Professor at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Daniel Deudney, presented to an intimate group of Loyola students and professors in McGuire Hall in the latest installment of Loyola’s Modern Masters Reading Series. Deudney began the talk by surveying his five major assumptions about the larger scale situation humanity exists in.
His assessment of human progress included what he calls the “gathering storms” that are impacting human life as we know it such as pandemics and atomic threats. The most pertinent to his discussion is transhumanism, the philosophy that technological advancements serve to empower humanity.
Deudney understands how technology in many ways has served to protect humanity on a small scale. He uses the average home as an example of this success, which has many protective measures in place developed from a long history of trial and error. Any household item such as food, medicine, inspections to ensure the building is structurally sound, and insurance all contribute to the safety and well-being of people.
He theorized that humanity could experiment with protective measures in the same way to discover what can preserve the earth and what contributes to its deterioration.
“What I am basically suggesting in making this point is that we’re actually pretty good at it at our scale. We’ve got a good track record. But what we have to do is scale this up. We have to do at this larger scale what we have done at a smaller scale,” Deudney said.
It is within this framework that Deudney proposes the theory of the techno-political spectrum. Running perpendicular to the political left and right ideologies on this spectrum is the range of ideologies surrounding technology. Some may lean high on the technological spectrum, championing the progression of human expansion, while others identify with technophobia, a fear of what expanding technology can do to put the environment, and by extension human life, at risk.
“The prospect of transhumanism. Technology is increasingly reaching the point where the very fabric of humanity might potentially be rewoven with big consequences,” Deudney said.
Deudney described ways in which he is cautious and critical about the grand technological movements humanity has made in recent centuries, particularly in his most recent book, “Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity.” He presents the views that space expansionism hinges upon and deconstructs that these goals are largely science fiction and the vanity projects of billionaires.
Deudney in his talk particularly dismissed the dreams of space expansionists to occupy Mars. He does this not only to show the absurdity of some of the visions for expansion, but also to remind listeners that the earth is truly, in his words, an oasis to be preserved if humanity has any chance of survival.
“It’s a long way away, tens of millions of miles away. Mars’ atmosphere has no oxygen, extremely thin, and gravity is only 40% that of earth, and the atmosphere is filled with chlorine dust, lethal to humans. So, Mars doesn’t look so good,” Deudney said.
Deudney teaches and researches political science, international relations, and political theory at Johns Hopkins, and he used this knowledge to inform his propositions about the future of humanity. He believes that if humanity can find ways to protect the greater world through trial and error, just as we have collectively done as a society with our own homes and neighborhoods, there is a chance to find solutions to climate issues despite the progression of technology.
“On the techno-political spectrum, we cannot stop the progress of technology, but we can steer,” Deudney said.
The next and final Modern Masters Reading event of the year will take place on March 11, featuring Carlene Bauer, a Loyola University alumni and published author of a memoir and two novels, “Frances and Barnard” and “Girls They Write Songs About.”
