The Mind Bomb?
Scientific modernism has established a track record of being excruciatingly naive when it comes to matters of the mind. On top of that abysmal track record, we are now seeing a stunningly belated scientific 'discovery' of the mind. Under other circumstances this 'discovery' might have been considered a welcome antidote to centuries of scientific neglect of the mind in favor of science's purely materialistic contract on the world.
No. This is not welcome. Not now and especially not under these circumstances.
How quickly we forget. The last time that science was afforded the opportunity to unlock any secrets, we came very close to blowing ourselves up. What have we learned from that lesson? Has science become more moral? Do scientists show any greater sense of responsibility or any deeper understanding of the world? There is a burden of proof here, and it does not lie with the potential victims of continued scientific stupidity.
In their own defense, some scientists will try to claim that there are no secrets of the mind, indeed that there is no mind, so there is nothing to get worried about. All that these scientists see is an accidentally evolved, epiphenominal complexification of matter into brains. We are merely meat machines, harboring egomaniacal delusions of spiritual transcendence. Are these the people we want to be performing global brain surgery, in the sense of a government sponsored Human Mind Project? Which of these scientists or their sponsors harbor ambitions of global mind control? If there is no God, then they will surely try to create that job for themselves.
On the other hand, suppose there is a mystery of the mind. What then? Then science has been dead wrong about the nature and source of reality. Then they should start doing their homework. Before applying for government grants to unlock those secrets they had better start rethinking the past three centuries of the existence of science. For starters consider how and why Descartes tried to split all of reality into an absolute physical reality and a separate and absolute mental reality. What agenda was being played out in that breathtaking excursion into irrationality? That 'sacrificial rite' became the foundation of scientific modernism. How strange!
Let us hereby declare a moratorium on government mind research. Let us first, instead, stop to think about what we are doing. We might even go so far as to consult with the people who would be the ultimate sponsors of any such research.
Dan T. Smith, Baltimore, MD