Epilogue: Towards a technical-scientific reconfiguration of religious narratives?

Abstract

In this Afterword, we propose lines of convergence between all the articles of this double special issue and, beyond this, hermeneutic keys to read these techno-scientific mutations and their impact on religious narratives.

This double opus devoted to technoscientific eschatologies has enabled us to see the complexity and multiplicity of the social and spiritual reconfigurations the new technologies open up. Sometimes sources of distrust vis-à-vis the worst in technological dystopies, sometimes sources of promise for a humanity lacking goals but very worried about its own posterity. A very broad spectrum of possibilities presents themselves in these emerging phenomena.

That these eschatologies, induced by the new technologies, are imposing themselves is unquestionable. These eschatologies are first of all global and geographically unlimited, electrifying the world through the ever increasingly tight mesh of the Internet. In this double issue, we have traversed three continents: the multiple uses of the digital in the United States or in Europe which is witnessing the dawn of new spiritual careers, the contemporary hermeneutics of Indian mythologies, brought up to date by immersion in digital worlds, and, further, the spiritual transformations generated by the reconfiguration of robot-human relationships in Japan. But we could have taken the analysis further: by stopping with the smartphone revolution and access to the internet by human groups a priori isolated from furiously paced technological advances, as in rural Africa or on Pacific Islands; by focusing our attention on fears of a ‘world-prison’ ushered in by the first State hyper-controls of our personal data by American or Chinese security agencies; or by focusing our attention on the weight of the social networks in service to the march of hopes, such as in revolutions called ‘Arab’ or in Latin-American social movements. In short, the techno-scientific eschatologies open a new window, now unavoidable, on the oldest hopes of humanity: overcoming death, suffering and disease, and, more generally, reaching beyond the limits of its human condition. Technoscience, for that matter, participates in the redefinition of the symbolic relations between the human and non-human worlds, subjects and objects, matter and spirit, man and animals.

Henceforth, artifacts, the ensemble of manufactured objects, come under scrutiny, not as the simple and possible tools of religions, but as partners or competitors in human spiritual projects. It is as if, up to now and with some notable exceptions, technological objects have been reduced to an ensemble of purely secular artifacts, peripheral materials in man’s religious quest. Tools for training, dissemination or organization, technologies were relegated to the status of passive adjuvants. However, in the cybernetic times described by Triclot (2016), besides that secular orientation, the first computers’ developments already had a spiritual dimension. The techno-trance machines are revealing the spiritual dimension present from the beginnings of the digital revolution. Consequently, a few decades later, it is not astonishing to see the transhumanist narrative emerging in Silicon Valley – a place of microprocessing and Internet revolutions. That narrative confers an eschatological dimension on technical advances and relates them to the individualistic developments of humans which it amplifies.

Thus we find transversal themes here in every field, such as that of ‘going beyond’ or man’s last end (Fukuyama, 2002), the eternalization of the ego, immortalization, or, contrariwise, a return to a primal age (Geraci, 2016). The theme of hybridization is omnipresent too and describes profound aspirations in relations between humans and machines, leading to a new society with no lack of spiritual questioning.

Is this eschatology by machines also a redeployment of counter-cultures? Faced with this wave of new scientisms, the digital also becomes a paradoxical refuge for those disappointed with our dehumanizing societies. These digital hermits, Ikkikomori or No Life, in a certain way appear not as the premises of this humanity hybridized to machines, but as resistants of a new kind (Servais, 2017, this issue). We can in part see them as withdrawn from the world, disappointed with the pragmatic flatness of a human universe with no rough edges, displaying a lack of dreams and epochs at its length and breadth. In short, they denounce a dying humanity, unable to renew its great narratives and great adventures, an ‘empty’ humanity, which is to say administered by an unrelieved mediocrity.

