The Futures of Humanity: Anarchism,Technoscience,and the Sociology of God

It’s a strange thing, being human. We are of the same mundane matter and energy that make up the rest of the universe. But we have intellectual capabilities far beyond any other known living organism, and our society and culture are complex and fascinating extensions of this intellect. For as long as humans have been recording history, we have contemplated the meaning of our uniqueness and our place in the universe. At least since Plato, humans have studied the nature of social change, and have tried to envision the best possible futures and how to arrive at them. I am delighted to report that this tradition is still alive and well in social theory. ¹ The three books reviewed here all pose difficult questions about the nature of humanity, its possible futures, and possible pasts.

What it means to be human has changed drastically since humanity’s beginnings, and it is changing faster all the time. For nearly two million years the pace of cultural change was glacially slow. Now, in the developed world at least, each generation inherits a new set of symbols, challenges, and technologies that were unimaginable to the generation before. How far can cultural evolution go? Can there be an omega point? What is the capacity of humans to engineer their own evolution? Or thwart it, if we deem it necessary to do so? Is humanity slowly transitioning into an ethereal consciousness, shedding our material basis like a snake shedding an old layer of skin? Or are our civilizations hopelessly constrained by the limits of our materiality? Steve Fuller’s Humanity 2.0, Sal Restivo’s Red, Black, and Objective, and John Zerzan’s Future Primitive Revisited bring a wealth of scholarship and intellect to these questions.

These books have slightly different foci, but are concerned with a similar set of problems. Fuller is primarily interested in transhumanism. Like other transhumanists, Fuller wants to probe the limits of humanity and consider the possibility of humans evolving into something else, something better. To Fuller, science and technology are the mechanisms by which humans will eventually merge with the Judeo-Christian God to establish the heaven on earth as predicted in the book of Revelation. Fuller offers nothing less than a Christianized portrait of human evolution, one in which the postulate that humans are made literally in the image of God plays a central role. Fuller insists that intelligent design is the future of scientific inquiry, and that the term “evolution” has become so nebulous that it can no longer be taken seriously. Zerzan, on the other hand, takes a much more critical view of technoscience. To Zerzan, technology mediates humans from their environment and relationships, creating mass “alienation” (though sociologists will recognize Zerzan’s version of alienation as anomie). Rather than bringing humans closer to achieving heaven on earth, to Zerzan technology creates a culture of mass misery and control that has crippled our ability to enjoy life. As an anarcho-primitivist, Zerzan is a critic of civilization and romanticizes our prehistoric past where, he argues, people were happier and healthier. (Think of Zerzan as Lewis Mumford meets Henry David Thoreau.) Restivo is also an anarchist, but not in the same sense as Zerzan. While Restivo would agree with Zerzan’s appraisal of technoscience as the machine that drives mass alienation, he stops short of calling for the end of civilization and instead offers a sketch of a new, more humane technoscience to replace the old oppressive one.

Anarchism is a recurring theme in these texts because the question of who will rule Humanity 2.0 has yet to be answered. As a social science, anarchism is the study of how to minimize social power in complex societies, both in the Weberian and Foucaultian senses. The goal of minimizing power is derived as a consequence of the observation that social power tends to immiserate a large portion of the population. Our species continues to evolve. Who will be our new masters? To Fuller, the answer is God and the Scientists. To Restivo and Zerzan, the answer must be that no one will—the only hope for humanity is to dismantle all of the institutions that enslave us, especially God and technoscience. Restivo would like to build something more humane in their place; Zerzan seems to conclude that any kind of complex social structure will inevitably become oppressive. After careful study of these texts, I must ultimately take a position that is closer to Restivo’s and Zerzan’s than to Fuller’s. As a sociologist who studies the dynamics of power relationships, it is difficult for me to accept being coerced into some grand divine “plan” without a fight. My approach will be to review each book individually, attempt to bring together their common themes into a synthesis, and draw some conclusions concerning the nature of humanity, its possible futures, the role of technoscience in those futures, and how to craft them according to an anarchist agenda.

