by R E Kearney
Advanced Human Evolution
The Stories behind the Future
By
R. E. Kearney
Contents
Introduction
Who is R. E. Kearney
Interview
Genetic Engineering – The Human Quest for Perfection
Part Human, Part Machine – Mind controlled Cyborg Technology is already here
Viruses and their Threat to Mankind
Endless Fire: Future Furies
Introduction
As a Senior Military Analyst in the U.S. Army’s Future Warfighting Division it was Robert Kearney's responsibility to write military scenarios for NATO and U.S. military training exercises based on environmental challenges, socio-economic changes, cultural and demographic differences, and newly developed weapons and tactics. Now that his time with the military has ended Kearney uses his forecasting skills and diverse knowledge to investigate, consider and discuss what the future may hold for the world.
This book looks at some of the incredible advances humans have made and considers the impact they might have for the future of our world, as well as the progress of mankind. These are considered scenarios that feature in Kearney’s futuristic thriller series Endless Fire that considers the calamities and catastrophes stalking humanity in the near future of an increasingly dystopian Earth. In the series, Metropolitan Generation, recalcitrant, part-time cyberwarrior Robert Goodfellow grudgingly joins intense, earnest and strong-willed Mugavus Komfort in her struggles to save humanity from itself.
Life is a tough challenge for every generation: An Endless Fire of climate change chaos, catastrophe and conflict is crippling civilization. Drought and starvation are crushing billions of people around the world forcing millions of families to desert their homes to survive. Dying is a way of life.
What was written as fiction, Endless Fire has now been renamed Prophetic Fiction and likened to Orwell’s 1984 in its surprisingly accurate assessment of life in the future. During 2016 many of the concepts Kearney proposed in book1, Future Furies, have already started to come true.
Who is R. E. Kearney?
“The best way to predict your future is to create it,” Abraham Lincoln said and as bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change Seth Godin wrote, “If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.” Now, you may ask why I am beginning my biography with these two quotes. I am starting my biography with these two quotes because they represent the type of thinking that shapes my reasoning and my life and my writing.
I am a future fanatic. As far back as I am still capable of remembering, I have always been interested in what is next, what is over the horizon, what will be the next innovation or invention and how it will change the world. Unfortunately, I am neither an inventor nor an innovator. Instead, I have been lucky enough to be required to adopt, adapt and employ inventions and innovations in my work as a writer.
For several years, it was my challenge as well as my pleasure to write military scenarios for NATO and U.S. military training exercises, and lately, scenarios for developmental wargames for the U.S. Army’s Future Warfighting Division. All of the scenarios I developed and wrote required that I look to the future and consider environmental challenges, incorporate socio-economic changes, recognize cultural and demographic differences, and introduce newly developed weapons and tactics. To use the proper military acronym I was responsible for ensuring that my scenarios moved all the elements of PMESII, which stands for Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure, and Information, into the future.
Now that my time with the military is done, I am engaging those same forecasting skills and my diverse knowledge to investigate, consider and discuss what the future may hold for the world. I don’t know what I don’t know I admit, but I am always ready and excited to learn something I didn’t know and then to share that information with others. For as Charles F. Kettering said, “My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.”
Interview
How do you think the human race (as an animal) will need to adapt to changing conditions on Planet Earth in order to survive?
Adapt or die. The history of the human race is one of adaptation and change. We would not be what we are today if we had not had some predecessors who tried and failed and others who tried and succeeded. By making changes that enabled them to adapt to new or changing environments, mankind has survived and in some environments - flourished.
In the beginning, as it struggled to define itself, and survive, mankind changed its basic structure, size, shape and intellectual capacity. But, mankind has not adapted and succeeded by just changing its body’s shape or form. Mankind has adapted and succeeded in the past and will adapt in the future by creating new tools. We survive through our creations and, therefore, create our survival. If the earliest humans had not invented tools our frail, weak bodies would have easily perished.
So, how will we adapt to the changing condition of Planet Earth? We will adapt to this quickly changing world by using the one tool that we have used since our beginning – our creative brain. Using our brains, some of us are already adapting. We are building energy-efficient buildings, transportation systems, energy systems and agricultural systems which will enable us as the human race to continue. Clothing is being developed that will cool us when we are hot and heat us when we are cold. Robots and exoskeletons are being developed to do the dangerous and human-deadly jobs. We are creating the tools required to continue inhabiting an Earth that our previous tools significantly altered.