Global meta-narrative and counter-narrative

In Souci de soi, conscience du monde (2012), Raphaël Liogier examines the emergence of an individuo-globalist ‘religion’, centred on the individual but acting on the planetary scene in its totality. Being without limit, unique and universal: such is the maxim of these new devotees of the 21st century. This new spirituality is developing against three competitive backgrounds: hyperscientific, hypertraditional or hypernatural decors. Following this tryptic, these techno-scientific eschatologies are obviously anchored in the first configuration, the hyperscientific decor. The central characteristic of this decor: the imperative of connectivity (Liogier, 2012: 223–225). Two key ideas stand out: a double life and redoubled speed. This corresponds to the model of humanity Lipovetsky describes as Superman (Lipovetsky, 2006: 294–345), an axiology of competition and surpassing oneself where performance becomes the horizon of all humanity.

In this meta-narrative, a fragile or weak body is a handicap. Hence the first path to achievement is improving one’s deficient body. The first step towards accomplishment involves increasing performances through training or the ingestion of doping substances. But those light techniques cannot compensate for everything, and, consequently, an ideology of increase by integrating technology into the body itself takes over and accelerates a movement of hybridization. The race is on towards a cyberbody freed from material constraints (Milon, 2005). This cyborg body, better than an automaton and better than the body, synthesizes the advantages of both. Unlike a body of flesh, it is imperishable, but gifted with consciousness – unlike machines.

The other option, with the body crossbreeding the biological and technological, is human avatarization (Astier, 2011; Graffam, 2012). This involves pushing the intuition that the computer will be our ‘Second Self’ (Turkle, 2005 [1984]) as far as possible. From a light dynamic of immersion, the central goal is a veritable incorporation, the absorption of the virtual environment in consciousness (Calleja, 2011: 169). But besides a phasing of the two bodies, a dynamic of identification with this new digital body is also sought after. Avatarization proceeds from this movement of identitary and social investment in the digital body. In the post-human project, the digital body may even end up replacing the socio-biological body, becoming an avatar-body (Lagneaux and Servais, 2014).

Heudin has clearly situated the symmetry between these two movements (Heudin, 2008: 377–378). He uses the term Cybridation to describe this hybridization of artifactual bodies and biological bodies, as well as to describe the interbreeding of augmented bodies and their connections to cyberspace. In the horizon he sees emerging in the new science fiction, he underlines a surpassing. No longer is there a binary opposition between human and machine, but in its place and stead a complexity generated by the two components’ hybridization. Hence the difference is reduced because all human bodies have become cyborgs. This new situation no longer results in a head-on opposition, but in a benevolence and complementarity between human and machine. Technological artifacts in fact become hybrid too, quasi alive, possessing a ‘spirit’, symbolized by a transferable memory. Similarly, all these human hybrids are henceforth directly connected and, in certain cases, this hyper-connection facilitates the emergence of a meta creature of collective artificial intelligence.

While this last section of the story today still clearly involves science fiction, certain current trends can orient us towards the premises of what is emerging.

Sadin describes the anthropology of this parallel humanity of digital information flow (Sadin, 2013), a veritable seventh continent of big data and cloud computing.

But this political-religious narrative of humanity reaching beyond itself has its dark side too, its underside as counter-narrative. That narrative surfs on the scene of desecuritization and the end of the nation State (Abelès, 2006). In that story, biotechnological discoveries generate new worries and feed competitive decors: the hypertraditional or hypernatural (Liogier, 2012). As Abelès points out, the threat is thought at the height of the discovery. This anxiety results in a veritable spiral of insecurity, with innovation henceforth being a vector of major risks. A logic of precaution is thus opposed to it, resulting in the installation of a primacy of survival over coexistence. The very logic of politics ends up being fundamentally transformed. The goal now is pacifying the relationship of humans with their future, and not of harmonizing and equilibrating relationships between humans. ‘It is no longer a matter of promoting the best, but of avoiding the worst’ (Abelès, 2006: 120).

