Will the New Gnosticism prevail? Remarks on Synthetic Biology, Nanotechnologies and Genetic Manipulation facing the Century of the Big Challenge

Abstract

Technological utopianism seduces many people, from the very origins of Western modernity –remember Francis Bacon’s island of Bensalem in his New Atlantis–, with the temptation of complete mastery over nature (which includes human immortality). Today, the prevailing mentality in the West, which tends to become a universal worldview, has much in common with the beliefs of the ancient Gnostics. According to this mindset, science and technology can allow the human mind to escape the limitations that characterize its natural state, releasing the anchor to biological stuff and escaping the human condition. In short, we would become gods –gods thought of as Immortal Super-Engineers. We must resist these destructive illusions and delusions, which means: technical rationality has to make his own critique of utopian reason (in the sense of Franz Hinkelammert). Without this self-criticism, a judicious use of techniques and technologies will be out of reach –and they do have an enormous potential for improving the human condition–, while avoiding –if it were still possible– the exterminist, nihilistic and suicidal drift of industrial civilization.