We Are Borg, Mentats, Empaths ...

© Laurence B. Winn

Aug 1, 2001

First, an acknowledgment: We learn from our children. The author has derived the title and many of the ideas in this article from conversations with his daughter, Faith Catherine.

We have such great expectations, each of us ... for ourselves, for our children, for our race, for our world. They exist in a stunning diversity. We dream, we plan, we scheme and conspire to make a difference, and we do it all under the assumption that our efforts will be tolerated. At least, we do in nominally free countries.

Where tolerance is the rule, cultural evolution marches steadily toward more disaster-resistant forms of behavior, governed by the same principle that drives biological evolution - survival of the fittest. From many branches, nature trims all but a few limbs. Which few will remain is always a mystery beforehand, so it is important that we produce enough diversity of belief and ability to meet any challenge. If we lop off some of the branches out of intolerance, we do ourselves a potentially fatal disservice.

The theory of biological evolution describes a genetic progression that could have equipped humans with the brains for cultural evolution. The theory is subject to attack from at least two quarters. Certain religious philosophies claim that science has followed its pursuit of truth to an unacceptable conclusion. This argument, we put aside. More to the current point, a second group argues that human evolution has been brought to a standstill, or has even been reversed, by our injudicious application of the medical arts. That is, individuals who are weak of mind or body, whom death would have removed from the gene pool previously, are now allowed to persist and reproduce with the aid of science.

It doesn't matter. Cultural evolution, of which science itself is a product, is poised to supplant the agonizingly slow process of natural selection in human beings. In this respect, we humans appear to be unique. Whereas natural selection operates over millions of years, cultural evolution, by the application of genetic engineering and cybernetics, could easily transform us into cybernetic organisms like Star Trek's "Borg", a technology-augmented being, or something altogether non-human, like a conscious machine, and this could happen within thirty years. (See "Survivors from Earth".) Or, previously under-explored physical and mental disciplines could alter our understanding of the space-time continuum, transforming us into telepathically augmented creatures like the Mentats and Bene-Gesserit witches of Dune.

We are told that Asians and Eastern Indians have done nearly impossible things with chi and the prana, the "life force". They can heal with a gesture or a touch, and over great distances. Some can see the energy field called the "aura" that supposedly surrounds all living beings, and use it for medical diagnosis. A well-trained martial artist can strike through obstructions, damaging or destroying only the target. Certain forensic specialists are said to be able to locate crucial evidence by sensing "vibrations", or by "feeling" the emotions of others to separate truth from deceit. Carried to their logical conclusions, abilities such as these could be as transforming as any other evolutionary change.

And now we return to the idea of tolerance, which is the central precept of all free association, and a product of frontier societies. Before somebody says, "Oh, you mean like Salem, Massachusetts, with the witch trials?", let me just point out that such extreme expressions of intolerance were moderated and eventually extinguished by the ability of members to abandon their communities. That is, in fact, the motivation for tolerance: to keep members present. It is the price of fidelity. But, in an enclosed society, this balance of tolerance and fidelity does not exist.

In an essay presented to the Outlook Club of Berkeley, California in 1989, J. Peter Vajk (see "Vajk's Dilemma" for other thoughts by Vajk) suggests that, in the absence of a frontier, the idea of tolerance may contain the seeds of its own destruction. "Memetics: The Nascent Science of Ideas and their Transmission" is worth a close look in its own right. It is an elaboration of an concept advanced by writer-zoologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, namely that the brain is physically altered by the presence of ideas, or "memes", coined by analogy to the term "gene".

Vajk writes, "The meme of tolerance evolved in America under conditions of partial isolation ... Thus the tolerance meme was not exposed to competitive pressures in the global ideosphere until the middle of this century."

To adopt a biological analogy from Dawkins and Vajk, anti-tolerance memes act like retroviruses, which coopt the genes of the host to replicate themselves. Anti-tolerance regimes seize control of the machinery for transmitting and replicating memes: radio, television, the press, the Internet, in the name of safety or political correctness or "ethnic diversity" (whatever that is), or simply to avoid controversy. In the current American mutation of the tolerance meme, anti-tolerance and Western democratic ideals are held to be morally equivalent. We suffer those who would not suffer witches to live. Because it must embrace its enemies, the tolerance meme may be self-extinguishing -- unless, that is, it can escape.

The forbearance of autocrats, engendered by the existence of a frontier, made the world look to the United States for guidance in matters of government by the people. Frontier-building was not just an incidental activity of American democracy; it was its organizing principle.

If it remains without a frontier, the world will become, perhaps is already approaching, a place where holding a divergent point of view is punishable, where you can't run and you can't hide, where there is no premium paid for tolerance, no need to keep the folks at home happy, no imperative to abide telepaths, empaths, mentats, soothsayers, or witches. And resistance is futile.