The popular archeology of a mythology

The hyper-scientific decor founding these new eschatologies is already quite well anchored in the literature. In 2002, relying on what he calls the biotechnical revolution, Fukuyama reminded us that the fundaments of posthumanism are already offered in two foundational works: Orwell’s 1984 published in 1949 and Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1932 (Fukuyama, 2002). In the first novel, we are shown the hypertrophied impact of communication technologies in futuristic and dystopian ways. In the second, in fact older, a revolution in biological and genetic manipulations constitutes the narrative’s heart and societal project. Now these two upheavals represent the two fundamental pillars of transhumanist mythology. It is precisely the alliance between biology, including the cognitive sciences, and advanced techniques in the fields of information, artificial intelligence and nano-technologies which constitutes the spinal cord of this transformation. If fantastic literature offers this myth an impressive array of symbolic resources, another media support has not remained idle, and has been able to gradually replace the book: Film. Even before the publication of the two works cited, the film Frankenstein (1931) already referred to a human project defying death. But it was unquestionably after World War II, and especially in the early 1960’s, that post-humanistic themes expanded. In the Colossus of New York (1958), Jeremy Spensser, a renowned savant, dies in an accident. His close relatives implant his brain into a robotized body, thus reviving him and allowing him to continue his scientific work.

This imaginary of the man-machine fusion remained prevalent throughout the 1960’s. Thus in Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and a whole series of sequels, the hero confronts the Daleks, ‘humans’ from the planet Skaro who have hybridized themselves with machines to become invincible. Cyborg 2087 (1966) places Cyborgs on centre stage, semi-human, semi-machine individuals. They rebel and try to change their future by dispatching one of their own in 1960.

But it was probably the decade of the 1980’s that amplified and, above all, popularized the cyborg theme repeatedly. In Blade Runner (1982), the replicants are copies of humans, conceived from a culture of flesh and skin. The Terminator trilogy testifies to evolutions in the perception of cyborgs, at once allies and frightening adversaries (Milon, 2005: 77–79). And finally, the opus RoboCop (1987, 1990, 1993) made prospects of hybridization quite concrete. In The Machine (2014), an electronic implant is installed into the brains of soldiers with combat induced cortex damage, in hopes of reactivating their cerebral functions.

The theme of augmentation continued to take on varied forms, in particular the popular successes of the Marvel Franchises. We might for example mention the figure of Iron Man (2008, 2010 and 2013), a human being augmented with very advanced technology via his exoskeleton. But another dimension of this mythology is featured in that success franchise: artificial intelligence. Indeed, Jarvis, Iron Man’s digital assistant is a high powered artificial intelligence. The programme with the same name developed in the last few months by Facebook is in comparison a digital dwarf. This theme is not new. As early as 1977, in Demon Seed, the Harris couple lives in an entirely automated dwelling. Alex and Susan, the two heroes, hope to put an end to the world’s health problems thanks to Proteus IV, a computer equipped with artificial intelligence.

The third theme that is repeatedly invoked is that of virtual worlds. The reference film on this subject is unquestionably Tron, by Steven Lisberger (1982). In this story, Flynn, a video game inventor, realizes that his games have been stolen by his former employer. He wishes to recover evidence so as to assert his rights. With two former colleagues, he penetrates the principal master controller (PMC), a machiavellian and power-hungry computer with impressive artificial intelligence that teleports the hero into a video game. Faced with this digital imprisonment, Flynn has recourse to Tron, an independent computer programme.

This idea of an intelligence which turns against humans and locks them into digital realities is regularly proposed in various forms. In The Matrix (1999) humans live in a virtual world controlled by the Matrix and machines, themselves nourished by humans reduced to the function of energy producers (Milon, 2005: 61–71). The theme of uploading the mind into a virtual or a biological body is also developed in film. The idea of uploading the mind is subsequently found in films like Avatar by James Cameron (2009) or in the film Chappie (2015).

But, as the meta-narrative has shown us, questioning in terms of proportional risk always goes hand in hand with narratives on going beyond humankind. In Gattaca (1997), the question of access to improvements in a capitalist society where only the richest can afford to have successful children is asked. Technologies become a factor of inequality between humans in the first zone (improved) and the others (obsolete). There are further questions on the dualization of humanity by technologies in Time Out (2011), Elysium (2013) or Jupiter: Ascending (2015) among others.

Lastly, and more fundamentally, several films have looked into the consequences of hybridization and/or augmentation on the preservation of humankind. Already in Ghost in the Shell (1995) and, more recently, in Lucy (2014) or Transcendence (2014) the crucial question is raised: What makes us human beings?

