Ingo Swann (14Apr97)
The mapping of the human genome (now underway) is understood as desirable
regarding two major areas: medical applications and genetic engineering.
Simply put, the major concept pertinent to those two areas involves deleting
undesirable genetic materials and inserting desirable ones.
The ultimate goal, of course, is the production of the perfect human specimen
-- "perfect" at least from the genetic point of view.
*
The potentials of this are awesome, staggering.
One of the fall-outs is that human history will be completely redirected,
more or less in one fell swoop.
The potentials, however, are not yet clear regarding their details. But
whatever those will turn out to be, they are inevitable, certain, unavoidable.
*
You see, hardly anyone will resist the engineering
of the genetically perfected human. And those who do resist, or have reservations,
will find themselves pissing into the wind of this great change.
*
The purpose of this essay is to discuss a relationship
between the genome, genetic engineering, and the superpowers of the human
biomind. I have to point out that this relationship is hardly ever mentioned
elsewhere -- even though it is an obvious one.
So far as I can determine, this relationship has nowhere been mentioned
either in parapsycholgy or genetics. It, and its implications, ARE AVOIDED
-- as they would be, of course.
It might be okay to contemplate the genetic engineering of super bodies,
super immune systems, super strength, even super intelligence.
But the genetic engineering of superpowers -- such as mind-reading, telepathy,
clairvoyance or PK -- well, this will be another matter, so much so that
its parameters almost surely will be dealt with in deepest secrecy.
*
To get into this topic (or dawning situation),
it seems relevant to briefly and simplistically review certain pertinent
past contexts regarding the superpowers. I have already expanded upon some
of those contexts in other essays in this database.
*
Up until the advent of the modern age, the existence
of the superpowers of the human biomind was accepted in most pre-modern
cultures, albeit under different designations and nomenclature peculiar
to each of them..
Among those cultures we might list those of ancient India, Amerindian, Egypt,
Bablyonia, Israel, Greece, China, Japan, and the Western Nordic cultures,
including the Eskimos, as well as all of the MesoAmerican cultures.
*
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
however, wide-spread acceptance of the superpowers began to diminish, ultimately
becoming questionable, and finally opened up to skeptical trashing.
One of the most obvious reasons for this diminishing and trashing can probably
be laid at the feet of various philosophical artifacts that were introduced
into Western thinking during those two centuries -- and which artifacts
became intellectually fashionable.
*
During the modernist twentieth century, "objections"
to the superpowers were based on those fashionable philosophical artifacts
-- with the inevitable result that the modern sciences and psychology became
fractured regarding an adequate conception of the whole human being.
As but one example, even intuition could not be fitted into the now dwindling
modern contexts -- while intuition is clearly one of the most primary aspects
of the superpower faculties. Although intuition's legitimacy has been played
down, it has survived as a concept only because of its close connection
to genius, creativity, inspiration, invention and problem-solving.
*
With the exception of conventional academe (which
still teaches them), most of those philosophical artifacts have become passé
and unfashionable by now -- largely because of the need to modulate new
overviews more suitable to post-modern advances, situations and developed
realities.
There is actually little reason today to base one's overviews on philosophical
artifacts of eighteenth and nineteenth century thinking. Those past philosophical
artifacts were workable in their time, serving their purpose in the light
of the realities and perceived necessities back then.
Even the philosophical artifacts of the first seven decades of the twentieth
century are out-moded, some of which are now useless. Things have rapidly
changed and altered a great deal during the last twenty-five years -- not
only because of advances, but because large and significant problems exist
today, problems past thinkers could not imagine ever existing.
*
With regard to the modernist trashing of the superpowers,
most people are aware that they were conventionally treated and taught as
superstitional and/or irrational, certainly unscientific. During the twentieth
century they were also dubbed as "abnormal" by sociologists, and
as having a psychopatholgical basis in psychiatry.
The terms superstitional, irrational, unscientific, abnormal and psychopathological
served quite well as cue words to warn professional people not to deal with
the superpowers, to stay away from them or experience professional disrepute.
The cue words were very successful -- even in the face of the tremendous
popular and lay response to the concepts of the superpowers. That response,
however, was largely science-fictionlike, the predominant theme casting
the superpowers as terrible, evil, hideous and of destructive potential.
*
One of the more interesting aspects of the objections
to and trashing of the superpowers is one most people don't at all realize.
Indeed, this aspect can come into view only by achieving a rather thorough
overview of the history involved.
This aspect has to do with the size and dimensions of the "resistance
to Psi" -- and which can be seen as excessive, even hysterical, all
things considered.
