Source: Vladan Lausevic & Oxford Languages
Photo Source: Unsplash, Thisis Engineering RAEng
ob·jec·ti·fi·ca·tion /əbˌjektəfəˈkāSH(ə)n/
noun
the action of degrading someone to the status of a mere object. "the objectification of women in popular entertainment"
One of the most important human rights is our right to life. Since humans only have one life to be lived it is in principal always tragic when we lose our only possibility to feel and experience things around us. How we value our lives and how we understand the meaning of death is both a result of social construction of ideas and our biological conditions. That is why there are civic rights regarding ending the lives through euthanasia in some US and EU-states. At the same time, we still have neither right nor possibility to decide on our own for how long we would wish to stay alive.
The idea of an eternal life is historically seen an old one, having in mind many ancient stories and myths. Discussions about death can be traced to the various historical periods, as for example the stone age cave paintings or Aristoteles arguing against Plato that “the longer life we live, the more we get distressed by the very thought of death”. Today, the idea of an eternal life or as expressed in the song “Forever young” is becoming less of a sci-fi thing and more of a real thing.
Current pace of development when it comes to infotech and biotech as in the case with drones is going so fast that policies and laws are as usual lacking behind. The most important argument in favour of right to eternal life is that every individual should have the possibility to choose how long one wants to stay alive. It is about being able to choose if one wants to live for 200 years or 2000 years. Something that could become a possibility in several decades thanks to the technological and scientific development.
This development also includes the case that ageing should be regarded as disease. By doing so humans could change how we treat ourselves and our bodies. For example, it could mean conducting different life extension methods as having a digital brain or a mechanic heart. It could also mean transplantation of cells based on the development of methods that have been conducted on mice, when stem cells from the younger ones were transplanted into the older ones in order to get their lives prolonged. Basically, the death should be something voluntary or accidental rather than being a normal or necessary part of our lives.
Another dimension is also the eventual transformation of humans and existence of different species. Yuval Harari argues in his latest book “21 lessons for 21st century” that in future there could exist different human species divided into the different biological castes. The case is that in the future humans (homo sapiens) are not going to be the only creature or subject that is conducting politics or being affected by decision-making. Artificial intelligence could, as the transhumanist Zoltan Istvan is proposing , became a president of USA based on how citizens have voted on algorithms.
Therefore, we should also ask ourselves what happens if for example somebody wants to transform into a cyborg? Should that individual loose its human rights and freedom? That is why we need to discuss more about robot and cyborg rights for future constitutions, treaties and declarations. The current technologic pace makes it easier for humans to be able to upgrade our body parts, change organs or to plants new cells. Instead of spending large sums of money on for example welfare and military programs it would be better to use the resources for life extension and health improvement programs.
The ideas focusing on life extension could mean possibility for EU becoming first in the world to implement such constitutional rights that could improve living conditions for millions of individuals as the fourth industrial revolution is getting closer. This could mean changing policies so that less money is spent on military and weapons while more money is being spent on scientific and technological achievements in field of biotechnology.
For EU this issue is also crucial since eventual changes or update on current constitutionalism and treaties should be more inclusive. European institutions need to be able to respond to an eventual “deathless future” in order to enable existence of larger diversity including both human and non-human species. If there are going to be any changes of the treaties in the future, the EU would need to include the aspects concerning the rights for robots, cyborgs and AI: s. This would be necessary for the future of European democracy where both humans and others as cyborgs can participate in conversations and other decision-making procedures as members of society.
What did Nazi Germany teach us about objectification of human begins? How does this apply today? How would you like to see your rights as well as others rights protected?
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