It is our current reality that we cannot survive without our creations – our tools. Our created tools are us and we are them. To survive in the future, we will become even more a part of our creations – our tools until no separation exists. Successful future humans will be transhumans – humans who have merged with machines. Transhumans or types of Cyborgs are being created here and now on a daily basis with people with spinal injuries receiving artificial computerized nervous systems that enable them to use their limbs again. Digital, computerized eyes and ears printed on 3D printers are becoming common medical implants.
But, as has happened many times in the past, some humans will be left behind. They will fail to adapt. They will refuse to adapt. Over the ages Homo species such as Neanderthal and Denisovans mated and merged with other different Homo species resulting in our current species – Homo Sapiens. In the future, their genes, like the genes of Neanderthals, will be found in the existing Mankind, but, like Neanderthals, they will no longer exist. Just another failed branch on the tree of humanity. Humanity will incorporate what benefits they have to offer and move on creating a new species of Homo or humans. Mankind is little more than a continuous experiment. Only in tomorrow’s world it will not be ‘survival of the fittest’ but ‘survival by the adaptable’.
Should we be investigating ways for humans to extend life?
Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon died young searching for a long life. He was not the first nor will he be the last to seek longevity. Humans have pursued the fountain of youth or ways to extend life since the beginning. Seeking to survive is one of our natural instincts, as is seeking to survive as long as possible.
Special diets, certain exercises and mental manipulations are just three methods which have been investigated through Gerontology as possible ways to extend life or slow senescence - aging. One of the latest methods is epigenetics or the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expressio
n rather than alteration of the genetic code itself. Using epigenetics, researchers are not attempting to change the DNA of human cells, but are seeking a method to keep human cells reproducing. At a certain point in each individual’s life, their cells reach their Hayflick limit and stop reproducing. When an individual’s cells stop reproducing that individual ages and eventually dies.
According to Gerontology researchers, “there are two possibilities for curing aging: 1. curing aging at early developmental stages using germline interventions; this means newborns would be aging-free but adults would still age, making us the last mortal generation; 2. curing aging in adults via a combination of therapies, meaning newborns would still be programmed to age, despite having the possibility of avoiding aging once as adults. In addition, it is possible that a combination of these two possibilities; for example, a case where aging is eliminated by germline interventions but some age-related diseases still prevail and have to be tackled by medicine in adults.”
Buying time. English author and biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey wrote, "Aging is a barbaric phenomenon that shouldn't be tolerated in polite society." The world’s wealthy will be the first to be capable of taking advantage of advances in epigenetics, due to its expense and limited availability. Using germline interventions, the wealthy will be able to produce immortal children.
Work to live. The rest of humanity will be required to rely upon their hereditary, their diet, their lifestyle and their ability to avoid accidents and diseases.
The ending of aging or even the slowing of aging would create a number of societal problems. A greater stratification of society will result, if the rich are the only persons capable of affording immortality, and with the stratification will come resentment and potentially, revolution. Yet, allowing all humans who desire extreme life longevity to have it would create many other problems, such as overpopulation and changes in the workforce. If a person can live two or three hundred years or longer then how long must a person work? If a person commits a crime then how long should they be incarcerated? What is a life sentence for someone who may live three hundred years?
The wisdom of age does not produce new thoughts. To some philosophers a major problem with curing aging is not overpopulation but the cultural or intellectual stagnation of humankind. Nobel physicist Max Plank wrote: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with the idea from the beginning." No innovative, inventive, new thoughts would doom humanity. The death of ideas coming from no deaths of man.
Where does the line between researching medical benefits cross into creating the perfect human and is it a line we should cross?
Planned evolution. The ultimate medical benefit. Creating the perfect human may be the only way to continue the human race. The environment surrounding us is changing rapidly creating new requirements for our continued health and in some cases survival.
Death dealing bacteria and viruses are multiplying and evolving far faster than we can develop medications to stop them. The “one drug, one bug” approach to fighting viruses is slow and ineffective. Attempting to stop each individual biological threat as they arise is similar to trying to kill a swarm of gnats with a toothpick. It is impossible.
Fending off these increasingly virulent viruses and bacteria will be our greatest challenge. As the Ebola and Zika virus outbreaks demonstrated, mankind is increasingly vulnerable. With that in mind, a group at Stanford University is trying a different approach: they want to boost our body’s defense systems instead of targeting the individual virus. So, to protect humanity, eliminate the weaknesses of our defense system by creating the perfect human.
