A Journal for Western Man
G. Stolyarov II
That the advancement of technology and morality is essential to the survival of the individual and of his freedoms is a question which, having been presented with overwhelming evidence to suggest this, the conscientious thinker will no longer dispute. Our examination of the matter reaches the crucial stage of identifying stumbling blocks for the eager mind struggling to reintroduce itself to the commonsense mentality of development for the purpose of bypassing them in a manner that the desired objectives may be fulfilled. The greatest threat to technological development and to its consequence, moral progress, lies within the source of the fanatics and regulators who seek to violently overthrow the great innovators, a mentality at the core of the misdeeds that needs to be evaluated in its characteristics. Not merely will many an argument in the rhetorical arsenals of the enemy be refuted here, but also a malicious intent revealed within such dogmas.
One of the many declarations that a man will hear is that a technology is untried and unproven, that its consequences are uncertain and that it therefore may result in "possible calamity", the above intended as a justification for opposition to the product of innovation or, to a more intense degree, outright coercive prohibition of further explorations into the field. This is a claim expounded across numerous of today's scientific frontiers, used to shackle the creative spirits behind such potential breakthroughs as cloning, stem-cell research, an effective space-based National Missile Defense system, and the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage endeavor. A most significant aspect of the fallacy to note is that no particular warrant is presented for the malfunction; it is merely suggested hypothetically, in a majority of cases without mathematical figures to support a substantial enough risk of damage. The foes of cloning spread banter concerning a potential for abuse, for the technology "falling into the wrong hands", or creatures bred for the specific harvesting of their organs to be used in transplants. Yet villains plague the world absent the cloning technology, and human organ farms exist outside the spectrum of law, frequently utilizing naturally produced persons as their victims. The causation of the evil is mistakenly attributed to the immense scientific range that a technique such as cloning renders accessible for the utility of man. While organ farms are immoral as is any coercion of innocents and must be combated by the forces of government, this threat is independent of the technological aspect which is here held as the scapegoat. Honest citizens are nevertheless deprived of the attempt to acquire another, frequently more convenient avenue to reproduction as well as the wealth of new exploratory potential the research will render available. The repressive measures associated with the error are all founded upon a speculative basis derived to a greater extent from impulsive fears and emotional "inklings" than from the scientific facts upon which all inventions are based. Similarly, the NMD opponents argue that "we do not know whether this particular approach will succeed", nevertheless presenting no particular justification for its failure. Doubt implies the necessity for further experimentation, for all was uncertain to man at some time along his historical journey, and only through observation and systematic analysis via the Scientific Method can he dispel the helplessness that had enveloped him as a primeval savage. Yet the very men who pronounce the cynical clich�s seek to withdraw government funding from NMD research because they possess a slight and scientifically irrelevant feeling that failure may result! This demonstrates the antiprogressivism of potential failure warnings used to urge abdication from the endeavor of development. The dogmatists' resort upon which to fall back via this fallacy, which can be termed withdrawal due to uncertainty, is the status quo, an imperfect condition of humankind and by all reason only a transition period to times of enhanced security, freedom, and comfort. The assertion, then, behind such deluded claims is that "things as they are" must remain so without alternation for all time, and that such is the optimal outcome. On the matter of the National Missile Defense, the fanatics' premise reveals their support of a current scenario in which the life of civilization itself is on the line as tens of thousands of warheads are targeted at major centers of habitation and industry without any possibility of their deflection in the event of conflict. While this threat of mutual annihilation may have at one time deterred nations from assaulting each other with conventional forces, just as a kerosene lamp had at one time provided improved illumination over the candle, both have been rendered obsolete by political and historical currents, such as, in the case concerning us presently, the emergence of rogue states whose objective is the infliction of greatest possible damage upon the industrialized world absent worry of immediate retaliation against their scattered and secreted operatives. The rationality of Mutually Assured Destruction has receded into the past, yet the threats of the present are ignored by the adherents of the status quo and thus expose countless lives to the ultimate evil which is the antithesis of progress, death. Had the caveman shuddered at the conception of agriculture (as many of his still subsisting hunter-gatherer brethren had) and clubbed the brains out of its pioneers, over nine hundred ninety-nine thousandths of the readers of this present essay would have been deceased (as primeval conditions, aside from the constant menace of disease and the pathetic life expectancy of twenty, also cannot support a world population greater than several million, which was the norm during pre-Neolithic times). In either scenario the crucial flaw remains identical.