I don't like analogies. But two are apt in this case -- such as setting
a Tyrannosaurus Rex to exterminate a gopher in the lawn, or to kill a fly
by using twelve nuclear bombs.
*
Rather than accept all this at its apparent (and
confusing) face value, one can dig a little deeper.
For example, most people are not aware that behind the regrettable scenario
briefly outlined above three other scenarios have existed among many major
thinkers and scientists, and all of which are surprising.
*
FIRST: One of the earlier objections to the superpowers
(such as clairvoyance, telepathy and mediumship) was based in the idea that
even if they did exist, there was no use for them.
This idea clearly expressed a lack of imagination. But none the less, when
it was pointed out that the natural or spontaneous manifestations of the
superpowers were fraught with undependability, the idea took on currency.
When the problem was added concerning identifying the difference between
those "manifesting" fraudulent and real superpowers, well, it
becomes somewhat understandable why there WAS a problem.
*
SECOND: This objection concerned the idea that
scientific advances would make any perceived need for the superpower obsolete.
This concept was based in the consideration that the superpowers once may
have played an evolutionary role within the species, a role relegated to
the limbic system, the "old reptilian brain."
However, our species had evolved the cortex and neo-cortex since then --
and which imbued the potentials of reason and logic, factors seen as leading
to more accurate and superior functioning.
*
In other words, behind the simplistic and vulgar
condemnation of the superpowers as superstition, irrationality, and psychopathological
disorientation, lay the two faces:
that the superpower faculties could not really be used for anything;
that they were early, rudimentary brain artifacts superseded by the more
recent evolutionary development of the higher mental functions embodied
in the cortices.
*
Both of these two faces are drawn from the concept
that reason and logic are better, more dependable and more efficient than
any manifestations of the superpower faculties.
This, of course, might be taken as apparently true -- if one does not study
in detail the history of reason and logic. Of course, if one does this study,
adequately, one might arrive at the idea that the difference between reason/logic
and mierda del toro is often quite narrow and obscure.
*
The two objections briefly noted just above usually
came from highly educated people, some of whom achieved a good deal of influence
and power within the modern sciences and philosophies.
[If you wish to achieve a broader picture of these two objections, I suggest
NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL: A HISTORY OF THE PARANORMAL (1977), and
SCIENCE AND PARASCIENCE: A HISTORY OF THE PARANORMAL 1914-1938 (1984)
-- both by the late Brian Inglis, and both published in England by Hodder
and Stoughton. For a slightly different slant, I suggest THE OCCULT ESTABLISHMENT
by James Webb (Open Court Publishing Co., 1976.]
*
Now, one could hardly imagine that yet ANOTHER
factor exists behind the two just mentioned. But one does. It is subtle,
secret and legitimately qualifies as a conspiracy.
*
To grasp the fundamentals of this additional factor,
one first has to realize how evasive (and silly) it was to suggest that
the superpower faculties have no usefulness.
Clearly, achieved telepaths or mind-readers would be USEFUL. At least my
humble self could find uses for them -- and for "traveling clairvoyants,"
too, providing they could surmount the signal-to-noise ratio in some dependable
and predictable fashion. [An essay regarding the problems of the signal-to-noise
ratio was placed in this database some time ago.]
*
It was also evasive to suggest that science and
technology would make obsolete the superpower faculties -- a factor that
might be true only IF the faculties were not identified, developed and enhanced.
There is a certain amount of spontaneous or deliberate stupidity in this
case.
For example, we all have legs to run with. But developing the rudimentary
running skills into Olympic Games status is something that technology will
NEVER make obsolete.
Likewise, we all have many rudimentary, superpower biomind sensors and transducers.
But identifying and developing them into Human World Games status is another
matter. Further, another matter that might make science and technology obsolete.
*
And here is the crux of the third subtle, illusive,
and deeply guarded factor -- which can be brought to the cognitive surface
by considering the concept that perhaps it MIGHT BE DISADVANTAGEOUS to DEVELOP
the superpowers of the human biomind.
You see, even ONE developed, truly developed, intuitive, telepath or mind-reader
might shift the balances and parameters of all games played in the World
-- especially if those games are idiotic and senseless to begin with. [And
this concept was the theme of my novel, STAR FIRE, published in 1978
by Dell.]
*
Having considered this, if we shift our thinking
just slightly, we can come up with the concept that perhaps it might be
better to PREVENT the development in the first place. Indeed, tremendous
power might ensue to the developed carriers, or their controllers, of any
of the superpowers. Best then, would it not be, to discourage the development
in the first place.
