Somebody might say that anxiety is a small price to pay for maximizing individual liberty.【F1】
Freedom from nature is bound to have its unpleasant side effects, but surely it is still much better than submitting to the brutish, undignified fate nature has in store for each of us.
【F2】
Yet it is also true that our inability to find a standard of personal dignity or significance to trump productivity might be the foundation for a new birth of tyranny in the emerging biotechnological world.
Consider that a perfectly technological world would be one in which every natural resource was harnessed to maximize the productivity of free beings. Biotechnology, in effect, adds one"s own body to the list of natural resources. The philosopher of unregulated individualism, John Locke, said that my body is my property to be exploited at will with security and enjoyment in mind. Biotechnology promises to make into a reality the transhumanist dream of leaving behind our bodily limitations.
This insight is the source of our enthusiasm today for cosmetic surgery and neurology.【F3】
It would seem that enhancing the body of a perfectly healthy individual would be a violation of the literal meaning of the Hippocratic Oath; it says, in effect, do not turn someone into a patient for reasons that have nothing to do with health.
These days, autonomy seems to trump such traditional concerns. But what arc the main reasons that people have themselves nipped, tucked, and Botoxed? To look younger and more pleasing and so to be more productive. To avoid the indignity of being old, alone, and poor. Autonomy is subordinated to dignity understood as productivity.
【F4】
If there is nothing wrong with such physical enhancement, we will all be pressured to stay young and pretty as long as we can, which will be a lot longer than nature intends.
Autonomy, in effect, will be sacrificed to productivity. The same will be true of other potential improvements—to our cognitive abilities, our memories, and our moods.
By way of example, consider a case from the university: the notoriously autonomy obsessed and unproductive professor. Despite the fact that such professors often drove off students and were too disoriented to publish to their full potential, we used to tolerate their moodiness for two reasons. First, we did not think that they could help it; professors are eccentric by nature.【F5】
And second, we sort of bought the claim that we all—and profound people especially—have a right to our "natural moods" as an indispensable clue to the truth about who we are.