Dharma is a concept that is difficult to define specifically, but it can be translated as "the law that expresses and maintains the unity of creation" (Easwaran 9), as "integrity or harmony in the universe" (Easwaran 9) or more simply, as "moral duty" (Easwaran 50). In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna's understanding and acceptance of his dharma as a warrior is a central theme.
The orthodox interpretation of the place of dharma in discussing the morality of war is that is it the moral duty or dharma of warriors to fight wars, because that is their nature (Easwaran 50).
For the contemporary reader of the Bhagavad Gita, this unilateral thinking in devotion to a person's dharma seems to obviate the need for moral responsibility for one's actions. I had a strong negative reaction to this concept. Krishna counsels Arjuna that he must not attach himself to any outcome of his actions and told him that the opposing warriors would be dead whether or not Arjuna participated, because He, Krishna, had already willed it.
He tells him that as a warrior, his highest aspiration should be participating in a war against evil, even though Arjuna can clearly see the terrible cost it would incur to his family and his people (Easwaran 54).
I could not help but be reminded of J. Robert Oppenheimer's quotations from the Bhagavad Gita: "If a thousand suns were to rise in the heavens at the same time, the blaze of their light would resemble the splendor of that supreme spirit" (Easwaran 151) which he quoted at the blinding sight of the first atomic explosion, the Trinity Test in 1945 near Alamagordo, New Mexico (Hijiya 123).
I was surprised to find that not only does Oppenheimer, in interviews, famously quotes verses from the Bhagavad Gita, but has also translated the text from the original Sanskrit (while studying with Professor Arthur Ryder at Berkeley), and uses its tenets as part of his personal philosophy (Hijiya 148).
In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna is counseled by Krishna that not following one's dharma is a sin:
Considering your dharma, you should not vacillate. For a warrior, nothing is higher than a war against evil. The warrior confronted with such a war should be pleased. Arjuna, for it comes as an open gate to heaven. But if you do not participate in the battle against evil, you will incur sin, violating your dharma and your honor. (Easwaran 64).
Oppenheimer believes that scientists have a dharma all their own. Oppenheimer feels that as a scientist, his job is to do science (and in this case, he believes that scientists, as scientists, had an obligation to serve on the Manhattan project) and it is up to political leaders to decide whether or not to use the bomb (Hijiya 137). He also sees his work in New Mexico as part of a greater battle against evil; he must also be part of the fight against Germany and Japan, two governments trying to conquer the world (Hijiya 133).
He counsels other scientists on the project to suppress their objections to the potential and even inevitable use of the weapon, that they "should not attempt to assume responsibility for 'the fruits of their work'" (Hijiya 145), a phrase that is taken directly from the Bhagavad Gita. He reiterates on many occasions that it is the duty of the scientist to build the bomb and the duty of the statesman to decide whether how to use it (Hijiya 137).
Oppenheimer uses his understanding of Krishna's advice to Arjuna to help him throughout his management of the Manhattan Project. He himself clearly identifies with Arjuna's dilemma, and also chooses to act according to what he saw was his dharma. Yet, at the end of Jon Ehle's documentary, "The Day After Trinity" Oppenheimer reminisces, without looking up at the camera, with what sounds like regret in his voice many years later:
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince he should do his duty and to impress him, he takes on his multi-armed form and say, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another. (Ehle, 1980)
After the end of the war, Oppenheimer's views seem to take a more repentant turn in a public lecture at MIT in late 1947, "In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose" (quoted in Thorpe 70). A quick reading of this comment seems to lend it to a Christian concept of sin, but other comments by Oppenheimer show that he sees the 'sin' as a loss of vocation. He advocates for a rediscovery of science as an inner calling and not as a means to solve humanity's problems (Thorpe 70).
Several years after these public comments, Oppenheimer chaired the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission and authored a report recommending against a program to develop the H-bomb, a "weapon of genocide" the use of which is targeted for large cities. This report includes an appendix that outlines the moral and political arguments against the program and here Oppenheimer abandons his earlier position that a scientist must narrow his responsibilities to just doing science.
He publicly abandons Krishna's advice regarding detachment and uses his reputation to further the arguments against developing super weapons. But I believe that Oppenheimer's objection to the H-bomb project was consistent with Krishna's directive about fighting a battle against evil; it's clear that Oppenheimer saw the new project as outside this directive. It is ironic that this report triggers the security hearings that ultimately strips Oppenheimer of his government security clearances, pushing him outside the scientific field he once led. Behaving much like Krishna, the government only wants its scientists to do science and not to moralize about the work (Thorpe 72-73).