And the best way to prevent anything is to surround it with disrepute and
confusions so convoluted and intense that it takes developed superpower
faculties to cut through the Gordian Knot that ensues.
*
The question now emerges: have secret hierarchical
decisions actually been taken along such lines?
Well, yes.
For example, feminist historians have built a good case regarding the secret
purpose of the Inquisitions. This goal was not to condemn and punish religious
heresy, but to exterminate the female "psychic" healers and counselors
of the times under the misunderstanding that the female line carried the
dreaded Psi faculties. And indeed, the statistics of Inquisitions, still
in existence, show that about 75 per cent or more of the victims were female.
*
Feminist historians majorly tend to interpret this
as the determination of a macho male society to exterminate the source of
undue female influence, a factor that does need to be considered. But the
female influence was, in the first place, derived from higher-stage functioning
of at least some of the superpowers of the human biomind.
*
During modern times, including the twentieth century,
the objections of science to adequate investigation of the superpowers is
virtually unexplainable. After all, the existence of the superpowers, at
least in fundamental and rudimentary forms, is easy enough to confirm.
The modernist mainstreams, however, have not only NOT undertaken the confirmation
-- but have adopted influential ways and means to prevent it, including
denying funding to any effort along such lines and instituted effective
anti-propaganda campaigns against the whole kit and caboodle of the superpowers.
The result was, of course, that the modern sciences, psychology and psychiatry
were SANITIZED as an obvious preventive measure to ANY significant development
of the superpowers. It's worth mentioning that the modernist anti-Psi platform
did not even research INTUITION -- from which many scientific discoveries
emerged.
*
And I personally know of one R&D project that
lasted for about fifteen years. That project did resolve some of the signal-to-noise
problems that yielded higher, dependable rates of efficiency. But that project
was finally terminated by subtle hierarchical decision.
In this case, AFTER the increased efficiency could be demonstrated, very
high level meetings were held regarding the "threat" of organized
and developed superpowers. As one dependable source quoted to me, two principal
questions were asked: "Well, do we want achieved mind-readers and Psi
spies?" "What if they get out of our control?"
And so, ZAP went that effort -- but not before organizing to send out unusual
press releases to "prove" the inefficiency of the superpowers
-- and also disinformation minions and functionaries to distort perceptions
of what is involved.
*
I would not usually be so blunt regarding this
issue or situation -- because there could be an element of danger involved.
But a new element has entered the picture, one that takes whatever is involved
out of my immediate concepts, an element that by far outshines anything
or anyone in the past as recent as a year ago.
And that element is the mapping of the human genome.
*
You see, IF it transpires that genetic markers
do exist regarding the superpowers of the human biomind, it is as sure as
your daily or weekly bowel movement that efforts will, will, will be secretly
undertaken to bioengineer perfected "superpsychics." This goal
will automatically include deep and penetrating research regarding whatever
it takes to help achieve this purpose.
*
In the first instance, this genetic engineering
process can be founded, easily enough, upon the recognized factor that elements
of the superpowers DO manifest spontaneously in our species, and always
have.
In this instance, all that needs to be done is to compare genetic profiles
of a number of natural psychics in order to spot which gene markers they
have in common -- and then to extract and splice them into the chromosomes
of either the spermatozoa or ovum or both, and which when combined will
then yield you know what.
*
In the second instance, the question of whether
superpower faculties are hereditary will come up as a significant issue.
And so whether the faculties "run in families" will come up for
renewed, and vigorous, interest.
*
So: do the express superpower faculties run in
families?
The tradition that they do began, in the West, in ancient Israel whose prophets
ran in families (sometimes skipping a generation or two, but reemerging
later) -- and which phenomenon is adequately recorded in the OLD TESTAMENT.
The Irish take this for granted, as do even today's remnants of America's
Amerindian populations.
In short, shamans, seers, telepaths, clairvoyants probably do run along
family lines.
*
Thus, the genetic basis can either be scattered
and seemingly fortuitous, or more predictably run in genetic family lines.
As it was, my material grandmother insisted that such was the case. Her
grandmother five or six times removed had been an Oglala-Sioux shaman. That
genetic bequest seems to have excluded all male descendants -- until Moi,
and which surprised Gram, and made her more than willing to directly answer
my many early questions.
*
In any event, with the mapping of the genome the
past (and future) objections to Psi are going to fall on rocky times in
that the map will have the last laugh in this regard.
The public will probably never know of developments in this regard, for
genetically engineered "superpsychics" will be too, well, too
valuable to be exposed for public entertainment, skepticism, or any other
kind of irrelevant whatnot.