Fuller’s Humanity 2.0 is an ambitious attempt to grasp the future of human evolution. A master of social theory, Fuller reviews conceptualizations of humanity from a wide range of thinkers and perspectives, but ultimately settles into a debate between two of Catholicism’s most prominent orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans. The former, Fuller explains, understand humans to be of a fundamentally different constitution than God the creator, while the latter understand humans to be literally created in God’s image. That is, the Franciscan perspective understands humans to be an imperfect version of God, or “low-grade creators” (Fuller: 80). It is this Franciscan perspective (and Fuller draws most explicitly on the thirteenth century English theologian John Duns Scotus) that Fuller aligns himself with. The primary thesis of Humanity 2.0 is that humanity is gradually evolving to become one with the Judeo-Christian God. Our cultural evolution is gradually converting us from “low-level creators” into a collective bona fide deity. What Fuller calls “converging technologies” (biotechnologies, nanotechnologies, information technologies, and cognitive technologies) are coming together to increase our control over our own evolution. By controlling evolution, we control creation and hence are increasingly becoming more God-like in our abilities. Science and technology are literally the mechanisms that transform us from profane matter into deities. At the conclusion of this process, Fuller claims, “all will realise in their midst a currently only dimly understood God, resulting in a ‘heaven on earth’. They will collectively become, so to speak, the new body of Christ” (Fuller: 100). From this perspective, intelligent design (the loose body of ideas that argue that God is observable in nature) is the future of science and social theory because it can facilitate humanity’s transition into deification. Fuller boldly claims the “intelligence” behind intelligent design to be the Judeo-Christian God. Studying God in nature scientifically is one step in a process in which technoscience will culminate in the Second Coming of Christ.

While Fuller argues for the close association between technoscience and God, Restivo’s Red, Black, and Objective aims to dismantle the very idea of God, especially God in science and mathematics. Restivo draws on Durkheim and Marx to argue that sociologists have discovered God, and he is the moral order. God is what allows large numbers of people to cooperate and build society. The problem with this, Restivo reasons, is that the belief that God is an eternal supernatural being responsible for creation provides us with a false sense of absolutes in nature and scientific method. Something like God may be a functional necessity for all societies, but that does not mean it should control how we do science. Science is, in essence, “nothing if not a continuing process of upsetting and resetting your beliefs” (Restivo: 165). This is Restivo’s anarchist vision of science as a tool of subversion, a way of upsetting hierarchy through inquiry. Intelligent design is a symptom of our failure to understand that “God is a symbol, not a material or transmaterial entity . . . All Gods symbolize the societies that generate them” (p. 165). In a few places, Restivo seems to be insisting that God is real (Restivo claims that “sociologists have discovered God” [p. 165]), but is only responsible for holding society together, and not for material creation. Gods are real because societies make them; the Creationists are half right, they just have the causal order reversed.

Restivo demonstrates his anarchist agenda with an analysis of math studies. Mathematics is a superb test case for Restivo’s arguments because mathematics is assumed by some to have “some sort of transcendental status” (p. 102) closely associated with Plato’s theory of forms. This Platonist conception of mathematics keeps it conveniently shielded from interference from the material and social worlds. Restivo observes that mathematics “has been the science of God” and “might also represent God or a religion” (p.105). Restivo aims to show that transcendence is limited to networks of social interaction. Durkheim and Mead have demonstrated, he argues, that independent minds are an illusion. Our thoughts are a product of interactions with others who have similar thoughts. Like Randall Collins’ (1998) analysis of networks in philosophy, the symbols that make up mathematical concepts are products of interaction rituals. Rather than mathematics having some ethereal existence that can only be represented symbolically, Restivo argues for a “sociological materialism” (p. 113) in which Platonic forms are explained through socialization, culture, and interaction. This is anarchist sociology in action: upsetting claims to privileged ontological status through radical social constructionism.

