biophysics- bionics

The idea of a bionic person is a tricky one. On the one hand, I totally support this in the case of someone with a traumatic spinal injury that prevents them from moving through the world with ease. How could this possibly be a bad thing? A person who could not walk or take care of themselves suddenly can. Obviously, this is amazing and important. Obviously we should keep innovating and creating these solutions for people. However, once we start talking about digitizing ourselves or making bionic upgrades just because we can, I start to get a little nervous. Is this just me being small minded about what humanity is or can be? I don't know. The thought of forgoing our bodies is both disturbing and seductive. As someone who has struggled with a chronic illness, I totally understand the desire to upgrade the system. If my body was more machine than body, I certainly wouldn't have struggled with the things I have. If I'm honest, there are times that I've wished for this. On the other hand, unlike western medicine would have us believe, I don't think our consciousness resides just in the brain. Our mind and our body are one. How can we think of one without the other? Yes, our bodies are not as reliable or productive as machines and they have an expiration date, but they are truly miracles. We are way cooler than any machine. If we take away the human body, what happens to our humanity.
As for bionic humans for military purposes this also makes me nervous. It makes me think about the cylons in Battlestar Gallactica. Yes, I would rather put a bionic person, someone who could potentially re upload into a different bionic body, at risk than a human life. But this seems like a slippery slope. It seems like there would be less incentive to find peace.

Comments

  1. Emily KwongAugust 17, 2017 at 9:04 PM

    I agree with you wholeheartedly. I can get behind a person's decision to get some mobility back, but upgrading just because you can makes me uncomfortable. I believe that our illnesses help us remember to balance ourselves and our lives. If it's even easier to just keep going like everyone thinks they can and correct the problem later with a new bionic liver or something, it takes away from the critical messages our bodies were trying to tell us. I feel like if I didn't have this chronic exhaustion, anxiety, depression, etc., I could possibly have gone on like the rest of "conventional" society and just mindlessly worked and indulged myself into complete emptiness. I feel like all of the problems I have with my body (and emotions) has slowed me down for a reason and forced me to take the time to take a look at how I'm treating myself and who I am and where my heart truly wants to lead me. If it were possible to just "correct it" perhaps with that HIV derived virus that would just correct my blood stem cells' DNA or something and be "normal", would I be the same person? I feel like if I just fast-tracked the physical part of feeling better, my emotional pain would be easier to hide and go unnoticed and therefore stay blindly stunted in those emotional aspects for the rest of my life. That just doesn't sound like a happy life to me.

    As for bionic soldiers, that is a slippery slope to me as well. I feel like the more shortcuts our society tries to pull off, the more time is wasted postponing the realization that we screwed up and then we have to waste more time and energy to figure out how to correct it. On a small scale, no big deal, just learn how to do it right, but I think that bionic soldiers is a mistake on a larger scale, like our thinking we can build nuclear power plants without any of them causing catastrophic meltdowns.

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