But one day genetically-engineered superpower faculties will make their
debut on the WORLD STAGE. At least, and for sure, the attempt will be made
-- at a time not too far distant. For one nation is nearing the completion
of the mapping process -- and that nation is NOT the Good Old U.S. of A.
Many things have rerouted the historical direction of our species, of our
existence on this planet, of our social, moral, ethical, philosophical and
sociological perspectives.
Without any question, though, the mapping of the genome will eclipse all
of them so far -- because for the first time (during our RECORDED history
at least) humans will make humans in their OWN image. And if it becomes
possible to fabricate novel "designer genes," then THAT image
may ultimately consist of something neither seen nor conceived so far.
What this portends is never presented in our media, and only rarely mentioned
in books devoted to the issue.
*
Indeed, the American public is quite underinformed
regarding the genome. Many may be disinterested, many having never even
heard the term. To those who know something about it, it may mean the eradication
of genetic "defects" that underlay certain forms of cancer, hearing
impairment, heart defects, etc. It might mean bigger tits for ladies that
want them, and bigger pecs and biceps or whatever for males.
In any event, the jump-connection between superpower faculties and the genome
is avoided like the plague. And doubtless this present essay will attract
little attention because of the installed anti-superpower mechanisms widely
distributed as the preventive measures earlier discussed.
*
So, to make this essay somewhat complete it seems
the better part of valor briefly to describe the GENOME.
*
The modern term GENE is taken from an ancient Greek
word that meant "to produce" within the concept of "this
naturally or automatically produces that" -- as contrasted to the concept
that something can be made or manufactured out of something else.
In other words, the acorn (seed) of the oak tree produces another oak tree.
*
In English, a number of words have arisen from
the Greek source.
One of the earliest was the term GENE-SIS, taken directly from the ancient
Greek term which meant coming into existence, being born, origin, creation.
It was applied by early Greek translators to the first book of the Old Testament,
appearing in Early English at about 1000.
*
Another early term (about 1300) was GENE-OLOGY,
roughly described as an account of one's descent from an ancestor(s) via
the enumeration of the intermediate persons -- this concept being roughly
equivalent to a pedigree, lineage, family stock, or bloodline. The term
"pedigree" was later transferred exclusively to animals, especially
dogs and horses.
Bloodlines were important in most premodern cultures for two central reasons.
Inheritance, power and influence descended through them, and they formed
the central core of family clans -- and, in some cases, formed the basis
of ancestor memory.
*
Another term was GENE-RATION, appearing in English
about 1374, and, in an active sense, principally referring to physical procreation
or the begetting of progeny or offspring.
Also during the 1300s, GENERATION was also applied to all of the progeny
of a given set of parents, and to the whole body of individuals born about
the same period and the time covered by the lives of those.
*
The term GENITAL also appeared during the 1300s,
but was taken from the Latin GENITALEM which referred to the external organs
of generation, usually those of the male.
*
The adjective GENETICAL was occasionally used up
through the 1600s, but later became obsolete with regard to a mathematical
meaning I haven't been able to grasp.
*
The term GENETIC, now so familiar today, apparently
did not appear in English until about 1831. GENETIC is not included in Noah
Webster's 1828 edition of the AMERICAN DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
As used in 1831, GENETIC seems to have referred to histories of poetry,
the origins and development of creative power and parts of speech or language,
and the classifications of religions and systems of logic.
*
The use of GENETIC in its now familiar biological
sense apparently began emerging only about 1859. It first referred to "one
that is the result of a common origin," thus having "genetic affinity,
connection, and relationship" to that common origin. Therefore, the
term GENETIC as we basically use it today is only about 130 years old.
*
It is rather surprising that the term GENE did
not really emerge in English until about 1913 -- and first utilized in the
context of "the invisible rudiment or transmitted germ of a character."
It is important here to enter into a slight digression in that the use of
GENE in this sense referred to "character," not to biological
structure. There are, of course, different ways of interpreting this. But
for one thing, the GENE as we know it today as articulated protein structure,
had not yet been discovered. A gene was more or less considered as an "invisible
rudiment" along the lines of a plasma or germ. Astrologers, circa 1913,
also considered the influences of the planets, i.e., as "invisible
rudiments," much in the same way.
The emphasis seems to have been on "causative formation" via invisible
rudiments, the sum of which was seen as a kind of holistic "character"
-- this more in a motivational psychological sense than in a biological
structural one.
*
In any event, as of 1913 "character"
was being used in a quasi mixture of psychological and sociological sense.
