Meaning of Life, Inc.

( Conclusion )

In a parallel quest for human extension or duplication in terms of automation, I turn to Gaby Wood’s account in her book Edison’s Eve (2002). She traces it back to the Salon des Quatre Saisons in Hotel de Longueville in Paris in the 11th of February 1738. It is curiously French like Raël. Jacques de Vaucanson, a pioneer in "automatons," put "The Flute Player" on exhibit. It was an important figure in this quest for human duplication because one, it was made to look human, though made of wood and painted white; two, it was made to make music; and third, with a flute at that, an instrument among those difficult to play; and four, it involved wind to work, which meant it "breathed," as humans did. Now this was quite eerie then for it echoed what Descartes had laid out for philosophy a century earlier about the human body being really just a machine, made of movable parts through which the "pneuma" (breath) from "God passes through."

The remnants of the Flute Player were last seen in 1805 in the hands of Hofrath Beireis, an alchemist. It was, among other Vaucanson’s automatons, described then as being in a "most lamentable state" and "utterly paralyzed." The Flutist had apparently ran out of breath, only to be resurrected later, in purpose at least, in a lab at Waseda University in Tokyo by Atsuo Takanishi in the 21st century. Wood perceptively noted Takanishi’s resistance to considering his robotic flute player a descendant of Vaucanson’s but as if to remind him, the robot then started to play that famous Beatle’s song "Yesterday."

So far, it would seem to this column at least, that the so-called "reasoning" to extend what is human in mechanics or duplicate it in genetics, is still circuitous. If Vaucanson wanted an automaton to play the flute and leave it to alchemists for reasonable people to scoff at later, what does that say about the authenticity of human desire to truly extend our functions? If the Raëlians believe that science will save us from ourselves, why should we embark on a science that makes copies of just that – ourselves?

Talbot notes that the Raëlians, through their company, Clonaid, do not plan to stop at cloning. They figured that in order for duplication to be complete, they would have to figure out a way to "download" experience into the cloned being so that he/she will be a perfect clone of someone you may have lost. Not only do we have a non-unique being, genetically speaking, we also have a lazy one. Too lazy to experience the world for herself or himself and make sense of it. Now really, don’t we have enough of those in the planet roaming around already? It’s like having all your dead relatives on Christmas morning courtesy of "Xerox." Okay, now how many of us really want that?

I have, in a previous column, proposed that this desire to explore ways of being alive in more ways than one through biotechnology is rooted, at least partly in a gnawing desire to understand "Helen" (women). I think partly and much more profoundly, it is also rooted in our all too easy human inclination to cling to life as we know it, or in the case of cloning, as we knew him or her, the ones we have lost. We, as humans, seem to feel that it is part of our will, our prerogative as conscious beings, to free ourselves from evolution, from the slow cook of life, and dash off to feasts totally of our own making, in total avoidance of death since with death, the cutlery and table cloths are put away for others to use down the line. But don’t we enjoy feasts because we know they will not last forever and that the joy and pleasure is from enjoying it intensely while it is your turn and in the company of others in the same lifetime guided by what writer Harold Bloom calls the "tutelary spirits" of the past, and the feeling of gratitude and relief when "enough" is reached and ceding the seat to a random being who, like I was, would be surprised by the many mysteries dished out by life?

Remember that scene from the motion picture, English Patient, where the character played by Juliet Binoche was led by the character of the Indian soldier to discover the beauty inside a dark, abandoned church? The soldier devised a contraption involving ropes and pulleys, whereby he and Binoche could, in seesaw fashion, illuminate with their torches what was hidden in the darkness: beautiful frescoed walls! They never saw the same spot in the same wall at the same time but by their very presence, by their own turns, each literally raised the other to see beauty in its light. What made it beautiful and meaningful was it was momentary and that in order for one to have her turn fully, the other one had to simply let go.