Another frequent variety of resistance to valiant technological reform stems from the declaration that "man is unfit for the particular innovation" or that "the development in question is bound to be abused to an unhealthy extent", the fallacies of withdrawal due to anti-humanism and withdrawal due to abuse potential. The former is prevalent in the tirades launched by the opponents of stem cell research, who proclaim that because stem cell research involves the alternation of cloned embryos, man was not "meant" to disrupt the status quo within the embryos and thus should not utilize their potential to cure individuals of ailments which have become epidemics, such as cancer, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, and numerous other genetically related afflictions. The fitting response to such a blunder is that because man had become able to discover the methods by which to so improve his own life, not only was he "meant" to take advantage of them, but restraint from exploitation is a crime against himself and his own survival. The latent premise behind withdrawal due to anti-humanism is revealed in the very name of the fallacy, suggesting that its adherents are mystics who deny the moral centrality of human existence and prosperity, who believe that a "higher force" had mandated human suffering under the perilous conditions of the status quo and that human beings do not possess sufficient value to correct it! This, reader, is a most malignant doctrine which deems evil to be virtuous because it inflicts harm upon you. It is an offspring of nihilism, a philosophy which opposes the good for being good and seeks as its central goal the overthrow of genuine morality, thus, the devastation of individual existence and prosperity. The second, related error, withdrawal due to abuse potential, can be illustrated through the Yucca Mountain example, in which activist groups cower behind pretend fears that during the transportation of radioactive wastes to the Nevada site the material will be rendered vulnerable to terrorism. This is employed not in order to strengthen safety measures but rather to dismantle the project in its entirety. To refute the absurdity, the potential for abuse, once again, exists independently of the technology itself and must be addressed as a separate issue, the positive impacts of the development permitted to benefit mankind while the wickedness of creatures such as the terrorists who would seek to assail the storage trucks is confronted directly, should such schemes truly arise. It may also be of application here to recall the correlation between man's divergence from the primeval state and his security from hostile conditions, henceforth, his increasing reluctance in harming his kind. Any achievement of technology, increasing one's material security, decreases one's willingness and frequently one's ability to harm his neighbor. In the example of the Yucca Mountain project, a single site in the desert of Nevada, supervised by authorities to ensure that no penetration occurs, presents a by far more substantial barrier to vandals than the numerous scattered gatherings of spent nuclear fuel within the country at present. Not merely will the excessive levels of radiation be located at reasonable distances from places of habitation (implying, of course, remoteness from those agents of evil whose presence in cities prevents suspicions from arising in regard to their activities which would have been put forth had they been spotted driving to Yucca Mountain along roadless terrain) but also a single strategic location enables concentration of the defensive effort against sabotage, implying a lightened security burden and simultaneously an unprecedented assurance of safety impossible under conditions of the status quo. This creation of multiple barriers will likely deter the terrorists themselves from assaulting the facility. Concerning the delivery effort, the elementary solution, ignored by malicious opponents, is armed defense of transport so as to deflect external threats before damage is inflicted. The improvement of material conditions enabled here as with any other technological endeavor will provide for the elimination or at least the diminution of a menace to the lives of numerous individuals, both in its material and psychological aspects. Withdrawal from abuse potential is erroneous also in the fact that recoiling from the enhancement simply due to suspicion of possible loopholes will render one exposed to conditions in which the chances of malfeasance are larger than they would have been with the implementation of the project.
A fourth claim propounded by the antiprogressives is that "the particular technology is designed to bring forth harmful effects". This is oft applied to halt weapons research and biological warfare programs, which the retrogrades masquerade as inherently evil. They state, in essence, that because the capabilities of the tool permit a destructive utility the tool itself must be abolished. Let us dub this misconjecture withdrawal due to invention characteristics. It has already been revealed that any element of technology (and any object in the world besides) is capable of inflicting pain and devastation. The implication, therefore, behind the fallacy in question logically extrapolated upon to the extreme, is that everything is dangerous and everything must be exterminated in accordance with such a vile precautionary principle. Adherents to this ideology are nihilist evil-worshippers at the core. Prevention of the abuse itself is not addressed, but rather a vaguer measure encompassing and hindering all mankind is suggested, as if the abolition of firearms brought upon man fewer harms than a criminal with gun threatening to deprive one of life. Rationally speaking, the principle of armed deterrence is related to the conclusion that increased material safety decreases one's psychological inclination to assail one's neighbors or one's neighbors' psychological inclination to assail him. Other men will hesitate to rob one who possesses the opportunity to lodge a bullet in their chests should they try, and, in return, he will be reluctant to perform the latter because he comprehends that others do not desire to inflict harm upon him, and harming the harmless is an immoral and illegal act which would result in the deterioration of his own condition. His neighbors may possess weapons of their own besides, and similar circumstances therefore apply to them. The sole threat emerges from irrational men who care not for their own welfares and would therefore seek to deprive or destroy their brethren in a manner which is inherently opposed to their own interests. The latter are creatures that are driven by a suicidal and savage scheme of action and therefore are unworthy of life and are indeed a threat to be addressed. The targeting of these abominations individually is the proper function of the police and other civilian protection agencies, not of prohibitive measures against technological innovation. Biological weapons, similarly, provide such a deterrent effect on a global scale, but the specific irony of the retrogrades' vehement condemnations of the research undertaken within the United States is that the fanatics are in reality erecting a hindrance to techniques designed to reduce the harms of biological weapons. Absent research on the behavior of anthrax bacteria, for example, it would have been an impossibility to develop proper vaccination techniques which, even in their infancy, may in the coming months preserve the lives of thousands of armed personnel. Knowledge about the properties of any object is essential to neutralizing the said object's effects in the event that harm may be presented with the object as its medium. No matter what the veneer of ruthlessness placed by the mystical paradigm of our society upon weapons may be, their development and implementation possesses positive effects just as do a tablecloth or a shovel or a microprocessor so long as they are utilized by persons for their own rational self-interest. Only when such is not the case do retaliatory measures need to be implemented, and only against the violators themselves. Yet the intentional error of withdrawal due to invention characteristics is in itself, when it transcends mere words and enters the realm of repressive compulsion, an irrational crime against every man living. It is meant to deprive man of those tools which he requires to live and function prosperously. Every prohibition he receives against the development and application of technological achievements deprives him of some portion of his welfare, acting against his survival and therefore evil by definition. The eventual aim of these rantings is to rob man of even the capacities of man himself, all for the sake of "a condition in which there is no potential of violation", i.e. a state of total nothingness in which no threat can be posed because nothing exists to pose it. That is the hate-filled vision concealed behind such a fallacy.