This usage had a close or distant relationship to eugenics, then on the
upswing.
The assumptions of eugenics held that psycho-socio character, such as criminality
and genius, ran in families within which the character was transmitted as
"fixed" if children demonstrated similar psycho-socio characters
as their parents and grandparents.
In other words, to the eugenicists (and to many psychologists) NATURE endowed
psycho-social character. Sociologists, of course, disagreed with this --
largely because the dominant sociological platform held that character could
be modulated or remodulated by NURTURE at both the collective and individual
level.
*
The tremendous NATURE vs. NURTURE "debate"
then arose. Eugenics and genetics fell into enormous convolutions and disrepute,
and biologists in general fled from them in droves -- mostly because they
were deprived of funding. The funding was given to sociologists who proposed
to modulate wide and wise social reforms and reconstruction via the institution
of proper nurturing.
And there things might have rested, suspended in sociopolitical "debate"
-- had not the electron microscope been developed in Germany in 1932, and
which invention made the invisible gene visible.
*
At this, genetics had to be restored -- but with
certain qualifications. The tremendous nature vs. nurture debate was still
ongoing and of quite fierce proportions, although the "nurturists"
stayed well in the forefront. The safest course for the neo-genetics was
to detach from all phenomena believed to be psychological (and parapsychological)
in origin, and of course to avoid the taint of eugenics at all costs.
Genetics then charted a course strictly material-biological-structural --
and until quite recently geneticists since then inhabited solely a material
universe, focusing exclusively on "nature" and leaving "nurture"
to psychological and sociological behaviorists.
*
Strictly speaking, the modern origin of GENETICS
is dated as 1908, under the heading of the quantitative scientific study
of physical heredity -- as distinct from the qualitative manifestations
and behavior of that heredity. The 1908 work was based on the earlier work
(c. 1866) of Gregor Mendel on inheritable dominant and recessive FACTORS
in plants, and the combinations and recombinations of those factors.
*
The concept of the GENOTYPE emerged about 1897,
first established as "any typical material of the type species of a
genus." [SCIENCE, 23 April 1897, p. 639.]
By 1910, the definition had been slightly altered as "the combination
of hereditary characters possessed by a race or organism; a race or group
of organisms having the same combinations of heredity characters."
*
Here it is worthwhile to distinguish between GENUS
and SPECIES, at least for the sake of the clarity that might not be immediately
at hand.
The term GENUS was first used in English about 1551, described then as a
"general word" for the characters shared similarly "in their
kind" -- much as birds of a kind flock together -- the "in their
kind" having mostly to do with "virtues and vices."
In about 1608, the term began to take on more physical botanical and zoological
meaning, especially with regard to different types of crocodiles and roses.
By 1895, GENUS had come to mean a class, kind, or group marked by common
characteristics or by one common characteristic, specifically a category
of biological classification ranking between the family and the species.
*
The term SPECIES was first used at about 1559,
and meant outward form or appearance, the visible form or image as constituting
the immediate object of vision (or taste, apparently, as in this species
of wine is better or worse that another.)
THE SPECIES, as the HUMAN RACE was not used until about 1711.
In terms of modern definition, SPECIES refers to a category of biological
classification ranking immediately below the genus or subgenus, comprising
related organisms of populations potential capable of interbreeding.
So, a SPECIES is defined by whatever it can interbreed with and produce
progeny.
Our SPECIES belongs to a family of mammals represented by the single genus
HOMO (man [which once meant male and female].)
After THAT designation, our single genus has styled itself as species SAPIENS
SAPIENS (loosely translated (if we can keep from rolling on the floor in
some instances) as knowledge that man knows that it can think).
And, we can interbreed only with our thinking other Sapiens Sapiens -- excepting,
so far, the possibility of extraterrestrial genetic engineering, and which
spaceside activity would need the equivalent of electron microscopes.
*
Not long after the development of the electron
microscope during the 1930s, the concept of heritable physical FACTORS merged
with the concept of physical GENES. The factors were then apparently being
seen as the physical manifestations of the genes -- while any reference
to CHARACTERS seems to have been sequestered into the depths of psycho-social
behaviorism.
In any event, the nurturists had won the day by the 1950s, and which decade
was also the paramount decade of behaviorism. Nurturism and behaviorism
detached completely from genetics, much to the relief of the geneticists
eagerly peering into the internal anatomy of the gene now visible.
*
And what they began to see was astonishing. To
get into this, we need to introduce the term CHROMOSOME, technically defined
(as of 1978) as the structural carrier of physical hereditary characteristics
(i.e., not behavioral CHARACTER), found in the nucleus of every cell.