Science saves – Superstition destroys. Refusing to advance life-saving genomic research to create non-infectable, “perfect” humans and relying upon current medical methods, or worse, refusing to use any medicine, like anti-vaxxers, will be signing a death warrant for millions of people. Using current antibiotics, the World Health Organization is predicting that deaths from drug resistant infections will surpass ten million people a year with the potential to kill twenty million people a year. Syphilis, Gonorrhea and Pneumonia will return as fatal. In addition, lifesaving treatments like chemotherapy and organ transplant, and routine operations like caesareans and hip replacements will be potentially fatal due to drug-resistant infections. Mankind will become vulnerable to disintegration from the smallest, dirty cut.
Expanding Genome research and editing is a life or death decision for humanity and Society. Society, as currently known, will collapse under the disruption and the destruction caused by the yearly death of millions. There may be no survival from tomorrow’s plagues for humans who are not genome prepared and altered in some way to escape the ravages of new, stronger, unstoppable diseases.
Should all medical problems have a cure? Or should we let nature take its course?
There is no cure for stupidity. So, is it actually possible for all medical problems to have a cure? Probably not. Especially, since the majority of human medical problems are self-created. One example is type 2 Diabetes. Type 2 Diabetes is currently a major medical problem, which is increasing in prevalence. Yet, reducing the number of humans suffering type 2 Diabetes is actually not an insurmountable medical problem. Stopping the consumption of sugar and other sweets, exercising more and losing weight would correct the condition for most people diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes.
Humans are self-destructive - not self-disciplined. So, instead of doing the few simple things that can correct or possibly end most type 2 Diabetes, such as changing diet and life style, we choose to consume medicines. It is easier and we are lazy. Type 2 Diabetes leads to or causes other health problems, which require more and more medicines, more and more doctors, more and more medical equipment, etc. Since diseases such as type 2 Diabetes feed the pharmaceutical firms and the medical profession, the patients and profits they need to flourish. So in the end, nature will be encouraged to take its course - human nature – that is, and human nature is not always wise.
Nature will be allowed to take its course when it is economically beneficial. Medicine is money. Curing people is not nearly as profitable as continuously employing medical staff and peddling pharmaceuticals to keep them from dying. It is in the medical industry’s best economic interest to continue treating, but never cure. The world’s pharmaceutical companies’ revenues require non-curable medical problems and many sufferers, so as long as possible they will maintain a self-discipline-weak, sick population supplying a continuous flow of the ill. Keep them alive to keep them paying. But, nature may defeat their plan, as viruses and bacteria out evolve their medicines and medical treatments decimating the population. We will not allow nature to take its course, but changing nature’s course is not probable.
As a techno-thriller writer what do you think the future of the human race will be?
The future of the human race will be continuous conflict between those humans who embrace and encourage change against the humans who fight the future and lose. Our future is a future built on ideas building upon other ideas, advancing faster and faster, causing constant and radical change. Some individuals will prepare themselves to capably conquer the future by adopting change and will advance. Inventors and innovators, people like Bill Gates and Helen Greiner, will flourish. But, for the majority of the human race, especially for the unprepared and individuals who refuse to prepare, the future will prove to be torture. They will be the ninety-five percent – the Sists.
Economics rule the world. Now and even more so in the future, Economics will determine what the human race will become. Economic Eugenics, the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics, which benefits the world Economy, will take effect. So, because of the rule of Economic Eugenics, I see the future of the human race resulting in extreme i
nequality involving three primary types of people that will resemble Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid.
Wealth without work. At the pyramid tip flourishes a tiny upper caste of genetically engineered, humans called Elites. The Elites caste controls the financial capital and is a continuation of the current one percent.
They will be the most wealthy and therefore the most healthy. Through genetic engineering, reprogenetics and germinal choice, they are designed humans who incorporate all of the desirable attributes necessary for a healthy and genetic-disease free life. Through genetic engineering, they may develop into a new species – one step beyond Homo Sapiens. They will be the ‘beautiful people’ living in the towers of the sovereign cities guarded, protected and separated from the rest of the population. To steal a line from the character Spock of Star Trek, they will live long and prosper. The rich rule.
The rich are now able to get richer all by themselves. Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and other forms of advanced automation have made it possible to create more wealth without labor. Robotic capital will enable Elites to completely secede from society. Equipped with an infinite supply of workerless wealth, Elites will seal themselves off in gated paradises, leaving the unemployed masses to rot.
Work without wealth. On the level supporting the Elites will be a larger, but still small, caste of Humani Machina, or humans merged with machines. The Humani Machina caste contains Transhumans with direct brain/computer interface implants. The Transhumans are the Intelligentsia consisting of inventors, innovators, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, academics and theorists. Through their implants and world-wide, digital interconnections the Transhumans are capable of functioning as a single being in their particular area of expertise. Transhumans practice reprogenetics and germinal choice to maintain caste status.