unsurprisingly, then, the argument for investing in post-mortem
cryonics services focuses more on abstract probability
calculations rather than actual revival conditions (which don’t
yet exist), with cryostasis presented as giving the client a
better chance at eventual revival than either burial or
cremation. Recruitment of customers seems to be the chief goal
of the Cryonics Institute, and this is based on selling the
notion of “build[ing] the long tomorrow”.
VII: Skepticism About Cryonics—The Long
Today
Of course, one might justifiably ask, ‘Will
tomorrow ever come?’ Or, more precisely, at what time—if
ever—will it be deemed appropriate for the cryonically preserved
to be ‘awoken’ from their icy slumbers? What Prince Charming
will come for these Sleeping Beauties? Most of these medically
dead clients are possessed of diseased and/or mangled bodies—and
no doubt imperfectly preserved, like the reportedly seven-time
fractured skull of the cryonically preserved baseball great Ted
Williams. At what future time will any society have such
excess wealth at its disposal as to fund the rehabilitation of
these frozen masses, even if it were someday found to be
possible? The principle of medical triage would demand that
every non-frozen living person at that time were in good health
and well provided for before the problem-children of centuries
past would merit official attention and reactivation, as their
conditions clearly wouldn’t be getting any less stable in their
cryo-stasis.
At this point we would like to give notice of a
novel moral problem of the kind that advances in technology
regularly (and inevitably) throw up—a problem that we shall not
attempt to resolve in this paper. Readers may take it as a
hypothetical example, or as advance warning of a looming
conundrum. The question can be put as follows: Do cryonically
frozen corpses have a right to be quickened, a right claimable
against a society that possesses a level of technology
sufficient to bring them back to life? This is not an absurd
concern, not least since it should have interest for
philosophers engaged with contemporary moral dilemmas. Can the
dead have rights? Can they have interests, on the basis of which
rights may be imputed? Grant that those who are in need of
resuscitation have rights to first aid. Grant that the
brain-dead may be ‘allowed to die’. What is the moral
standing of the resurrectible dead?
Moving on, we cannot ignore the fact that we
might face a great risk of contamination in thawing out the
victims of past epidemics: some would, no doubt, have died of
diseases that future generations may no longer have natural
immunities to. This is the same reason that there has been some
controversy regarding the possibility of bringing rock samples
from future Mars probes back to earth for analysis: the fear of
a Martian bacterium reviving itself here after a long period of
diapause there (this concern is for the possible realization of
a sort of War of the Worlds scenario in reverse—wherein
earthlings are cast as the invaders who fall prey to Martian
microorganisms—which would no doubt amuse Wells). Let us, for a
moment, imagine that if there were cryonics clinics from the
Middle Ages in operation that survived until the present day:
would we, today, be in any rush to unthaw carriers of the
bubonic plague, even if we had it in our power to do so? Or
would the risk be too great to the living? And the retrodictable
unlikelihood of any business surviving from the Middle Ages to
today should give cryonics hopefuls another reason to reconsider
their convictions; for what company can be expected to tend to
their frozen charges in the face of unforeseen complications
introduced by the passage of time? Bankruptcy, disaster, crime,
governmental interference, or the eventual collapse of a certain
form of government, could all potentially serve to close
cryonics firms.
In the future, when there may no longer be any
living individuals with emotional ties to the clients within the
cryo-chambers, these time travelers may nonetheless serve as an
important physical link to humanity’s past—as objects of
medical, scientific, environmental and anthropological research.
Cryonics is currently offered as a burial alternative, but in
reality it is more likely that one has donated one’s body to
future scientific research in willing one’s remains to be
frozen. As in the necromantic rites of ancient Greek and Roman
times, the bones of the dead may be utilized to make the past
speak—and speak, perhaps, in a clearer and more truthful manner
than if there were a living person in their place to tell the
story. Not ephemeral ghosts, but microbes and strands of DNA,
will speak to posterity on behalf of the frozen dead.
There is also the further complication that a
frozen subject, even if perfectly and successfully revived,
might not be ready for the future they found themselves in. As
in the fictional cases of Rip Van Winkle or Urashima Taro, the
future that one awakes to might be largely upsetting or
incomprehensible to the quickened. No doubt the effects of
‘culture shock’ would pale in comparison to those of ‘temporal
trauma’. Alternately, as in the ultimate fate of Wells’ Time
Traveler, potentially one could become indefinitely stuck in
one’s time machine…never to be retrieved from the cryo-chamber.
A worse fate still to contemplate, for those who have
optimistically arranged for their bodies to be frozen, is that
they could be allowed to thaw and rot—currently, a not unlikely
outcome of volunteering one’s corpse for cryonic preservation.
VIII: Conclusion
The war on time, utilizing the crude
weaponry of bionics and cryonics that we have outlined herein,
will doubtlessly continue if the generation of malchronetic
desires within human hearts persists unabated. Thus the war on
time cannot be won until the war on the self is
concluded, and malchronetic longing consequently stanched. Then,
perhaps, ineffectual wish-fulfillment schemes and primitive
attempts at time-travel will cease to be attractive to
humankind. Although Nietzsche posits that malchronetic desire,
expressed as the will to power, is everywhere, it is also true
that the final phase of Nietzsche’s project of liberation
involves overcoming the will to power. Nietzsche’s
position is, in the end, a post-malcronetic philosophy content
with its temporal lot. This is not to say that complacency in
the face of experienced malchronia is a justifiable response;
this would be like ignoring the symptoms of a disease,
discarding valuable phenomenological information without proper
warrant. Yet, even if advanced and reliable methods of time
travel do become available, the malchronetic agent must still
learn to live with herself, amongst others. This, perhaps, is a
prerequisite for more sophisticated modes of self-transcendence.
Christopher Yorke is currently based in the
Department of Philosophy at the University of Tokyo as a
visiting research student and Ph.D. candidate from the
University of Glasgow. Previous areas in which he has published
include ethics, cosmopolitanism, and utopianism.
Lois Rowe is a practicing artist and writer
currently completing her Master of Fine Arts at the Glasgow
School of Art. She has exhibited her work internationally and
written extensively on the role of intuition within creative
action.
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