A certain number of chromosomes is characteristic of each species. The fruit
fly has 8, the potato has 48, the human has 46.
The chromosomes of any plant or animal that reproduce sexually exist in
pairs, and are thus diploid, but are called alleles. Thus, in humans there
are 46 chromosomes -- or 23 pairs of them.
All cells in the human carry a complete complement of these numbers -- except
the sex cells of the spermatozoa or ova, which carry only half of them.
Upon the event of "fertilization," these two halves, one from
the male and one from the female, will match and fuse to format the new
progeny, and which will then have the complete 23 pairs of alleles or the
46 chromosomes.
*
Descriptively put, the genes can roughly be compared
to beads, the chromosomes to strings of them.
*
One of the early popular confusions regarding all
of this was an unknowing confusion between GENE and CHROMOSOME. To correct
this confusion, if it exists in some readers, we have 46 chromosomes of
23 allele pairs. But, as we will shortly see, these contain many, many more
genes, or genetic "packages."
*
The physical existence of chromosomes and genes
was hypothesized and predicted in the 1860s by Frederich Miescher and that
they would be composed of a substance he named "nuclein." This
substance was isolated by him in 1869.
But it wasn't until the late 1950s that the far-reaching importance of this
"substance" began to be understood as not only the material of
which the gene is composed, but as the actual CARRIER of the hereditary
characteristics (or traits).
Miescher's "nuclein" (or nucleic acid) was found to exist as two
types, and which have been named DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (ribonucleic
acid.)
In most organisms, as is the case with the human organism, the two nucleic
acids occur in combination with proteins, the combined substances being
called nucleoproteins.
So far as understood, the "hereditary information" is encoded
into the combined substances, and which "information" apparently
utilizes the same substances to re-encode itself AND to synthesize additional
nucleoproteins.
Further, the chemical and physical properties of DNA suit it for both replication
and transfer of information.
Each DNA molecule is a long two-stranded chain. The chains are made up of
subunits called nucleotides, each containing a sugar (deoxyribose), a phosphate
group, and one of four nitrogenous bases, adenine, guanine, thymine, and
cytosine. These are identified by the letters A, G, T, and C respectively.
The "information" carried by the genes is coded in sequences of
these nucleotides, which correspond to sequences of amino acids in the polypeptide
chains of proteins.
*
The A, G, T, and C contents of the subunits called
nucleotides are sometimes referred to as genetic "markers" --
and the total of which apparently comprise the "genetic code"
or the "human blueprint," and "filling in the map of human
nature."
Like all else in genetics, the "markers" exist in diploid base
pairs, one half from the male, the other from the female. It is their "sequencing"
that determines everything, or almost everything about what we do or do
not genetically inherit.
*
There are 3 MILLION of these base pairs (or markers),
the sum of which is referred to as the GENOME -- and the complete mapping
of which is called the Human Genome Project (HGP).
It is these base pairs that make genetic identification possible, and genetic
engineering a rather sure thing -- the latter because the functions of the
base pairs can be blocked or enhanced, or removed and replaced, by what
is delicately referred to as "genetic therapy."
*
In the United States, the ambitious Human Genome
Project needing twenty years to complete was voted and funded by Congress
in 1988, and thus got underway.
Problems arose, however, among the decision-makers and internal rivalry
among the genetic "camps" involved. The costs of the project were
objected to, although those costs were considerably less than the budget
for Project Apollo to the moon, and the HGP would clearly furnish more sheer
data than the moon landing for scientists and philosophers and sociologists
to reflect upon.
Umbrage was also heaped on the project by the vested interests of certain
inner sanctums I'll not specify because it might be too volcanic to do so.
But, after all, there would be, in the following order of importance, economic,
religious, philosophical, and real or imagined moral and ethical factors
to consider.
*
Thus, the American genome project collapsed at
a couple of points during the early 1990s -- but was hastily put back together
again when it became known that the energetic Japanese had begun their own
genome project about five years before the Americans had.
Even so, having lost time, and having started late, the American effort
stands no chance of winning the race for the genome MAP -- the most basic
human blueprint and the doorway to . . .???
Before getting into the genome implications relative to the superpowers,
one factor certainly needs to be emphasized: A species that, with hands-on,
can directly micromanage its own genome will be considerably different from
the one that can do no such thing.
*
After all, there IS a difference between selecting
genetic materials in the laboratory and "selecting" them by random
copulation, even if the copulation is achieved among those who believe themselves
to be the best or better people.