The biggest problem with Red, Black, and Objective is that it fails to really engage with the anarchist literature and political philosophy. For this reason Restivo’s use of the term can be confusing at times. He vacillates between treating scientific method as anarchistic and treating it as a tactic available to anarchists to subvert hierarchies. He also labels as anarchism his critique of the global capital order. Though the beginnings of such a critique can be found in the prologue, this theme is not really addressed in any detail throughout the rest of the book. A “Bibliographic Epilogue” promises to show us “Anarchism All the Way Down,” but is essentially two pages listing a few works of anarchist literature with brief commentary, and Restivo does not attempt to make connections between that literature and his claims about anarchism and science. His definition (and operationalization) of anarchism would be clearer if he could situate it with reference to more of the anarchist literature.

Future Primitive Revisited is a collection of essays by leading anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan. Many of the essays were first published in the early 1990s, though the “revisited” in the title alludes to the early essays being paired with some more recent ones. Chapter One, which bears the same name as the book’s title, is a review of the anthropological literature on the early stages of human evolution, beginning with the Lower Paleolithic period but focusing the most attention on Homo erectus, a predecessor to Homo sapiens in the human evolutionary chain. Zerzan cites evidence that Homo erectus was highly intelligent and capable of abstract thought, yet after nearly two million years of existence their level of technological sophistication remained essentially stagnant. Consider how much more sophisticated the technology of Homo sapiens has become in just the past 500 years. For nearly two million years Homo erectus, an intelligent proto-human with the beginnings of culture and technology did not develop them further. “Such ‘stagnation’,” says Zerzan, “is especially vexing to many social scientists” (Zerzan: 7) who are interested in how complex societies evolve over time. Zerzan argues that Homo erectus did not develop an advanced civilization because they saw no need to. “It strikes me as very plausible,” muses Zerzan, “that intelligence, informed by the success and satisfaction of a hunter-gatherer existence, is the very reason for the pronounced absence of ‘progress’” (p. 7). Although Zerzan declines to speculate on why exactly Homo sapiens went on to create the civilization that Homo erectus did not, once civilization is started it has a Pandora’s Box quality. Civilization is a living organism sui generis and it feeds on individuals. Technologies offer immediate pleasures or relief, but their overall function is to discipline us by deepening our material dependence upon civilization.

Zerzan’s argument is that civilization has tricked us into believing that all of our toil will somehow be repaid one day. It does this through a division of labor, which sacrifices intimate relationships in the name of system efficiency, and through technology, which mediates our connections to other people and the natural environment. Chapter Two, entitled “The Mass Psychology of Misery,” documents the explosive growth of mental disorders in Western civilization. Zerzan argues that psychiatry and the mental health industry arose as a means of managing people who are frustrated with the social order. Social institutions such as marriage and the economy promise utopias to young people but instead deliver frustration, disappointment, and toil. The function of the mental health industry is to convince people that it is their own fault that they have failed in these institutions, diverting attention from the possibility that it is the institutions that have failed them. People are therefore duped into contributing to civilization under false pretenses. The book’s cover art is a wonderful graphic presentation of this idea: a line of human stick figures labor to get up a mountain, only to hurl themselves to their deaths after reaching the top.

One of the more provocative essays in Zerzan’s collection is “Tonality and the Totality.” His argument that Western music is a form of social control is a reflection of Zerzan’s superb ability to reveal the subtle ways in which we are disciplined to accept hierarchy and exploitation. The hierarchy and structure built into Western tonality in the form of institutionalized scales, melodies, and harmonies (chords which have order and produce particular kinds of sentimental effects) are argued by Zerzan to import into our consciousness the kind of respect for authority necessary to cooperate with civilization. He quotes Stravinsky as saying that “The phenomenon of music is given to us for the sole purpose of establishing order in things” (p. 45), and it is exactly this order which Zerzan finds to be oppressive. He therefore celebrates Schoenberg’s atonalism as a form of resistance to totalitarianism.

