Feature Shock: Renee Zellwegger and the Face of Morphological Freedom In the last week of October, news of Renee Zellweger’s facial plastic surgery went viral, provoking opinions from feminists, psychologists, plastic surgeons, columnist and the public. It invoked headlines such as: Why The Strong Reaction to Renee Zellweger’s Face? How We Misread Renée’s Face: Renée Zellweger and an Ugly Brawl About Beauty. Why The Renee Zellweger Photo Controversy Reminds Me How Were All Terrified Celebrities Inside. To Succeed, A Woman Had Better Freeze Her Age At 40 (and her eggs at 25): The Unnerving Message Of Renée Zellwegers New Face. Renée Zellweger’s new face was subjected to intense, critical and unforgiving scrutiny. Blame for a ‘bad outcome’ was visited on plastic surgery, cosmetic dermatology, human vanity, the media, capitalism, the shallowness of society, the worship of youth, and the herd instinct toward porcelain perfection intolerant of variation, asymmetry or irregularity that is fostered by the beauty and fashion industry. It was a massive complaint about the triumph of form over substance that also revealed the limitations of our tolerance, the grip of our judgment, and the depth of our envy. The shock that the reshaping of Renee Zellweger’s features engendered can be viewed as a reaction to her exercise of the transhumanist concept of morphological freedom, which presently has some vague legal support, but largely stands on the basis of social and cultural agreements and standards that her critics feel she offended. Morphological freedom together with cognitive liberty, procreative liberty, and participant evolution, form the pillars of a transhuman vision of justice. Morphological freedom is a proposed civil right of a person to maintain or modify his or her own body on his or her own terms using biomedical, genetic or cybernetic technologies. Morphological freedom can be viewed as an aspect of a person’s property claim to his or her body, a controversial right whose reach is still unclear. But morphological freedom expands the idea of personal sovereignty over the body to include the right freely accept or refuse interventions that augment the body in ways that enhance its physical or mental capabilities. Morphological freedom is a proposed negative right. It’s a right to freely choose to do certain things to the body and a protection against coercion to do those things to the body. Being technological creatures since the Stone Age, we have demonstrated a primordial and enduring tradition of incorporating artificial components into our bodies and environments, as well as modifying them to satisfy personal desires or cultural objectives that enhance our appearance, comfort, convenience, and aesthetic pleasure. Art, ornamental clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, tattoos, piercing, circumcision, hair styling and plastic surgery serve these innately human drives which, to varying degrees, are accepted by our present social and cultural agreements. We have also demonstrated a primordial and enduring tradition of incorporating artificial components into our bodies and environments, as well as modifying them to satisfy personal desires or cultural objectives that enhance competitive advantage, control, efficiency, productivity, health and longevity. The stone ax, the wheel, the suture, and the products of the Agricultural, Industrial and Information Ages serve these innately human desires. The history of humanity supports the proposition that to be human is to enhance; and, to some extent, what human beings enhance serves their vanity as well as their desire for competitive advantage, comfort, convenience and resistance to aging. These perpetual human desires comprise the latent demand for human enhancement enabling technology, and, in part, will invoke a transhuman future. The complaints leveled at Renee Zellweger are actually a hypocritical pretense that covers up our own innate desires for beauty, competitive advantage, comfort, convenience and resistance to aging. These desires are a part of what it is to be human. Yet many of us insist that it shouldn’t be this way. These desires are targets of rejection, denial, suppression and moral condemnation; and, maybe they should be. But first, we must accept that making a good impression, avoiding a bad impression, dominating others, avoiding the domination of others, and surviving as long as we can, are core human attributes, perhaps programmed into our very DNA. It is only by getting authentic about these aspects of our humanity that we will be able to deal with their satisfaction with integrity. Thus far, modifications to the body have been relatively superficial and intended to enhance appearance and social impression, rather than bodily function. But this is about to change. Human enhancement enabling technology is poised to change the structure and function of our bodies, minds and genomes. This invites an inquiry into how far morphological freedom should go in endowing persons with the freedom to enhance their bodies, minds and genomes. Should we design morphological freedom as a constitutionally protected civil right or an international human right? Should morphological freedom be a right at all? Debates rage about commerce in body parts, sports doping, attention enhancement in toddlers, reproductive rights, the threat of artificial intelligence, etc. The number of such debates will increase and their contentiousness will deepen as human enhancement enabling technology arrives and disseminates. If we are to manage the coming storm of social disruption and divisiveness whose first drop fell on Renee Zellweger’s face, these debates will have to be settled, preferably by the rule of law. We tend assert the claim of a right over anything we desire. But endowing every desire with the claim to a right is