*
The whole of this is no longer a science fiction
fantasy that might come true five hundred generations into the future. It
is something that is less than one-half a generation away from NOW.
For those who have something of a grasp of the Larger Picture involved,
there can be little doubt that there will be four versions of genome micromanagement
at the outset -- the American, the European, the Japanese, and the Chinese
versions.
*
At the outset, the American version will almost
certainly be conceived as a new, and very expensive, economic opportunism
to sell (cures for diseases, for example) to those who can afford to buy.
In other words, genome consumerism -- a new market to be brought into the
short-sighted, capitalistic syndrome.
*
I'm not sure how the early responses regarding
the European version will manifest, but in general I'll bet on genetic enhancement
of what we Americans refer to as "brains." As contrasted to American
preferences for economic-power trusts, Europeans have always opted for brain-power
trusts, including the British.
*
China has always been more or less inscrutable,
at least to Western thinking in general -- so I'll forego jump-guessing
this one.
*
Japan will have the opening and first cutting edge
regarding genome micromanagement. Unlike China, Japan is not so much a mystery
as it is a wonder. In size, Japan fits neatly into the state of California
with room left over. Yet, after World War II, it took but forty years for
the Japanese to become a world economic power, and which today owns an outright
8 per cent plus of the American economy.
This feat, as the Japanese openly state, was achieved by focusing on long-range
planning, not on the immediate gratification of short-term gains. I would
guess that the Japanese will go for the overall superhuman that can be increasingly
perfected over long periods of time. In other words, they will go for an
outright "evolutionary step," as it might be put.
If you have struggled through this essay to this point, and if your "mind"
feels tired, and if your realities have started to blink out, well, join
the crowd which includes my humble self. But to get to the end of this essay,
we must proceed.
*
The advent of the superhuman has been foreshadowed
in movieland fiction -- in chop-chop karate thrillers, space epics, the
meeting of Earthlings with ultra-achieved Other "cultures," Psi
intrigues, and in wonderful tales where overadequate muscle meets overpowerful
androids resulting from laboratory micromanagement, either earth-based or
space-based.
All of the foreshadowing has two factors in common:
(1) the downgrading of natural human efficiency in the face of superpower
efficiency, no matter what kind it consists of; and
(2) the calling forth, in the natural human, of factors necessary to meet
and cope with the "invading" superpowers.
In this sense, the MESSAGE of these foreshadowings is the conflict, but
the TEXT beneath is that the superpowers pre-exist in the natural human
or they could not, as undeveloped potentials, be called forth into potential
realization.
*
The overt and hidden essences and meanings must
now be overlaid onto the potentials of genome micromanagement -- and which,
via selective genetic engineering, will be "called forth" by direct
microsurgical intervention in DNA sequencing.
THIS, however, will NOT be "genetic therapy," but genetic re-creating
that jump-starts and re-routes the rather slow "evolutionary process"
into deliberate designer modifications. In other words, PRECISE DNA sequencing
as contrasted to rather fortuitous and random sequencing via sexual drives
or love combinations.
*
In other words, the future as of NOW is in the
hands and minds of geneticists, and this can be said pure and simple.
Since this IS the case, or will increasingly become the case, it is worthwhile
having a look at PRESENT geneticists.
These, it might well be said, exist in a purely physical realm where DNA
splicing and removal and re-sequencing are interpreted via the physical
outcomes of doing so. Here we must remember that genetics came to involve
physical structure in a direct quantitative way, while the qualitative biomind
factors were left to psychologists, sociologists and psychiatrists to cope
with.
*
But there can be little doubt that DNA re-sequencing
that leads to high QUALITY performance and efficiency will be recognized
as the start-up of the superhuman population.
Nonetheless, and as regards the current state of the genetic "art,"
geneticists will have to look for quantitative physical structure -- since
presently they are ill-prepared to do much else.
The meaning here is that those superpowers of the human biomind that can
be seen to emerge from or because of some kind of genetic physical structure
will be the first to be "enhanced" via DNA re-sequencing.
The two fields of neurobiology and genetic DNA-sequencing recognition have
not quite yet gotten "married." But they are destined for this
nuptial state.
Via the electron microscope and other advanced technologies, neurobiologists
(and bio-physicists) have recognized that the entire genetic physical body
is laden with all sorts of sensory receptors, down to and including the
skeletal framework. But since each specimen is DNA-sequenced differently
in slight or gross ways, the distribution of those receptors is also patterned
differently in each genetic specimen.
Except in genetic family lines in which specific superpower faculties are
transferred to progeny in higher-than-average qualitative ways.
