The first thing I touch with my hands in the morning is a plastic clock, followed by a plastic toothbrush, then the obligatory plastic coffee maker. Sometimes I touch the latter two at the same time; I’ve been programmed that way. Today the majority of all of us living in the city will not touch earth. We wake up with fewer reasons to do so as plastic separates us from the elements we once lived with in relative harmony. My gut tells me that touching plastic all day, in addition to the thousands of signals with electronic origins passing through my body is inherently wrong. I mention this as I type on my notebook computer, which receives a wireless Internet signal from my router.
The next step of my morning ritual is to test my blood to determine the amount of glucose present, which is arguably the result of a childhood illness. Some scientists have hypothesized that Type I or Juvenile Diabetes is triggered by a virus, usually contracted at a young age, which causes the immune system to attack the body’s own insulin cells. I wear an insulin pump, a small computerized device connected to a plastic catheter hooked to my body. The pump holds a reservoir full of genetically engineered bacteria, commonly known as artificial insulin. I replace the catheter and refill the reservoir every three days and the AAA battery every three to four weeks. I’ve had the disease since I was eleven. I treated my diabetes with insulin injections two to four times a day until I was twenty-three. The insulin pump has been a god-send, so to speak. It’s also mostly made of plastic.
Sometimes I wish that I was completely computerized, instead of only partly. That way, I wouldn’t ever have to think about diabetes. I’d be free to eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I wouldn’t have to think about the toll that even highly controlled diabetes has on my body. I want to be free of consequences, just like everyone else does. But it also upsets me that I’m no longer a pure human because of the virus that compromised my system. For now, I suppose being part cyborg is more than I could ever have hoped. I’m sort of like Robocop, except I’m not in law enforcement, and I think Robocop was shot something like a bazillion times. He also had a good reason to become part plastic. However, Robocop is fiction, and my insulin pump is not. Science Fiction has been postulating the idea of trans-humanism for quite some time. That we can be superior to Nature and replace our body parts with computers, polymers, metals, or a genetically modified organism certainly seems less far-fetched today than fifty years ago, or the 1980s for that matter. I have become science fiction nonfiction and a hypocrite who embraces technology while shuddering in its shadow.
The major question that arises at this point in my coming of age tale in a post industrial, post modern, post video, website poster society, is whether or not our transition into trans-humanism is evolution? By the tenets of evolution as I understand them, our ability to create technology to adapt in the changing world seems exactly that, evolution. Of course our technology also has a tremendous impact on the very environment to which we adapt. Through our innovations and actions, we have become a force of nature and we are adapting to the toxic, plastic world we created. A proverb is needed at this point, and it is one we have all heard: with great power comes great responsibility.
Thus far I have spoken of humans in the collective sense, and this is obviously not fair to the social and cultural side of humanity. Many humans are not as lucky as I am in my partial cybernetic existence, and they must remain wholly human. Many of these people touch earth everyday, but the earth is spoiling in their fingers because of technological byproducts. They are offered just enough of the plastic world to be lured by its conveniences. Fast food with little to no nutritional value is attractive for its nominal price and abundance. The mass media with its ever growing reach is infiltrating cultures, cultures that have evolved in a non-plastic world. These humans can afford just enough of the technologically civilized world to be hurt by it, but not enough to be healed. Unfortunately, it is not all or nothing in this digitized world.
Human struggles with Nature will either eventually end with Nature killing humans, or it will leave humans with a new-found respect for Nature. That is if the storytellers were right. The evidence that suggests the former becomes cliché and ironic as it is delivered via Information Superhighway and televised news. Things like global warming, or climate change depending on your politics, is finally becoming a mainstream concern as politicians, and the public that trusts them, begin to listen to the scientific community. It is technology that has ultimately led us to the situation we have to confront, wielding the weapon of none other than technology. It is modern life’s paradox. Just as the technology keeping me alive and healthy is plastic, silicon chips, batteries and genetically modified bacteria, so too will be the things keeping the earth alive and healthy. And just as I will never be able to be completely free of the negative effects diabetes has had on my body despite my rigid attention to it, the earth cannot completely shake the virus that has compromised her system.
What we are left with is a confusing and disparaging situation. Do we embrace trans-humanity and all its wonders despite the overall outcome it has on the planet? Are we really worth the price of the planet? Evolution is about survival, but can we continue to survive in a world we made of plastic and is full of our own waste products? Blissfully ignorant the technocrats of the world have been. The money that has poured into the hands of the fortunate at the expense of the unfortunate must be redistributed back to the planet before all is lost for both the first and third worlds. Our only hope is trans-humanism, becoming beyond human. We must transition beyond the sins of our fathers and mothers and we must respect the planet as we evolve into a post-human world. The solution is not easy, but it is attainable through the will of those who listen and choose to become beyond human.
-Ryan McFadden