unworkable. The proliferation of claimed rights and the unlimited widening of their scope weakens their power. When everything is a right, nothing is a right. To make rights retain meaning, we need a decision procedure that distinguishes what are fundamental or sacrosanct rights from what are merely insistent desires. Rights should define moral limitations on what society can do to us and what we can do to others and ourselves. Unfortunately, in the context of technological and social change whose breathtaking acceleration distances it from tradition and the past, there is no clear test for determining what is and is not a right. Moreover, however that determination is made, unless a right is elevated to a legal right, there is no way to define its scope and strength. There are several strategies to get a right recognized as sacrosanct or fundamental. The oldest strategy creates rights that conform to an immutable human nature that alone defines the purpose of our existence and informs us of what is fulfilling, nurturing, and satisfying. Within this strategy, rights respect and empower activities that promote our purpose for being. Our purpose for being has been given by religions, challenged by philosophies, and is likely to be transformed by the very human enhancement enabling technology for which a claim of right is asserted. Human nature and purpose are too controverted and dynamic to validate a right. The second strategy creates rights on the basis of interests that are not necessarily fixed by human nature but bestow benefits such as well being or safety. Interpretations of well being are also too controverted and dynamic to validate a right. The third strategy for creating rights is one of the most vaunted in contemporary culture - autonomy. This strategy’s focus is on choice and free will. Rights are about preventing others from constricting our choices as long as our choices do not interfere with the rights others. Thus, to hold a right as sacrosanct is to show that it can be chosen freely without harming others. In designing a right to morphological freedom, we can ask which of these strategies best captures what sources the desire for human enhancement, what rationalizes human enhancement, and what makes human enhancement worthy of the status of a right. In all of these strategies, a right never provides carte blanche to harm another. If human enhancements are safe and will not harm others, personal autonomy is probably the most cherished value on which a right to morphological freedom can stand. However, this value has been diluted because so many rights have been asserted in its name that these rights have become permits to do anything that does not harm others. Autonomy has devolved into that which entitles any desire to claim a right. As a mere token, autonomy has lost respect, worth, and workability. Additionally, standing a right to morphological freedom on autonomy says nothing about the value of human enhancement it only makes a demand for freedom from interference. An appeal to interests is more practical than an appeal to autonomy. An appeal to interests would articulate goals of such importance and potential benefit to our welfare and well being that freedom is essential for those goals to be realized. Freedom of assembly, access to healthcare, freedom of worship, public education, or police protection, are exemplary of rights that benefit us by protecting vital interests and goals. To elevate morphological freedom to their rank requires an explanation why human enhancement is a vital interest. Because radical life extension will serve the preservation of life, cognitive enhancement will restore, protect and expand knowledge, and regenerative medicine, organ transplantation and bionic implants are already restoring and expanding health, morphological freedom is at least entitled to a right that society not criminalize it. Beyond that minimum, there is a vital interest in legal protection against any threat that powerful organizations or the government will force bodily modifications upon us. Given the tremendous possibilities of human enhancement enabling technology, legal regulation of its use is preferable. We will need to establish clear principles to guide the development and application of human enhancement enabling technology. The challenge will be to draft guidelines flexible enough to permit legitimate research and applications, and formidable enough to deter dangerous activities. Symbolically, Renee Zellweger’s new face is the face of the technological future that’s coming, in need of our authenticity and the restoration of our integrity to actualize its potential, calling for education, deliberation, policy, and the rule of law to deliver on its promise. References with Grateful Attribution 1. Natasha Vita More and Max Moore, editors, The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future. (pp. 56-57). Wiley (March 5, 2013). 2. Nayef R.F. Al-Rodhan, Emotional Amoral Egoism: A Neurophilosophical Theory of Human Nature and its Universal Security Implications. LIT Verlag (January 11, 2008). 3. Dale Carrico, The Politics of Morphological Freedom. (August 3, 2006) Available at ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/carrico20060803 (Last visited October 29, 2014.) 4. Anders Sandberg, Morphological Freedom - Why we not just want it, but need it. (2001) Available at aleph.se/Nada/Texts/MorphologicalFreedom.htm (Last visited October 29, 2014) 5. Sara Goering, The Ethics of Making the Body Beautiful: Lessons from Cosmetic Surgery for a Future of Cosmetic Genetics, The Center for the Study of Ethics in Society, Vol. 13 No. 3(2001). Available at wmich.edu/ethics/pubs/vol_xiii/sara_goering.pdf (Last visited October 29, 2014.)
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 21:14:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015