Post-human supermen versus the threat of machines

Reviewing all of this mythography has revealed a paradox: post-human eschatology is popular. We of course have no intention of suggesting that this meta-narrative is approved of by the great majority. Rather this mythography is popular in the sense that its narrative is appropriated by the great majority thanks to the three media conveying it, film, television and henceforth video games, with the three audio-visual media increasingly inter-connected. Although the latest narrative tendencies provide a glimpse of a hybrid world where machines and humans mix and combine, the dominant tendency, if only in terms of audience success, from a certain perspective, remains binary. What comes across predominantly is an endless tug-of-war between techno-scientistic happy endings and technological apocalypse.

Indeed, in these contemporary techno-scientistic narratives, the tension ever in ascendency between utopia and dystopia, between human victories and emancipations or defeats and slavery to the machine’s advantage. In the pessimistic version – The Matrix, Terminator, Tron – the totalitarian systems come out on top. In the end, it is no longer a plot of a few against the many, and thus the system’s instrumentalization by the powerful, but the loss of human control over the system to the machine’s advantage. The supreme insecurity is structural; politics is dispossessed by another species designed by us but which has surpassed us. It is in some sort a new myth of Prometheus in ultramodern times. In this version, the ideology of survival wins out.

If we tend towards the optimistic version, at least at the end of the story – Elysium, Time Out, Avatar or even The Matrix – we can evoke the success of a man who stands up against the system. Behind all of this is the conviction that the system does not lead to an end that is good ‘for everyone’. That is why the hero, or even the savior in the case of The Matrix, is a rebel, an individual who shakes off the system’s shackles to transform it. Even Iron Man, who in part incarnates the system, is outside-system in the sense that he is both uncontrollable and fragile. In the imaginary struggle between totalitarian insecurity and salvation through technologies, the idea of fragility emerges in concavity as a determining element in our humanity. The ideology of survival dominates here too.

Thus behind the two faces of one same narrative whole, we get a glimpse of the most essential human dimensions. Indeed, this conjunctural paradox leads us to the most fundamental of anthropological structures: the dream of power, of overcoming through the manipulation of material forces, inherent in humans, which is in part magic, but also anxiety in facing this power, in facing the outburst of forces which have been awakened. This is indeed what we find in accounts of magic gone wrong, featuring sorcerer’s apprentices caught in their own trap, destroyed by their own inventions. It is also what we find in accounts featuring robots who, in some sort, wake up and seize their autonomy, thereafter turning against the men who built them, who may themselves too be likened to sorcerer’s apprentices. We rediscover this anxiety faced with the magic machine, which turns against us not only in a catastrophism of the Terminator type, but more concretely in the imaginary of robots who steal ‘our’ jobs whereas all they are doing is reducing the human effort needed for production (Liogier, 2016). The arrival of a new subjectivized technoscience, in other words robots equipped with artificial intelligence, a manufactured subjectivity if you will, is a determining factor in the re-actualization of this hope-rejection. Freud had already shown that evolution in the sciences brought along with itself both power and a feeling of impotence, which he called a narcissistic wound. He pointed to three great narcissistic wounds: the discovery of the infinite universe depriving us of our cosmic centrality; the discovery of the laws of evolution reducing us to a simple animal organism; the discovery of the unconscious (this last wound, which Freud held dearest, we can see why, is the least convincing) which deprives us of our will. These narcissistic wounds are actually narrative ruptures which force humanity to tell its tale differently (Liogier, 2010), to recompose its account of its origins (its cosmogony) and that of its ends (its eschatology). However, the new technoscientific power brings a new wound along with itself, that is ‘humiliation by the machines’ according to Peter Sloterdijk’s formula (2001). It is in this sense that technoscience – and particularly that involving NBIC and BANG convergence (Liogier, 2017, this issue) – has brought about a narrative rupture, a source of anxiety and, correlatively, the need for a narrative, and even metanarrative, recomposition, affecting the mythico-religious dimension, as we see in the phenomena analysed and discussed throughout these two issues of Social Compass.