Together, these books raise interesting questions about the nature of humanity, God, and the role of technoscience in the past, present, and future of human evolution. Fuller, Restivo, and Zerzan seem to agree that technoscience tightens social control, facilitates self-discipline, and is the means by which our Will to Knowledge limits alternatives and creates subjugation. What separates Fuller from Restivo and Zerzan is his position that these are unfortunate side effects of an otherwise desirable Grand Plan developed and implemented by the Judeo-Christian God. While Zerzan is chiefly uninterested in God, like Fuller he is interested in how civilization has become more complex, and the somber effects of this complexity on individual lives. Restivo is less concerned with human evolution than Zerzan and Fuller, but he provides critical arguments against Fuller’s attempt to understand the evolution of humanity with reference to God, and shares with Zerzan a refusal to permit powerful social institutions such as God and science to immiserate humanity in the name of some ill-defined and ill-conceived collective “good”.

In the end, Fuller’s claims about humanity merging with God and becoming “the new body of Christ” have to be firmly rejected. The consequences of this argument are too severe, and the evidence on which it rests too flimsy to give it serious consideration. I will not go with Zerzan all the way back to the Paleolithic era to escape technology, but I believe it is necessary to consider the ways in which technoscience constrains and disciplines. As Zerzan points out at length in Future Primitive Revisited, complexity per se is not a virtue. Fuller needs to approach technoscience with a more critical eye.

Fuller’s claims about God explicitly promote one particular kind of religion—a Christianity built on the belief that God created humans in his image, and will return to earth at some unspecified future time as stated in the New Testament. If this were true, it would limit the freedom of humanity to formulate alternative visions of God. Rather than Humanity 2.0 sounding like heaven on earth, it comes across as a new world order, imposed on us by a dimly understood external power. While Fuller’s scholarship is impressive, the evidence supporting his claims is spread quite thin. Let us examine more closely Fuller’s claims about God and humanity.

Fuller’s predictions for Humanity 2.0 rest entirely upon his assumption that humans and God have essential similarities. But what evidential basis is there for belief that God created humans in his image, and not of a fundamentally different architecture? What evidential basis is there for assurance that humans resemble God and not something other than God? The fact that humans can learn (math, science, etc.), and can empathize cannot serve as an evidential basis for this claim, because we still have no real evidence about God’s characteristics, other than the highly varied and inconsistent claims that originate from humans. We assume these characteristics are divine because we possess them, not because we know with any degree of certainty that God does.

What evidential basis is there for belief that there is a single God responsible for creation? What evidential basis is there to discredit the claim, for example, that there are many Gods, perhaps even an infinite number of Gods? That there seems to be one set of laws that govern the universe cannot be used as evidence to support a monotheistic position, because physical laws govern only the physical world, and have no necessary connection to a “supernatural” world unknown to humans. Perhaps there are many Gods who are all constrained to the same single set of physical laws. What evidence is there to contradict this claim? Maybe the universe is not in fact governed by a single set of laws; recent developments in string theory suggest this may be a possibility. While Fuller seems confident that he is thinking outside the box when it comes to science and religion, he is really falling prey to the same fallacies and contradictions that have plagued Christian theology from the beginning.

Why should humans desire to merge with a God that is vengeful, violent, spiteful, narrow-minded, and intolerant? Fuller claims that advancements in technologies (“converging technologies”) are bringing us closer to merging with God. Advancements in technologies have also brought us the Holocaust, nuclear/chemical/biological weapons, colonialism, alienation, and innumerable other catastrophes that were impossible in our “primitive” pre-technological past. If technology brings us closer to God, then we must infer that closer proximity to God will only increase human suffering. Of course, technology has also prolonged our lives, and made some aspects of life more comfortable and convenient. The moral ambiguity of technology reveals that it is no more than a reflection of our imperfect humanity: noble, vile, and contradictory. Technology is not the means by which humanity united will achieve deified status; it is merely a set of tools wielded by particular individuals and social groups who use it for destructive or constructive purposes depending on their own interests, ideologies, and concerns.

