{"id":5981,"date":"2012-11-25T16:52:58","date_gmt":"2012-11-25T21:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=5981"},"modified":"2012-11-25T16:52:58","modified_gmt":"2012-11-25T21:52:58","slug":"because-i-am-fearfully-and-wonderfully-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/11\/because-i-am-fearfully-and-wonderfully-made.html","title":{"rendered":"“Because I am fearfully and wonderfully made”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Frankenstein<\/em><\/a> is at least the great-uncle of the zombie story. The alternate title of Shelley\u2019s book is The Modern Prometheus<\/em> and we can\u2019t quite decide, when it comes to necromancy, whether it\u2019s more frightening to have Prometheus, Frankenstein, Faust and all the rest fail in their quest or succeed. \u00a0Somewhere along the way, our Frankenstein\u2019s creatures acquired a lot more hardware than the bolts in the neck. Today, Shelley\u2019s story has more in common with HAL and cyborgs than it does with the simple reanimation of the dead.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s zombie aren\u2019t so much about hubris. Sometimes scientists have gone too far and \u201cam playgods!<\/a>\u201d but, even when this is the case, they\u2019re more likely to have gone wrong by wanting an evil like bioweapons, than lusting after knowledge and mastery in the wrong ways<\/a>. Sometimes there\u2019s no explanation of the cause at all; life is natural to the human form, so it\u2019s not quite surprising when it recurs, especially if we don\u2019t think the conservation of life requires an external Cause.<\/p>\n

So, today\u2019s mad scientists don\u2019t play God by creating life. Life is abundant and dull<\/em>. The frizzy-haired person in the white coat is creating intellect<\/em>. We don\u2019t animate flesh, we build AI. And here, part of the mystery is how much we can pare off and still have a human. Airplanes didn\u2019t turn out to need flapping wings to fly; what kind of interface with the world does a rational soul need? What does it need to be human?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the play, the Creature was intensely embodied. In an interview clip shown before the show, Benedict Cumberbatch explained that he developed the physicality of the Creature by watching footage of stroke victims in physical therapy. In the opening scenes, when he discovered his body and set about learning to use it, I was reminded of an infant, who is enraptured by the simple pleasure of possessing a foot. But instead of growing into partnership with his body, the Creature develops an enmity.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d love to slip out of his body and into another for the sake of companionship. The body he possesses isn\u2019t his<\/em>, it\u2019s his prison. When the blind man cannot see the Creature, he knows him better than any other character. There\u2019s no hint that true companionship would require recognition of the Creature\u2019s body as well as his intellect and feelings.<\/p>\n

Cyborgs are more frightening than Frankenstein\u2019s creature, because we\u2019re acutely sensitive to the question of what kind<\/em> of piece of work is man<\/a>. \u00a0When we fear a computer, our terror takes two contradictory forms. We\u2019re afraid of something greater than ourselves that will have no special regard or love for us.\u00a0What use are we<\/a>, if they\u2019re something\/someone faster and clever than us? But we\u2019re afraid of even building something that matches us. \u00a0If we can comprehend ourselves, how interesting can we possibly be?<\/p>\n

In\u00a0The Most Human Human<\/em><\/a>, Brian Christian notes that when machines have achieved a task that we thought required a particularly human intellect, we haven\u2019t congratulated the programmer but have just defined the skill as boring in retrospect. \u00a0But the solar system isn\u2019t diminished when we can put a model of it in our science class. \u00a0The fun and mystery isn\u2019t drained from a relationship when we know a friend well enough to predict what she\u2019ll like and can get thoughtful presents. \u00a0If the machine is interesting, how can the schematics be boring?<\/p>\n

The appropriate reaction is that of the Creature in the beginning \u2014 that of a child. \u00a0Goodness, a foot! \u00a0Full of bones and other fleshy things! \u00a0What happens if I do\u00a0<\/em>this? \u00a0Oh dear! Wow! \u00a0Neurons, action potentials, remapping sensations into a phantom foot! \u00a0Proprioception<\/a>! \u00a0Boy howdy!<\/em>\u00a0 We might want to tweak or train our bodies, but we won\u2019t end up despising them and we\u2019ll be more curious instead of fearful to see what other shapes intelligence might take.<\/p>\n

But, when we look at Frankenstein<\/em>, we\u2019re afraid of a creature cut off from its Creator, and we scrutinize him carefully, making sure we\u2019re not similarly abandoned. \u00a0Or we decide that its his relationship with a Creator that was so\u00a0destabilizing. \u00a0If he were content in himself, without companionship, without claims or duties, he might have been happy, but he would not have been human.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frankenstein is at least the great-uncle of the zombie story. The alternate title of Shelley\u2019s book is The Modern Prometheus and we can\u2019t quite decide, when it comes to necromancy, whether it\u2019s more frightening to have Prometheus, Frankenstein, Faust and all the rest fail in their quest or succeed. \u00a0Somewhere along the way, our Frankenstein\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":5983,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[51,216,18],"class_list":["post-5981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviewsrecommendations","tag-at-the-theatre","tag-theology-of-the-body","tag-transhumanism"],"yoast_head":"\n"Because I am fearfully and wonderfully made"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Frankenstein is at least the great-uncle of the zombie story. 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