The Race
Andrew Sullivan writes vis a vis the possibility that OBL and his ilk may be looking at biologicals,
I fear we are close to the moment when our intellectual capabilities as human beings overtake our moral capacity for self-restraint. We are becoming too smart for our own good. We know too much, and have too much potential for massive destruction for major shit not to hit the fan relatively soon. I’m not even talking about unintended consequences of intellectual or scientific advances. I’m talking about deliberate use of destructive technologies to end our civilization as we have known it. Have we advanced morally as a species at the same pace that we have advanced technologically?It is pretty easy to imagine scenarios in which the sheer fanatical nastieness of al-Qaeda or the perversity of nature let lose the plague. (I am always struck by the fact Canada’s own Timothy Finlay had his bizarre dystopian novel Headhunter set against a backround of dying birds…What did he know??)
andrew sullivan
At the same time, we are on the brink of scientific revolutions – from nano technology to solar power to space elevators to cancer vaccines – which will push back the limits of our Earth’s resources and our own mortality. My bet is that Sullivan read rather less science fiction than Glenn Reynolds when he was a kid. The sheer awfulness of the deliberate use of biologicals is not a foreign country to people who read Heinlein or Herbert; but the ability of humans to adapt and thrive drives the classic science fiction.
No doubt OBL and his fellow cave men would be delighted to let loose a plague. I doubt they have the ability at the moment; but the desire is there. Which, of course, makes them vermin in the same sense that the rats which carried the bubonic plague are vermin. Time to go and finish the job. Extermination is never particularily attractive; but the alternative is worse.
Maybe Al Qaeda will hand out smallpox infected blankets to us. That would be a nasty thing to do, don’t you think?
By the way, I seem to have disappeared off the Bullet’s feed.
“No doubt OBL and his fellow cave men would be delighted to let loose a plague. I doubt they have the ability at the moment; but the desire is there.”
Saddam Hussein’s stores of botox are still unaccounted for.
Robert, there are major problems with the feed aggregator and, try as I might, I have not managed to confine them to just your blog.
The position I was quoting was Sullivan’s. Frankly I’m with Sean on the cavemen capacity…desire yes, capacity no. However, you are not far wrong with the small pox remark. There is still a little bit of smallpox in the world and one of the stores in the ex-Soviet Union is apparently not terrifically well guarded. The Chechens owe OBL.
Needless to say I was not suggesting wholesale slaughter of Muslims but rather the extermination of the cavemen. And it seems pretty clear that their whereabouts is known and that all that stops the Coalition from finishing the job is a bit of diplomatic nicety with Pakistan. I can’t see why Bush bothers. It is not as if he is much more popular in Pakistan than he is in Ann Arbor.
Ah yes, lets not fight terrorism, lets continue to wring our hands and squirm in the shame of our ancestors’ actions from 2-3 centuries ago. Excellent policy.
Jay, If you are interested in the mother of all bleak news. The genetic experimenters, [ I wish they would ease off on that damn stuff], have revived the 1812 plague. Biggest, fastes killer of all time. Article says it took out more than the first world war in jig time.
Let’s hope OBL only wants to scrifice all his young realatives but no himself.
If OBL gets really pissed off, and he’s getting older, so more cranky and more touchy, then he could decide to pull in the curtains for all of us.
Cash wise, he’s loaded and connected. Let’s hope he can’t buy any 1812 TG
http://My.Opera.com/T-G/
1812 plague? Perhaps you mean the 1919 Spanish flu.
Sullivan is correct that our intellectual capability is about to outstrip our moral judgement, but not that it necessarily will lead to doomsday. What we will find, and are finding now, is that our failure to resolve certain moral questions correctly in law has made the fruits of reproductive and other biological technologies rather complex to handle. Some folks are likely to be hoist on their own petard; they just haven’t thought it through yet.