Fuller’s answer to this seems to be that “Creation generates so much suffering merely as an unintended consequence of divine agency” (Fuller: 193). In other words, goodness is assumed to be divine, while suffering is assumed to be some kind of cosmic oopsy-daisy. Fuller thus aligns himself with theodicy, the theological tradition of reconciling a benevolent and omnipotent God with the fact of mass human suffering. Leaving aside the blatant contradiction that technology is argued by Fuller to make humanity more like God, yet has at the same time multiplied human suffering, what evidential basis is there to determine that comfort is divine and suffering non-divine? What evidential basis is there to discredit the claim that, for example, suffering and evil are manifestations of divine agency, and goodness and comfort are merely “unintended consequences” of God’s wrathful nature, instead of it being the other way around? There is none. There is only faith in God. People want to believe that God loves them because it is comforting. The possibility that God may be an asshole is too troubling for most people, including Fuller, to entertain, so they commit themselves to impressive intellectual gymnastics to reconcile their faith with all of the facts that suggest otherwise.

Where are the data on God? If intelligent design is an empirical science, as Fuller claims it is, I challenge him to bury me in data that clearly show that there is a single intelligence acting on the world and not multiple. Where are the data to prevent me from making the claim that the psychology of humans has absolutely no relationship to the psychology of Gods? Show me that there is some kind of God mark on happy things but not on suffering. Is there a statistically significant difference between the number of happy events that have a God mark and the number of suffering events that have a God mark? That would be normal science if intelligent design were really a science. If Fuller insists on making claims about the nature of “God” then I want to see some data on God. The reason why intelligent design theorists have been reluctant to name the Christian God as the intelligence behind “design” in nature is because there is no basis for such a claim other than faith. Doing so would discredit their claim to intelligent design as an empirical science, and reveal their “theory” to be the political ploy that it is.

Can/should humans resist merging with God if they find God to be reprehensible? Even if Fuller is correct, his postulation begs the question of resistance, dissent, and refusal. If God is real, we need to hold him to the same standards we would hold any leader. Is he democratic? Do we get to vote on what gets included in God’s plan? Does his regime guarantee equal opportunity under the law? Or does God only reward those who help him to stay in power, like human politicians? How transparent is his government? Some say the Lord works in mysterious ways; so do the secret police. How does God deal with dissent? I am under the impression that God’s laws of the universe are not supposed to be subject to reform by humans. A town hall meeting would give God an opportunity to address his detractors. My understanding of the message of the Judeo-Christian God is this: “do what I say without question and worship me constantly or endure eternal suffering (Hell).” That sounds mean. What would be the public’s reaction if Barack Obama said things like this? What would you do if your significant other acted this way? Can we elect a different God if we don’t like this one? Where is the divine opposition party? If we answer these questions honestly, it is difficult not to conclude that God is at least the head of a despotic regime, and at worst a fascist megalomaniac that must be stopped at all costs (see Bakunin [2010] for a similar position). The Judeo-Christian God resembles Hitler and Mussolini more than Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Anyone interested in resisting divine totalitarianism ought to call themselves an anarchist. It is the anarchist’s responsibility to study power for the purpose of subverting it. Even if you do not take Fuller’s Christianity seriously, be aware that there are many in the social sciences and humanities who would welcome Christian theology back into theory. It is imperative that any claims about the nature of God be subject to rigorous scrutiny. This is more than just an academic debate; it is about powerful institutions vying for control of civil society. God is by definition a supernatural being. Before any claims about God can even be considered, observation and measurement of this supernatural realm must be made. This would be equivalent to discovering access to another dimension. If God is communicating or otherwise present on earth, then isolate his substance in some way and show me that what you have is indisputably the Judeo-Christian intelligence acting upon the world. Finding a watch and inferring a watchmaker is not the same thing as meeting the watchmaker.