In our strange and
potentially very dangerous world where science fiction and Charles
Darwin often collide, a handful of scientists are racing to be the
first to create life. According to a flood of recent reports, this
artificial life could be as close as six months away. In fact, Pat
Mooney, executive director for the science watchdog organization the
ETC Group, states: “For the first time, God has competition.”
Indeed, far different
than cloning or cultivating stem cells, today’s scientists are going
beyond replicating life. They’re creating life in a lab. The process
of creating so-called “wet artificial life” or “synthetic life”
involves building a living organism from nothing but life’s very own
basic building blocks—genes.
Such scientific
tinkering will obviously have revolutionary implications—especially
in how we humans view ourselves. “When we can synthesize life,”
professor Arthur L. Caplan recognizes, “it makes the notion of a
living being less special.”
This was the
overriding message of director Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking,
prophetic 1982 film Blade Runner. When it opened 25 years
ago, it was both an omen and a solemn warning against scientific
meddling. Although the film did not do well at the box office,
Blade Runner’s discovery on cable TV, videocassette and in
revival houses revealed a cult film par excellence. And according to
a poll conducted several years ago by a British newspaper, Blade
Runner was chosen as the best science fiction film ever by 60 of
the world’s top scientists.
Set in Los Angeles in
the year 2019, Blade Runner presents a world where the sun no
longer shines and there is a constant rainy drizzle. An energy
shortage has crippled life in the future. The earth is decayed, and
people have been forced to colonize other planets. Those who remain
behind live in huge cities consisting of new buildings 400 stories
high and the dilapidated remains of earlier times. The crunch and
crush of the modern population seems overwhelming and totally
dehumanizing.
Genetic engineering
has become one of the earth’s major industries, with humans now
assuming the role of “creator.” Since most of the world’s animals
have become extinct, genetic engineers now produce artificial
animals. And artificial humans called “replicants” are manufactured
by the mega-giant Tyrell Corporation. The replicants only have a
four-year lifespan, however, and were created to do the difficult,
hazardous and often tedious work necessary in the colonies on other
planets—military, industrial, mining. And when the replicants
somehow make their way back to earth, they are systematically
“retired” (or “killed”) by special detectives or “blade runners.”
The film shifts
dramatically when the replicants, who are on a mission to extend
their short life span, display a stronger sense of community than
the human beings on earth. After his three partners are destroyed by
explosive bullets, the fourth replicant, Roy Batty, succeeds in
finding his way to Tyrell himself, the master of the Tyrell
Corporation and the genetic engineering genius who designed him.
Batty wants to have his genetic code altered to extend his assigned
four-year life span. He simply wants to live. But when he discovers
he cannot, Batty kills Tyrell in a despairing rage, calling him (as
Zeus to Cronos) “Father.” At one point, Batty remarks: “It’s a hard
thing to meet your maker.”
The importance of
Blade Runner is that it reaches for higher truths. Three key,
yet profound, questions contribute to the core of Blade Runner:
Who am I? Why am I here? What does it mean to be human? These are
the same basic questions that humanity has faced since the dawn of
time. The eternal problems presented in the film are, thus,
essentially moral ones. That is, should human beings really be in
the business of creating artificial life? Should replicants kill to
gain life? Should the blade runners kill the replicants simply
because they want to exist?
As we see with recent
scientific developments, defining what it means to be human is
increasingly the dilemma faced by contemporary society. As such, the
most vital question confronting us is how to maintain our humanness
in the face of an increasingly dehumanizing world.
Blade Runner
is based on a novel by Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep?” “In my mind,” Dick said, “android is a metaphor
for people who are psychologically human but behaving in a nonhuman
way.” During research for an earlier work, Dick had discovered
diaries by Nazi SS men stationed in Poland—men who had defined the
Jews as sub-humans. One sentence in particular had a profound effect
on Dick. It read, “We are kept awake at night by the cries of
starving children.” As he explained, “There is obviously something
wrong with the man who wrote that. I later realized that, with the
Nazis, what we were essentially dealing with was a defective group
mind, a mind so emotionally defective that the word ‘human’ could
not be applied to them.”
“Worse,” Dick noted,
“I felt that this was not necessarily a sole German trait. This
deficiency had been exported into the world after World War II and
could be picked up by people anywhere, at any time.”
The dilemma is even
more acute now than when Dick was penning Sheep for we have moved
deeper into the methodological terrain of a post-9/11 world—one now,
more than ever, dominated by technology and an amoral science. And
with the daily bombardment of terrorist threats, perpetual wars,
global warming alarms, entertainment distractions and a
propagandizing media, it is no wonder that only a few realize what
is happening to them.
Constitutional attorney and
author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford
Institute. He can be contacted at
johnw@rutherford.org.
Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at
www.rutherford.org.
