It seems that the modern world we’re living in is threatening human identity: established ideas of our identities, actions and behavior. According to a book soon to be published by Susan Greenfield entitled, ‘The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century,’ “the human brain – that most sensitive of organs – is under threat from the modern world.”
Battling the Crisis
So what can we do to fight off this crisis? As reported in a Daily Mail article, we need a big wake-up call to the damage our brain is encountering from the “gadget-filled, pharmaceutically-enhanced 21st century.” If we fail to do this the article continues, “we could be sleepwalking towards a future in which neuro-chip technology blurs the line between living and non-living machines, and between our bodies and the outside world.”
Potential of Damaged New World
So what would this new world look like? Apparently one in which these devices could lead to a strengthening of our muscles/senses in an abnormally-exaggerated way. That might not sound so bad, until you find out that to achieve this, we would need a “daily cocktail of drugs to control our moods and performance.”
Today’s Gadgets and Human Identity
And it may not be so far into the future. Right now undergoing development is an electronic chip that might enable a patient who is paralyzed to “move a robotic limb just by thinking about it.” And we already have mood manipulating drugs (although it is often tougher to access them without a prescription).
We take pills against depression, shyness or hyperactivity! So clearly we’re trying to clone ourselves (and others) into a “perfect person” but this will come with it the added factor of human identity loss. So while these things may have certain advantages, we will definitely have to tread carefully to avoid becoming a nation of one-type beings, devoid of their own specific, particular, human identity.