Francis Hwang on Sun, 26 Jan 2003 21:19:19 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> biotech, art, and community ethics |
Benjamin Geer wrote: >In 'On Violence' >(http://attac.org.uk/attac/html/view-document.vm?documentID=148), >Shierry Nicholsen identifies 'groupthink' as a mechanism that >inhibits ethical reflection. ... > >Perhaps a similar type of groupthink is at work today among the >scientists and artists whose unbounded enthusiasm for biotech >brushes aside all ethical considerations. There's another dynamic as well. Generally speaking, artists are not accustomed to having to deal directly with ethical considerations, and they may have to if they're going to work in fields like bioart. Consider the example of nuclear scientists, which Geer brought up. The development of the atom bomb, and the subsequent annihilation of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forced them to confront the possible implications of their work. These aren't simple ethical questions, they're knotty and multifaceted and when you find yourself possibly implicated, some major soul-searching is appropriate, to say the least. Of course in an ideal world, Japanese children would never be incinerated in a nuclear explosion. But how do we apportion blame? Who is guilty? Einstein? Oppenheimer? Truman? Hirohito? The issues aren't strictly limited to nukes. A more recent example: Innovations in weapons design have allowed manufacturers to create semi-automatic weapons that are lighter and have less recoil. But as a result, military leaders in Africa, southeast Asia, and elsewhere have been able to recruit child soldiers because now a 10-year-old can carry a gun. (If the U.S. invades Iraq, we'll have to kill quite a few of these child soldiers ourselves; I have read nothing to convince me that our own troops are so dehumanized as to be capable of such a disheartening task.) If I'm remembering my history correctly, the atom bomb forced scientists in general to think about their role in the scheme of the world. They formed organizations to exert influence as scientists, and there's been a lot more taking of responsibility. Which is not to say that all scientists today are ethical, or that their interpretations of personal responsibility are uniform across the board. But contrast this picture with artists. Artists, in the traditional formulation, are useful to society in large part _because_ of their remove from it. They are supposed to act largely with disregard for larger community ethics. But part of this luxury, I think, stems from the fact, that much of art is about representation of the world, but not actually materially changing the world itself. Art is influential on society in many subtle ways, of course, but we don't have the concerns of nuclear scientists. Artists don't generally ask themselves "If I'm successful with this painting, 100,000 Japanese civilians will be killed -- am I okay with that?" Enter bioart, with all its knotty ethical considerations. Or, imagine us 50 years in the future seeing the first examples of "nano-art", with the slim possibility that each new artistic innovation might cause a "grey goo" disaster described by Bill Joy and others. All of a sudden we're doing things that others outside the arts community have a right to be concerned about. How do we let them into our discussions? I remember hearing of a ethics panel that was convened in the U.K. to discuss the issue of human cloning. There were a lot of different people on that panel -- including a priest (or maybe two?). Would we be willing to let priests, or any sort of community spiritual or ethical leaders, to tell us what sorts of bioart we can and cannot create? I can't imagine that ever happening. Francis -- # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net