I have said on occasion that I "was born to do my job" and now I wonder if this was an expression of my enjoyment of my job or if it was a kind of self-knowledge of my dharma or even more specifically as a scientist, my svadharma:
The expression svadharma means "duty specific to an individual" in terms of intersecting identities: gender, caste, stage of life, and the life. The expression is also firmly rooted in the belief that svadharma derives from, or is equivalent to, svabhava, one's own inherent nature. Duty is not merely a contingent moral response to a set of circumstances but a categorical imperative flowing directly from one's innate and immutable nature (Olivelle 99).
As a biological scientist using genetic technology, if my dharma is to do science, stemming from my innate and immutable nature, then do I do my job without thought to potential consequences, with no thoughts about the 'fruits of my labors'? My life's work has been confined to discovering novel treatments for disease, work that I hear variously described as a "good fight", "war against cancer", and "battle against disease and suffering". I am obviously aware of the power of the technology that I use in my work, but as my work is about relieving human suffering, it seems to fulfill Krishna's advice to fight in a battle against evil.
But what if the power of genetic technology is used for applications other than relieving human suffering and disease? If it is the genetic scientist's dharma to do this science, then is the application of this science beyond therapeutic use fulfill Krishna's directive regarding a battle against evil? Is it part of the battle against evil to expand the reproductive choices of adults who would otherwise not be able to have healthy children? Is it part of the battle against evil to create taller, smarter, faster, more beautiful, and longer-lived children?
At a 1998 UCLA symposium on the manipulation of the genetic basis of human reproduction, James Watson, one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA observes, "… If we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we? What's wrong with it?" (Stock and Campbell 79). On the other side of the debate, Francis Fukuyama remarks, "… the most significant threat posed by contemporary biotechnology is the possibility that it will alter human nature and thereby move us into a "posthuman" stage of history" (Fukuyama 7). Watson also observes that while he has a great respect for the human species, evolution is cruel and capricious; he also sees no sanctity inherent in the human genome, seeming to echo the posthuman observation but from a position of desirability (Stock 132).
Much like Oppenheimer's view of the inevitability of the use of the atomic bomb was inherent in the project from the beginning, manipulating the human germline (the genes passed on to the next generation) to create improved children is also seen as inevitable as the technology becomes developed (Stock and Campbell 129).
There are also significant differences in the kind of science being done for Oppenheimer's project and the biotechnological science being done today that makes the newer science more accessible. Genetic science, for the most part, does not hold the kind of physical hazards (specifically the atomic radiation hazards of uranium and plutonium) that characterizes atomic weapons production. The government does not completely control genetic technology; there are certain types of experiments that are banned by the U.S. government and a few completely legislated as illegal (reproductive human cloning, for example), but the technology, is now relatively ubiquitous and even portable. This kind of work is ongoing in every country capable of supporting a laboratory, whether governmental, academic, or private. A significant amount of technological advances are being made in the private sector and not in academic or government funded labs. The technology has become simplified and accessible, even in a do-it-yourself "kit" form; high-school students learn to insert genes into bacteria in their school laboratories, a process that was illegal in the United States in the early 1970s.
While reproductive cloning is banned in the United States and most other Western countries, there are plenty of places where the research can continue without restriction. While some worry about "opening Pandora's box" when it comes to reproductive technologies and genetic enhancement, I find this concern dated: the box was opened many years ago. Public opinion and policy hasn't caught up with the science. Scientific innovations can and often do proceed with a speed that society cannot integrate smoothly.
The arguments for and against using genetic technology to improve our children fall along religious, philosophical, moral and scientific categories. The arguments go beyond the prevention or treatment of disease, which is not the central issue, but in extending the technology to enhance or improve desirable traits.
Dr. Gregory Stock has distilled the major arguments against using this technology for conscious genetic manipulation into five short statements: (1) People might turn into biological time bombs. (2) Our genetic constitutions might become impoverished. (3) Society might fragment. (4) Our relationships and values might become distorted. (5) We might lose our spiritual mooring (Stock 140). All of these arguments are concerned with our fundamental human nature, the first two, with our biological nature; we don't know if what may happen over time once genes have been inserted, and we might endanger our future if we being choosing certain genes more frequently, narrowing the genetic variation needed by evolution to be successful. The last three arguments are concerned with society and the inner nature of human beings; will be we become a society of haves and have-nots? Will we value manipulated genetic enhancements over those inherited from our families? And will we become so embodied in our newly enhanced selves that we are no longer interested in the spiritual? I would add an additional issue to debate: at what point does genetic enhancement makes us posthuman, or no longer homo sapiens?
The largest "big science" of the late 20th century, the Human Genome Project, allocated three percent of its budget to studying the ethical, social, and legal implications (generally known as ELSI) of genetic research but not everyone felt that the money was spent in a genuine way. One perceived problem is that the community of bioethicists grew up in tandem with the biotech industry. Another was that bioethicists were often the most permissive when it came to debating the new technology. So what did the money fund? As Dr. Fukuyama notes, "this can be regarded as commendable concern for the ethical dimensions of scientific research, or else as a kind of protection money the scientists have to pay to keep the true ethicists off their backs." (Fukuyama 204). If this is true, then the role of the bioethicist is make ongoing genetic research palatable to the public and to answer critical objections towards work that is already clearly inevitable. The usage and utility of genetic manipulation and enhancement was implicit in the Human Genome Project in the same way use of an atomic weapon was implicit in the Manhattan Project itself.
Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project opened the way for the development of weapons that could destroy all life on the planet, a mass extinction. The Human Genome Project opens the way for the such a fundamental shift in the biology of the human race, that Homo sapiens could actually disappear, become extinct, by becoming something new, a Homo sapiens novo.
Perhaps it is the genetic scientist's dharma to contribute towards this redefinition of the human species, but we can no longer separate our ability to do the science from our responsibility for its results. It is also a scientist's moral duty or dharma to educate and inform the public on both the potential and danger of genetic manipulation, because the decision to use these technologies should be democratic, like our society. We appear to we standing on an edge, at the brink, and whether this edge is a precipice to a fall or a bridge to something higher is, at this time, unknown. It is of paramount importance to continue to ask the question 'why' we are doing this work and to continue to imagine the potential consequences of such changes to our fundamental biological nature. It is important to continue to examine the question of a scientist's dharma in terms of right action and moral duty, not just as an individual, but moral duty as it serves the larger society.
Oppenheimer says, "Science, by its methods, its values, and the nature of the objectivity it seeks, is universally human" (Oppenheimer 56). Perhaps in the biotechnological 21st century, we will discover that science is universally 'posthuman'. Is this then our dharma?
Works cited
Easwaran, Eknath., trans. The Bhagavad Gita. Tomales, CA. Nilgiri Press 1985.
Fukuyama, Francis. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
Hijiya, James A. "The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer" Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 144 (2000) 123-167.
Oppenheimer, J. Robert. "The New Weapon: The Turn of the Screw." One World or None. Masters, Dexter and Katherine Way, Eds. London: Purnell and Sons, 1946.
---. Interview. The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer & The Atomic Bomb. Dir. Jon Else. Pyramid Films, 1980.
Olivelle, Patrick. "Meet-eaters and Grass-Eaters" pp 99-116 in Holy War: Violence and the Bhagavad Gita, Steven J. Rosen Ed. Nyack, NY: Deepak Heritage Books, 2002.
Stock, Gregory and John Campbell, Eds. Engineering the Human Germline. NY: Oxford U P, 2000.
Thorpe, Charles. "Violence and the Scientific Vocation" Theory, Culture & Society 21 (2004) 59-84.
About the Author
C. Clogston is a protein chemist and crystallographer working in biotechnology with degrees in Biology and Mythological Studies. Clogston is currently a Ph.D candidate in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California, and can be reached at c.clogston@gmail.com
Posted by: Angel on Monday, November 06, 2006 @ 16:20:04 CST
Carbonek, thanks for the enjoyable and informative article. I actually first read about Oppenheimer's life in a book titled "Brighter than a thousand suns" (by Robert Jungk), but didn't know that he was such a Krishna-ite, and that it was this philosophy which led to his downfall in the McCarthy era.
Sci-fi is full of scenarios why "mass cloning" could be ultimately disastrous. It could produce ucontrolable "monstrosities" like the mutants of "X-men", or an army of "perfect soldiers" bred to obey and not think, or just generally lead to even greater inequality of life, when only the very rich can afford to graft their children with better genes, while everyone else is kept at the "animal level".
Frankly the possibilities scare me. We unfortunately live in a world ruled almost entirely by personal and financial interests, where "the greater good" and "benefit to the people" are given only lip service and not really seen as the greater goals. Sadly, it appears that every big new scientific discovery today only perpetuates this state of affairs.
Sci-fi also has many visions about a future ruled by a dictatorial "scientific clique", who determine every aspect of everybody else's daily life. It's good to know that if this does come about, at least we have somebody like you on our side (:-).
But I really like your concept of "Homo Sapiens Novo". Many mystics today are saying that we're about to evolve to the next stage of our evolution. Since our science is as "natural" a product of humans as dams are of beavers - perhaps this means that our current scientifc ability to actually achieve this evolutionary step is a "natural" result of our development.
I believe that the "Novo Sapiens" will be called "Homo Paradoxalis", because what he does and the way he lives will seem utterly paradoxical to us. On this note, the highest stage in Timothy Leary's "8-circuit model of consciousness development" involves conscious DNA manipulation with the power of our minds.
there's the possibility of creating bio-weapons, which target specific genes, perhaps on a racial basis.
in this sense, genome research can be equally dangerous the atomic bomb research in the past.
that said, i believe you're right: pandora's box has already been opened. sooner or later (and probably sooner), humanity will either "grow up" and use these types of technology wisely, or else humanity will destroy itself.
wouldn't be the first time earth has had a reset -- dinosaurs, anyone?
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