A specific example is now necessary. I will select the example of dowsers,
and whom are dowsers because they are more sensitive to magnetism and magnetic
fluctuations.
Neurobiologists have confirmed that the palms and soles of the feet in all
specimens of our species possess sensory receptors for detecting "magnetics."
The difference between the able dowser and the non-able one is that the
able ones possess more of such receptors, and are thus much more sensitive
and aware of magnetism and magnetic fluctuations.
Thus are dowsers produced, and which dowsers tend to "run in families."
MEANING: there is DNA-sequencing regarding less or more sensory magnetic
receptors on the palms and soles.
It will certainly be possible to locate and identify the DNA-sequencing
patterns by examining the DNA profiles of able dowsers, especially those
with a given familial lineage along those lines.
*
Since DNA nucleotides can be artificially synthesized,
the DNA-sequencing responsible for "growing" sensors magnetic
receptors can be altered and enhanced by genetic micro-engineering. ERGO:
super-dowsers.
This genetic trait (or character, or whatever) is known, for example, to
run in Amerindian shamanistic family lines. Those that possess the relevant
magnetic sensors can hold up their palms -- and detect a small campfire
or a human or animal body concealed in a forest twenty miles away. THIS
has been demonstrated to moi several times in New Mexico, Arizona and lower
Utah. There is no trickery or "magic" involved -- only DNA-sequencing.
It is also confirmed that certain "point men" in Viet Nam were
successful point men because they could magnetically sense metal (such as
mines) concealed in earth or jungle.
*
I would now like to go into qualia receptors --
which account for several, but not all, forms of clairvoyance. But space
does not permit.
There is much more to be said (or speculated) along these lines. But the
goal was to show that the "search for psychic and/or paranormal powers"
is in process of gravitating to genetics -- and to geneticists.
But it now needs to be pointed up that if the geneticists were to research
psychic or paranormal powers, they would NOT do so. As mentioned, by far
and large geneticists dwell in a material universe filled with the physical
matter of biological structure and processes. Psychical and parapsychological
research is anyway filled with box canyons, endless detours backing up into
fruitless theories, and, not the least, hobgoblins of the so-called "non-material."
*
But examining sensory receptors physically present
on and within the bio-body is clearly another matter -- a PHYSICAL, structural
matter, and hence a matter of genetic interest.
In this sense, and in the sense of mapping the ENTIRE genome, geneticists
cannot refuse to consider the meaningful interest of the "subtle"
receptors, and cannot avoid identifying their particular DNA-sequencing.
*
But in undertaking this promising task, the geneticists
will NOT at all need to incorporate parapsychological or psychical workings.
After all, the researchers of those two fields often insisted there was
no biological basis for the psychic "abilities." And, as someone's
ironic last laugh, the modern sciences AGREED.
One of the meanings here is that the genetic inquiry into the DNA-sequencing
of the superpowers of the human BIO-mind WILL NOT incorporate the theories
or the nomenclature of Psi or parapsychology.
*
There are at least two reasons for this exclusion:
(1) The psychic-parapsychological theories and nomenclature will only clutter
the effort with imprecise definitions and the ambiguities typical of most
of the terminology.
(2) But there is a better reason: geneticists DO NOT NEED psychical and
parapsychological research concepts or their nomenclature.
You see, the superpowers will be a matter of PHYSICAL
sensory receptors -- not of illusive (and undependable) psychological episodes
or events. Indeed, neurobiologists, etc., have already discovered many different
kinds of sensory receptors -- as well as a number of receptors for which
no function is recognizable so far. Also, certain DNA-sequencing has been
discovered for which no functional correlation is recognizable.
When I became aware of this shift-in-nomenclature problem, I attempted to
prepare at least a partial codex for it. I presented this codex at an invited
lecture at the United Nations in March 1994, and placed the lecture as an
essay in this present database in September 1996. I direct your attention
to that essay, entitled: ON-GOING SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY OF SENSORY RECEPTORS
WHICH ACCOUNT FOR MANY SUBTLE PERCEPTIONS.
*
Anyhow, and to sum up, think GENOME DNA SEQUENCING -- no longer think PSYCHIC,
PARANORMAL or PARAPSYCHOLOGY.
And, by the way, ready or not, welcome to the Age of Superpower DNA Enhancement.
Oh, Yes: I almost forgot. Don't expect to find media reports on achieving
DNA-enhanced superpowers -- for all of this will be kept TOPMOST-TOP SECRET,
and require seven levels of need-to-know above that.
SO, BAMBINI, THERE IT IS...
...believe it or not.